Book mixing math and crochet wins UK 'odd' prize

[ensho]

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/book-mixing-math-and-crochet-wins-uk-odd-prize-1928459.html


"Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes"


A book charting the frontier between handicrafts and geometry on Friday won Britain's quirkiest literary award, the Diagram Prize for year's oddest book title.

"Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes" by mathematician Daina Taimina beat runners-up "What Kind of Bean is This Chihuahua?" and "Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich."

Prize overseer Horace Bent said "the public proclivity towards non-Euclidian needlework" proved too strong for the competition.

Founded in 1978, the prize is run by trade magazine The Bookseller. Its rules say the books must be serious and their titles not merely a gimmick.

The winner is decided by public vote.

The other finalists were "Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter," "Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots" and "The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease."

Previous champions include "Bombproof Your Horse" and "Living With Crazy Buttocks."

The winning book's title may be odd, but the subject is serious. Taimina, a mathematician at Cornell University in New York state, uses crochet to illustrate the properties of hyperbolic planes - difficult-to-model forms in which lines curve away from each other instead of running parallel or converging.

Her creations, which resemble complex coral formations, have been hailed by academics and included in art shows.
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I've also noticed crochet stitches in many fractals

thought you all might enjoy the above literary award

[pnwmom]

1. Very cool cover. Thanks! n/t

[bananas]

2. Thanks - here's her website and her blog

Looks like she's having a lot of fun!
http://www.math.cornell.edu/~dtaimina/
http://hyperbolic-crochet.blogspot.com/

[D-Lee]

3. Thanks for the links (and the original poster also). Who would have ever known? nt

[Patsy Stone]

4. :)

:thumbsup:

[MagickMuffin]

5. You should see some of the great artists out there, FreeForm Crocheting is HUGE

I'm still teaching myself all the various stitches :blush:

[ensho]

6. I crochet but didn't know about free-form, thanks for the info

I'll try looking it up

I've done some free-form on my own.

[MagickMuffin]

7. There is a Yahoo FF crochet group

I haven't posted there, but get the emails when someone starts a thread. There seems to be a lot of important crocheters that post there. A lot of very talented crocheters in the World.


http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FFCrochet/