Video Games that Secretly Teach Mathematics

· #personal essay #video games #mathematics #Cultural Criticism

A love letter to the mathematics hiding inside video games, and a protest against the expression 'I'm just not a math person'. From parallel universes in *Super Mario 64* to the technical exegetes mapping *Animal Crossing*, *The Sims 2*, Pokémon, and Paper Mario. Then *Balatro*: the IEEE 754 double-precision ceiling, tetration, Knuth's up-arrows, Conway chained arrows, Graham's number, TREE(3). A history of notation catching up to the infinite.