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Matt Lane

@mattlane.us
101 followers 63 following 391 posts

Mathematician in my heart, software engineer on my paystub. I use math to write about gerrymandering, inequality, game shows & love. Wrote a book about math and video games. mattlane.us

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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 29/09/2026
happy math monday! here's a fun problem i remember fondly from my undergrad days. #mathmonday
calculating the sum of reciprocal squares for even and odd numbers only
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 17/09/2026
Playing Earthbound in the 90s: hahaha these prices are so ridiculous. Playing Earthbound in 2026: $6 for a coffee? Not bad.
Earthbound fast food menu prices
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 12/09/2026
Kids have been using Saturday morning to work their way through the Marvel canon. This week: Thor!
Thor holding a hammer
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 11/09/2026
new games are cool, but have you ever played earthbound?
screenshot of onett in earthbound
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 09/09/2026
Hi! are you a completionist? see a set of collectibles and got to catch them all?
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 07/09/2026
hey @the-independent.com i fixed your headline for you
fixing amazon bootlicking headline
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 03/09/2026
It’s been almost 20 years since burnout paradise came out. Am I missing something or is it still the best arcade racer ever?
Burnout paradise car crash
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 30/08/2026
Me: trying to get kids into your corporate brand through video games is some capitalist bullshit. Also me: man, these games ruled
yo noid box art for NEScool spot box art for NES
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 29/08/2026
breaking ground on my next story, this should be a fun one
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 29/08/2026
How much would the demand for prediction markets crater if Nintendo just brought back the Everybody Votes channel?
Everybody Votes result for the question "Does your Mii actually look like you?"
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 29/08/2026
told my kid today that the first kirby game was on a handheld device that displayed games in black and white. he looked at me like i was literally a thousand years old.
box art for kirby's dream landscreenshot of kirby gameplay.
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 28/08/2026
not trying to put anyone on blast. but complaining about people who use "y'all" is a very strange hill to die on.
trending topics - debate over using y'all is fourth.
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 28/08/2026
This seems like as good a name as any
lake trump is a fucking loser
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 27/08/2026
Hey math stans! looking for an application of the intermediate value theorem? check out my latest, on the absolute dystopia we must be living in to allow prediction markets on medical trials: mattlane.us/stories/bett...
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 25/08/2026
Want to explore what might happen when we put markets on top of medical trials? check out my latest story: mattlane.us/stories/bett... spoiler alert it's not great (what might happen, not the writing of it). but math is fun!
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 22/08/2026
Meanwhile, here in San Francisco, we are close to crossing the $20 cafe cookie rubicon
Cafe menu with a giant cookie for $19.50
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 04/08/2026
Yeah no shit
Dario Amadei warns new hires prioritize money over mission
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 27/07/2026
Post a perfect album from the 90s.
Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star album cover
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 26/07/2026
I don’t drink that much anymore, but when you have friends staying with you on a Saturday night, sometimes this happens
Old fashioneds!
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 23/07/2026
The vibe of living in San Francisco in 2026
Ai bus ad with graffiti
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 23/07/2026
Look at these pretty graphs! The best thing about gambling is the mathematics that undergirds it. Want to know what these graphs are all about? you can read more here: mattlane.us/stories/coin...
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 21/07/2026
Also even if you don't like math, this one has free slot machines. Unfortunately, everything's made up and the coins don't matter. But still, give it a spin (literally) and let me know what you think!
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 20/07/2026
Going through some old docs and found this story I wrote in kindergarten. What a wild ride this tooth went on.
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 16/07/2026
David Lynch’s book “Catching the Big Fish” has some real gems.
Screenshot of David Lynch book
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 07/07/2026
Media: this racist piece of shit is becoming more mainstream! What are we to do??? Also media: let’s platform him. wtf @npr.org, not a good look.
NPR platforming a racist
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 03/07/2026
This was fun to think about. These three aren’t necessarily the easiest beach reads, but thematically they all shine a light on American power, and how in pursuit of greater power it can leave a sometimes unquiet horrifying path of destruction in its wake. Even for those in power.
Book cover for Merchants of DoubtBook cover for The Sum of UsBook cover for Careless People
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 26/06/2026
Sure beats sitting behind a desk.
Beach view from vacation
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 21/06/2026
This Father’s Day, let’s take a moment to remember one of TV’s greatest dads, Sandy Cohen. May all dads find the patience, love, and hair products that Sandy had. #FathersDay
