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Math and GIFs are united on one blog, and it is glorious

A new blog, MathGifs, uses colorful GIFs to motivate basic yet fascinating geometric concepts.

 

Joe Kloc

Streaming

Posted on Oct 16, 2013   Updated on Jun 1, 2021, 4:05 am CDT

Out there on the lonely ocean of Internet ephemera, two unlikely castaways have at long last crossed paths: math and GIFs.

Last month, some anonymous patron saint of high school math education created a new blog that uses colorful GIFs to motivate simple yet profound geometric concepts.

Really, it’s not so surprising: geometry and GIFs are both aesthetic enterprises. They value efficiency, simplicity and brevity. They compliment each other well. Even the name of the aforementioned blog, MathGifs, has no tolerance for flowery nonsense.

I won’t put you on here. These are GIFs about geometry. If you are not the least bit curious why, for example, when you whisper a certain spot in Grand Central Station, you will be able to hear it loud and clear from another spot across the station, then the GIF explaining how foci are related to the construction of an ellipse is just not going to do it for you:

 

That’s okay, of course. MathGifs, like math and GIFs, is not for everyone.

Photo by fdecomite/Flickr

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*First Published: Oct 16, 2013, 3:27 pm CDT