Why the World’s Best Mathematicians Are Hoarding Chalk
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited as an amusing side story whenever HN discusses blackboards, chalk, and how mathematicians work.
What it is
A short Great Big Story piece about Hagoromo, a Japanese chalk brand so prized that mathematicians stockpiled it, with some reportedly dealing it on the side. It tells the quirky tale of a writing tool whose supply became scarce.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2019 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends Reedx · 2019-06 · on “The Chalk Market: Where Mathematicians Go to Get the Good Stuf”
Recently saw a good video about this: [this video] Pretty amusing they were stockpiling it and some were chalk dealers on the side.
Cites leovander · 2019-05 · on “Advanced Data Structures (2017)”
Ha, I remember seeing that post recently. Looks like it goes back to a 2015 gizmodo article, and was in a recent youtube clip. [LINK] [LINK] [this video]
Cites JulianWasTaken · 2022-07 · on “Lessons I wish I had been taught (1996)”
Sounds like crummy chalk -- a good blackboard with some chalk is heaven for me. Whiteboards are so sterile. [this video]
Cites Syzygies · 2022-08 · on “Thinking with pen and paper”
I can remember rolling my eyes at a writer using a mechanical typewriter decades after word processors had taken over. Did they thaw out of a glacier? At the same time I love physical media. As a math professor I defend a widespread preference for blackboards over soul-sucking whiteboards, imagining that musicians will still play grand pianos in a century, and they'll still snicker over Ryan Gosling playing a toy piano under the spotlight in that classic movie "La La Land". I've hoarded Hagoromo chalk; I'm the one with the chalk attaché case in [1]. I've always carried multiple grades of drawing paper, and I've worked through many hundreds of artist grade felt tip pens, scanning all my math