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    Back to Here Be Monsters

    Here Be Monsters

    HBM058: Kelly is Cold

    It was early in the morning of New Years Day and Kelly had just bought a purse-load of psychedelic mushrooms from Laramie Wyoming's local "druggist." Kelly handed them out to the assembled company and took some himself. He felt a bit apathetic about the world. But when he went outside to look at the stars, he realized what he wanted more than anything else in the world...a book on combinatorics.

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    By Jeff Emtman • Mar 2, 2016 • 17m Listen

    It was early in the morning of New Years Day and Kelly had just bought a purse-load of psychedelic mushrooms from Laramie Wyoming's local "druggist." Kelly handed them out to the assembled company and took some himself. He felt a bit apathetic about the world. He was wearing thin shoes, a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. But when he went outside to look at the stars, he realized what he wanted more than anything else in the world...a book on combinatorics.

    Suddenly, Kelly found himself elsewhere, in a wavy and confusing reality, holding a large rock and looking through the windows of Coe Library. He was thinking about the math books that lived there on the third floor. He was very cold and had a decision to make.

    Kelly lives in Seattle today. He cares about math, people and bikes. His favorite book on combinotorics is Herbert S. Wilf's generatingfunctionology, which is available for free, on the book's website.

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    Calculation of Pascal's Triangle, a classic combinatoric. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    Generation of a Sierpinski Triangle via a chaos algorithm. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    "Kissing Spheres" are an application of combinatorics that are useful in constructing 20 sided polyhedrons. Courtesy of Robert Bradshaw of Wikimedia Commons.

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      Jeff Emtman

      Independent Producer

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      Bethany Denton

      Managing Editor of 'Here Be Monsters'

      CultureArts
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