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Comment by chch | Hacker News Reader

The mathematics of juggling definitely continues out from there, as well! [1] is a video to get a taste of some of the ideas of the mathematics of the patterns of juggling.

Then, when you figure out that a certain set of patterns are jugglable, you try to figure out state diagrams for things like "What are all the possible rhythms for juggling three objects, under some maximum number of beats in the air?" [2]

I've definitely caught myself idly drawing ladder diagrams[3] before, then plugging the mathematical results into Juggling Lab[4] to see what it would look like, e.g. [5]. :)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1zSlvQtKM4

[2] https://plus.maths.org/issue52/features/polster/state1.jpg

[3] https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/juggle/images/b/ba/0123...

[4] http://jugglinglab.sourceforge.net

[5] https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/juggle/images/8/8f/86x4x...

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I once around age 12 saw a talk of the mathematics of juggling and it inspired me to go home and download some old software for playing around with juggling patterns which I then did for hours and hours on end.

I'm now wondering if it's the same software, although this would have been circa 1998. I recognise the use of "siteswap notation" though.

That may have been me.

Off-topic a bit, but just want to say your juggling talk is very good (and IIRC got me to start juggling again). Although my friends found it odd when they saw it a second time and realised how even your off-hand jokes were all deliberate and planned.

Thank you.

The talk has evolved over the last 30 or more years, and is /significantly/ different now from 2 years ago. There are many common lines, many common jokes, many common quips, because I've kept the ones that are effective, but there are new lines, new comments, new jokes. It's always changing, but people remember the bits that are the same because they are the ones that are good. Which is why I keep them.

It's genuinely evolved, and the lines you see are the survivors.

I do other talks on other topics too.

I worked at a comedy club during university and this is totally normal.

We would usually have a set of comedians booked for the whole weekend, and in the main their performances over the three nights would be identical. There was the very occasional one who would do some ad-lib back and forth with the crowd for a few minutes, but even those you would start to notice a pattern of repeated jokes, or types of jokes if they were booked for more than a few nights.

What was interesting was seeing the same acts return months later and find their set was still 80% the same. They evolved material slowly over time.

I wasn't 100% sure so I didn't want to call it out, but I thought I recognised your name and now I'm sure it was, thank you!

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