Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 29/09/2026happy math monday! here's a fun problem i remember fondly from my undergrad days. #mathmonday 000
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 17/09/2026Playing Earthbound in the 90s: hahaha these prices are so ridiculous. Playing Earthbound in 2026: $6 for a coffee? Not bad. 010
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 12/09/2026Kids have been using Saturday morning to work their way through the Marvel canon. This week: Thor! 000
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 09/09/2026Hi! are you a completionist? see a set of collectibles and got to catch them all? 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 03/09/2026It’s been almost 20 years since burnout paradise came out. Am I missing something or is it still the best arcade racer ever? 130
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 30/08/2026Me: trying to get kids into your corporate brand through video games is some capitalist bullshit. Also me: man, these games ruled 000
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 29/08/2026How much would the demand for prediction markets crater if Nintendo just brought back the Everybody Votes channel? 000
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 29/08/2026told 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. 000
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 28/08/2026not trying to put anyone on blast. but complaining about people who use "y'all" is a very strange hill to die on. 000
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 27/08/2026Hey 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... 041
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 25/08/2026Want 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! 010
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 22/08/2026Meanwhile, here in San Francisco, we are close to crossing the $20 cafe cookie rubicon 000
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 26/07/2026I don’t drink that much anymore, but when you have friends staying with you on a Saturday night, sometimes this happens 110
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 23/07/2026Look 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... 000
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 21/07/2026Also 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! 000
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 20/07/2026Going through some old docs and found this story I wrote in kindergarten. What a wild ride this tooth went on. 010
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 16/07/2026David Lynch’s book “Catching the Big Fish” has some real gems. 000
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 07/07/2026Media: 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. 000
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 03/07/2026This 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. 030
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 21/06/2026This 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 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 19/06/2026When is the last time anyone gave a fuck about anything Rob Schneider had to say? 000
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 18/06/2026As 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... 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 18/06/2026Digging 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: 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 18/06/2026You can also do some sentiment analysis: of the things people say in each episode, how many of them are positive, negative, or neutral? 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 18/06/2026Though, at least in this sample, Chris tended to be more profane. The one exception was a call he had with an Australian 🇦🇺 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 18/06/2026The 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... 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 17/06/2026Here's a visual explorer of the p-adic distance for a few small numbers: #math #mathsky #iteachmath 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 17/06/2026What'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 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 17/06/2026In 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) 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 17/06/2026We 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 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 16/06/2026We can also cross reference this data agains the political leanings of the state as a whole. What do you notice? What do you wonder? 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 16/06/2026Then 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 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 16/06/2026We start by exploring some voting statistics over time and state: #math #iteachmath #mathsky 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 15/06/2026We then explore a fun application of Sperner's lemma towards finding a way for roommates to divide rent fairly. #math #mathsky #iteachmath 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 15/06/2026A 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. 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 14/06/2026Another 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. 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 14/06/2026Then 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 200
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 14/06/2026This 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 110
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 13/06/2026We 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... 120
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 13/06/2026The 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... 100
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 13/06/2026We 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 120
Matt Lane @mattlane.us · 12/06/2026And 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 100