help with siteswap history
owenjonesuk
I have written an article on the maths of juggling (basically
siteswap and state diagrams) for the magazine of my university's maths
society. What I didn't realise is that they are trying to make it a bit
like a proper journal, so all the articles are meant to have references
to papers and stuff at the bottom. The only references I included in the
original article were to some websites.
So what I need is a short history of who invented siteswap and some
books which people can refer to. I am a bit hazy on the history, if I
had to write it now I would probably put:
Siteswap was independently created by four different groups at roughly
the same time. The first was Bruce Tiemann.
This is based on a talk given by Colin Wright, who was part of one of
the other groups. Unfortunately I need more detail. Did anyone else help
Boppo come up with it? Where were the four groups located (one in
Cambridge, UK, one in California if I remember correctly...)?
The other thing I need is some books which cover the maths of
juggling which people can refer to if they are interested. I haven't
ever read any. The editor suggested the following:
B. Magnusson and B. Tiemann, ``The Physics of Juggling,'' \emph{Physics
Teacher}, \bf{27} (1989).
B. Magnusson and B. Tiemann, ``A Notation for Juggling Tricks,''
\emph{Juggler's World}, summer 1991.
J. Buhler, D. Eisenbud, R. Graham, C. Wright, ``Juggling Drops and
Descents,'' \emph{Amer. Math. Monthly}, \bf{101} (1994).
I wouldn't be surprised if he got these out of Amazon or Google.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Owen Jones
Jack Boyce
> So what I need is a short history of who invented
> siteswap and some books which people can refer to.
From:
http://www.juggling.org/help/siteswap/faq.html#hist
"
10.A little history
This notation (or the vanilla notation, at least) was invented around
1985 by three people independently: Bruce "Boppo" Tiemann at Caltech,
Paul Klimek in Santa Cruz, and Mike Day in Cambridge. (Hence its
British name "Cambridge Notation".) Jack Boyce (also at Caltech) came
up with the juggling state model to explain the phenomenon of
excited-state tricks. (So did I, but a couple of weeks later, damn it!
: -8 )
Bruce has two articles published on the notation: "The Physics Teacher"
(November 1989) and "Juggler's World" (Summer 1991).
"
> Did anyone else help Boppo come up with it?
Bengt Magnusson got involved a little later; one of his contributions
was to write an early siteswap generator program. For more info ask
Boppo; email me and I'll forward his email address.
Paul Klimek (another independent discoverer, also in California)
noticed the distinction between ground state and excited state tricks,
and coined that terminology.
> The other thing I need is some books which cover the maths of
> juggling which people can refer to if they are interested. I haven't
> ever read any.
"The Mathematics of Juggling" by Burkard Polster is the only book
devoted to the topic, and is a good reference. If you're doing
historical research there, note that his account is somewhat
incomplete. Allen discusses this a bit in his review:
http://www.ams.org/notices/200401/rev-knutson.pdf
For the "pre-history" of juggling notations, Arthur Lewbel wrote an
interesting article for Juggler's World:
http://www2.bc.edu/~lewbel/jugweb/acadjug/acadjug9394.pdf
As the JIS FAQ points out, some of the other elements of today's
notation developed several years later. My own contributions were
state diagrams and the multiplexing, synch, and passing extensions to
vanilla siteswap notation (all in 1990).
If somebody wants a project, it would be nice to interview all of the
people involved and get the correct history down on paper. Were all
three groups inspired by some common source? How did the ideas evolve
differently in isolation? It's a good case example of simultaneous
independent discovery.
Jack
Charlie
<owenj...@yahoo.com.nospam> wrote:
>This is based on a talk given by Colin Wright, who was part of one of
>the other groups. Unfortunately I need more detail. Did anyone else help
>Boppo come up with it? Where were the four groups located (one in
>Cambridge, UK, one in California if I remember correctly...)?
Mike Day was something to do with the group in Cambridge and I believe
subsequently worked with the Gandinis. You might thus be able to reach
him through Sean.
Cheers
Charlie
Peter Bone
> explain the phenomenon of excited-state tricks. (So did I, but a couple of >
weeks later, damn it!
> : -8 )
I'm confused about that bit. Otherwise I found it very interesting -
thanks.
Peter
----== posted via www.jugglingdb.com ==----
Mark Morreau
Owen,
Our forthcoming siteswap DVD contains a fair bit of stuff to do with
history of Siteswap. What would be immediately available for your
research and what might be useful to you would be footage of interviews
we've done with Colin Wright and Charlie Dancey about this very subject.
These interviews pretty much answer the questions you ask above. We'll
not be interviewing Mike Day until early next year, so maybe a bit late
for your article. But if you would like the raw interviews to watch
contact me (removing the spamtrap) and I'll dub them over for you.
And before anybody asks, the Siteswap DVD will - barring disaster - be
launched at the BJC in Perth next year. And continuing with the
unashamed commercial plug, our WJF tie-in, the second Toby Walker DVD
imaginatively entitled "Toby The Best Too" is being edited even as I
type. Slightly more detail on our website at www.mediacircus.biz.
Cheers
Mark
Peter Bone
> > Jack Boyce (also at Caltech) came up with the juggling state model to
> > explain the phenomenon of excited-state tricks. (So did I, but a couple of
>
> weeks later, damn it!
> > : -8 )
>
> I'm confused about that bit. Otherwise I found it very interesting -
> thanks.
Sorry, I get it now. I wondered why you were talking as if you were
someone else but I realise it's a quote.
Well done for inventing state notation!
Jason Quinn
> Sorry, I get it now. I wondered why you were talking as if you were
> someone else but I realise it's a quote.
> Well done for inventing state notation!
It's strange that state notation came after plain siteswap. States to
state diagrams to loops in state diagrams seems to me the more likely
route that siteswaps would have been invented. I'm going to be giving a
brief presentation soon to some people on the mathematics of juggling and
I think this is the way I will motivate them anyway.
Jason
Jack Boyce
>
> It's strange that state notation came after plain siteswap.
States to
> state diagrams to loops in state diagrams seems to me the more likely
> route that siteswaps would have been invented.
>
Boppo explains the genesis of the idea as throwing differently so as to
switch the landing order of the balls (you "swap" the landing "sites"
in the pattern). Once you have this mental picture, you start playing
around with throw sequences like ...5555556455555..., then start
playing around with multiple swaps, and things start to generalize.
The development of state transitions occurred later, when I was trying
to figure out under what conditions two patterns could be stuck
together to get another valid pattern.
I think it's generally common to intuit an idea first, and then fill in
the rigorous justification later (an extreme example is Fermat's Last
Theorem). Since it isn't fashionable in mathematics to talk about
intuition once the logic is known, it's easy to be misled into thinking
that deductive logic is how we actually arrive at the truth.
Jack