Sandy Cohen talking to his son Seth
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 19/06/2026
When is the last time anyone gave a fuck about anything Rob Schneider had to say?
Rob Schneider headline
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 18/06/2026
As a final trick, I fed this into an algorithm and created a game where you can guess whether a given quote is an actual quote from the podcast or is just something randomly generated by a computer: mattlane.us/stories/beau...
Guessing game for who said a given quote
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 18/06/2026
Digging into things more, you can also look at patterns of speech across episodes. Here's a chart of speech tells for Chris compared to his guests:
Scores of speech patterns and how likely they predict Chris as the speaker vs his guest
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 18/06/2026
You can also do some sentiment analysis: of the things people say in each episode, how many of them are positive, negative, or neutral?
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 18/06/2026
Though, at least in this sample, Chris tended to be more profane. The one exception was a call he had with an Australian 🇦🇺
Profanity counts per episode
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 18/06/2026
The first one: who's talking more per episode? For the most part, in this sample Chris had no problem giving his guests the floor: mattlane.us/stories/beau...
Word counts by person per episode
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 17/06/2026
Here's a visual explorer of the p-adic distance for a few small numbers: #math #mathsky #iteachmath
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 17/06/2026
What's more, we can talk about distances in a very general way. Words have distances between them (this is foundational to how spell checkers work). Classes of functions have an infinite number of distance metrics you can define on them too Here are a couple examples: #math #iteachmath
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 17/06/2026
In different geometries, the shortest distance may not be a straight line. It may not even be unique! Here's all of the shortest distances between two points using the Manhattan distance, which models how we measure distances in grids like cities (hence the name)
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 17/06/2026
We all learned in school that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But that's only true because of the way we define the distance between two points. #math #mathsky
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 16/06/2026
We can also cross reference this data agains the political leanings of the state as a whole. What do you notice? What do you wonder?
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 16/06/2026
Then fold in different measures of participation. Did you know that poll worker statistics are relatively easy to come by? You do now! You can see how man poll workers per capita volunteered in a given state, and compare that to things like overall turnout. #math #mathsky #iteachmath
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 16/06/2026
We start by exploring some voting statistics over time and state: #math #iteachmath #mathsky
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 15/06/2026
We then explore a fun application of Sperner's lemma towards finding a way for roommates to divide rent fairly. #math #mathsky #iteachmath
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 15/06/2026
A couple of case studies are introduced: the first is on detecting whether a coin is biased, and how one could still create a game that's fair even with a coin that's more likely to land on heads.
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 14/06/2026
Another approach is to use the fact that district elections are winner take all. We can count how many votes did not go to the winner across each district, and use that to detect whether there's systematic bias in one direction or another. If you're gerrymandering, this metric detects it.
Example district with significant gerrymandering to favor one party over anotherCalculating the efficiency gap for a gerrymandered collection of districts
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 14/06/2026
Then we turn towards different ways to quantify the degree of gerrymandering. One approach is purely geometric. The lower the ratio of a shape's area to the area you could get from a circle with the same perimeter, the less compact (and more weird) the shape tends to be. #math #iteachmath #mathsky
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 14/06/2026
This story lets you take a deep dive into gerrymandering. First you can start by creating your very own gerrymandered districts. the thrill! mattlane.us/stories/mind... #math #mathsky
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 13/06/2026
We close by exploring energy transitions, where a population moves from a resource whose extraction is bad for the environment, to a resource which is renewable. Depending on how much damage has been done and how fast the transition is, outcomes vary quite a bit: mattlane.us/stories/warm...
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 13/06/2026
The model then layers in measures of environmental health, as well as resource harvesting and recovery rates. Tl;dr: when resources are consumed too quickly, population collapse is very likely to occur. mattlane.us/stories/warm...
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 13/06/2026
We start by exploring a standard population model, parametrized by the growth rate of the population and the carrying capacity of the environment: mattlane.us/stories/warm... #mathsky #iteachmath
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Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 12/06/2026
And you don't even have to buy the game to play it - I built a version in the browser, just for you! mattlane.us/stories/harv... #math #mathsky #iteachmath
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