I have accepted that this week, at least, I do not have it in me to write an A-to-Z essay. I’ll be back to it next week, I think. I don’t know whether I’ll publish my usual I-meant-this-to-be-800-words-and-it’s-three-times-that piece on Monday or on Wednesday, but it’ll be sometime next week. And, events personal and public allowing, I’ll continue weekly from there. Should still finish the essay series before 2020 finishes. I say this assuming that 2020 will in fact finish.
But now let me look back on a time when I could produce essays with an almost machine-like reliability, except for when I forgot to post them. My 2019 Mathematics A To Z: Versine is such an essay. The versine is a function that had a respectably long life in a niche of computational computing. Cheap electronic computers wiped out that niche. The reasons that niche ever existed, though, still apply, just to different problems. Knowing of past experiences can help us handle future problems.
