The Art of Mathematics in Chalk

This article really resonated with me. I'm an undergraduate math major, and classes being all-remote this past year have unfortunately reduced chalkboard use among both professors and students. Particularly, I have been unable to go into lecture halls after hours and do homework on chalkboards like I used to.

I much prefer to do work standing up at a board where I can physically step back to get a literally different perspective on what I have written. The ephemerality of a chalkboard also far surpasses paper, which means there is less commitment for writing anything down – it thus feels more conducive to proper scratch work where ideas are tested and perhaps backtracked. Plus, as the article covers, there is definitely a feeling of having created something artistic when the problem is solved and the board is covered top to bottom in symbols. (Though I haven't had occasion to draw any interesting, abstract topology in my studies.)

To make up for the lack of access to chalk boards on campus during the pandemic, I built one in my room, along with an automated system for scanning flattened images of it. It took about a weekend to set up, and I've used it every day since. Some technical details for anyone who may be curious:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26872168

One thing that annoys me is the reasons administrators give for replacing chalkboards: "chalk boards are hard to maintain, the chalk powder gets all over the place, etc". But then they replace them with whiteboards that they probably spend twice as much to maintain. If they just spent that same effort sourcing high quality chalk and chalk holders, chalk boards would work great.

An old Soviet joke.

Professor in a math class calls out a student to draw a circle on the blackboard. The student makes a perfect one; the Platonic ideal of a circle in one swift, generous motion. The professor is impressed and inquiries, how come?

- See, all I did in my two years of military service was operating a meat grinder.

Reminds me of the story of Hagoromo shutting down their chalk business several years ago. Previous HN discussions from 2015 and 2019. [1] [2]

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9770017 "Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business"

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20237878 "The Chalk Market: Where Mathematicians Go to Get the Good Stuff"

The article mentions the chalkboards having been removed at Cambridge, but I recall one of the colleges having chalkboards in the toilets at one of the sites¹. They were a curious mix of nerdy jokes riffing on regular toilet graffiti, jokes that felt stolen from Futurama, and a few apparent attempts at some actual work. I think the playfulness allowed them to be interesting, as you can place offbeat thoughts on to them without tying yourself to them too deeply.

¹ Can't recall which one it was, but suspect they'd be a casualty of the past year anyway. Edit: Pretty sure it was the INI.

I still think chalk boards are superior due to the feeling and aesthetics. I had a chalk board of 2qm at home but got rid of it after leaving uni. I have white boards in the office and at home, and it's still superior to the Samsung Flip we also have, but nothing is even close to chalk boards. Not sure why. Feels down to earth? You feel more connected to the medium? I'm wondering how much of it is nostalgia (we had chalk boards in school) and how some of the next generations would see it. But the pencils still smell funny and the black colour of the pencil on your hands still sucks.

Now I want a chalk board again. So aesthetically pleasing, damn.

There is a lecture style particularly in mathematics where the professor writes a long derivation, proof, or calculation on the board while lecturing. For this style, a chalkboard works better than a whiteboard or any other technology I've seen.

if you like the look 'stuff happening on a chalkboard', you might like cy twombly's paintings from around 1968-70, e.g. http://telnet.asia/synopsis_of_a_battle.jpg

I'm an avid fan of all boards - I consider them magnets for creativity, collaboration, and exploration. My father and one of my brothers are professors and I'm well-versed in the chalkboard vs. whiteboard debate.

My team's solution to the sudden dearth of boards in our lives was to launch sharetheboard.com - it allows board-users to connect with board-lovers remotely AND legibly, while digitizing contents in real time. Coming in about one week, we'll release a streaming feature to make this process even easier. Best of all, it supports BOTH blackboards and whiteboards.

To any fellow board enthusiasts: please give it a try and share your thoughts (or wait until the streaming feature launches - in a few days). Thanks in advance for your frank feedback.

Jokes aside, I never have seen lecturers to make such beauty on whiteboards. There is an old religious war of blackboards vs. whiteboards, and somehow the whiteboard has won and lost at the same time.

It seems some of the boards are out-of-order with respect to the captions. See the one on natural language - the referenced scribblings on hom(top) and functor existence are two pictures up

Unmentioned is Hagoromo Fulltouch Chalk ... the standard for academic mathematics.

You know your seminar's well prepared when there's a box of Hagoromo chalk on the tray.

I didn’t read the article, but it was quite soothing to look at the chalkboard photos. Perhaps due to the superficial chaos and the order that arises from it.

I’d be curious if there was a subreddit dedicated to these types of chalk math photos.

If you liked this, the article reminded me of a paper I read, "Chalk: Materials and concepts in mathematical research", by M.J. Barany and D. MacKenzie. It talks about various practices in math research.

Real mathematicians write in sand.