Tagged “probability”

2 essays.

1. Prime spirals and pattern-hunger

   May 3, 2026 · 4 min

   Ulam's spiral lights up the primes and, unnervingly, they fall along diagonal lines. Some of those lines are real mathematics and some are the mind inventing order. A companion to the prime-spiral toy, on the honest uses of a suggestive picture.

2. What π actually measures

   March 1, 2026 · 3 min

   π turns up in a dart game that has no circles drawn on it, only counted. A companion to the Monte-Carlo toy, on area as probability, and why getting one more decimal costs a hundred times the effort.