Well, today I wanted to take a brief moment to talk about a Discord that I participate in called Finite Group. Started by some familiar faces in the math community. The leaders are Katie Steckles, Peter Rowlett, and Matthew Scroggs. Ayliean MacDonald has replaced Sophie Maclean who had to step down.Though I’m sure we will still hear from her from time to time.
I leapt at the chance to join to support people whose content I love watching. You will know that all these folks have put on free things for the community. A few are; the 24 Hours Math Games Show for charity, Scroggs Maths Advent Calendar, and Clopen Mic Night. You will see some of them on the math blog Aperiodical.
To join us on Discord you will have to sign up at Patreon. So, yes, there is a monthly fee that goes to support the team. But, the lowest tier is only about $5.50 US. All tiers have access to the Discord. Paying more gives you more perks. The fee is well earned considering how much they do for the community at large. And, as a freelancer, I’m very committed to the idea that we all deserve to get paid. No one should have to work for free.
The biggest perk for everyone is the monthly live streams that are free for Discord members. So far, there have been five in total. My favorites were the Christmas episode, the one on prime numbers, and the last one on memes.
Fortunately, the live stream for March is open to everyone! This is a chance to experience what these streams are like. Hopefully enticing you to join us. Here is a trailer that they put together for Pi Day.
The next stream for Finite Group is set for Wednesday, March 27th at 10:00 am PDT US time.(Hat tip to Stuart Celarier for pointing out we are on Daylight Saving Time now.) For those in other countries, it airs at 5-6pm GMT. The topic is covering the recent 100-question survey that threatened to tear us all apart. The one on mathematical conventions where there are disagreements between mathematicians.
That video will be available here when it is live.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLvU30I03ZY
If you have a YouTube account you can sign up for a notification when it starts.
It should be fun. I’m interested to hear everyone’s perspectives. The one that I was most familiar with was about the natural numbers starting at 0 or 1. Which seemed very divisive when I learned about it in my proofs course. Surprisingly, it appeared recently on an episode of Numberphile.