Announcing my 2021 Mathematics A-to-Z

I enjoy the tradition of writing an A-to-Z, a string of essays about topics from across the alphabet and mostly chosen by readers and commenters. I’ve done at least one each year since 2015 and it’s a thrilling, exhausting performance. I didn’t want to miss this year, too.

But note the “exhausting” there. It’s been a heck of a year and while I’ve been more fortunate than many, I also know my limits. I don’t believe I have the energy to do the whole alphabet. I tell myself these essays don’t have to be big productions, and then they turn into 2,500 words a week for 26 weeks. It’s nice work but it’s also a (slender) pop mathematics book a year, on top of everything else I write in the corners around my actual work.

So how to do less, and without losing the Mathematics A-to-Z theme? And Iva Sallay, creator of Find the Factors and always a kind and generous reader, had the solution. This year I’ll plan on a subset of the alphabet, corresponding to a simple phrase. That phrase? I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to think of, but it must be the right one.

I plan to do, in this order, the letters of “MATHEMATICS A-TO-Z”.

That is still a 15-week course of essays, but I did want something that would still be a worthwhile project. I intend to keep the essays shorter this year, aiming at a 1,000-word cap, so look forward to me breaking 4,000 words explaining “saddle points”. This also implies that I’ll be doubling and even tripling letters, for the first time in one of these sequences. There’s to be three A’s, three T’s, and two M’s. Also one each of C, E, H, I, O, S, and Z. I figure I have one Z essay left before I exhaust the letter. I may deal with that problem in 2022.

I plan to set my call for topics soon. I’d like to get the sequence started publishing in July, so I have to do that soon. But to give some idea the range of things I’ve discussed before, here’s the roster of past, full-alphabet, A-to-Z topics:

• A Summer 2015 Mathematics A to Z Roundup
• A Leap Day 2016 Mathematics A To Z: The Roundup
• The End 2016 Mathematics A To Z Roundup
• The Summer 2017 Mathematics A To Z: What I Talked About
• What I Wrote About in My 2018 Mathematics A To Z
• What I Wrote About In My 2019 Mathematics A To Z
• What I Wrote About In My All 2020 Mathematics A to Z

I, too, am fascinated by the small changes in how I titled these posts and even chose whether to capitalize subject names in the roster. By “am fascinated by the small changes” I mean “am annoyed beyond reason by the inconsistencies”. I hope you too have an appropriate reaction to them.