Last year during my June half-term break I was supposed to be revising for my A-Level Maths exams. Part of that ‘revision’, unsurprisingly, involved rewatching Sherlock on iPlayer for what was probably the third time. Somewhere between those episodes I decided two things: I was going to start a maths blog1, and I was going to learn the violin.2
Having published my first post on 9th July 2025, twenty days after my last A-Level exam in the middle of what I can only describe as a post-exam grief, I thought this platform would be structured. Mostly maths, probably quite academic, and a place to write about theorems and proofs and the things I was excited to learn at university.
Somewhere along the line this blog became a place to share a lot more things than what I had initially planned. Part maths, part memoir, part ongoing attempt to process things I haven’t fully worked out yet. Looking back, the posts have been about everything from exam anxiety and the fear of being judged for getting things wrong, to outreach events, eigenvalues and Ryan Gosling. But most importantly, I wrote when I felt like it, about whatever was sitting with me at the time, with no particular schedule and no particular plan.
People often say routine is important, and for a lot of things it is. But what I learned from a year of writing this blog is that I work better in bursts than in schedules, and that the posts I’m most glad exist are the ones I didn’t plan to write3.
In a year, mathsrant reached readers in over 50 countries, which I find genuinely baffling in the best possible way. Over 4300 views and 2300 visitors, and 31 posts4. The most read thing I published wasn’t about anxiety or Logicomix or anything particularly personal, but a post about maths notes that start on page two5
To everyone who’s read, shared, or stumbled across something here- thank you. Genuinely. I started writing to rekindle something I thought I’d lost, and I’m not sure I’ve fully rekindled it yet, but knowing people have read along makes it a lot easier to keep going.
- More on why Mathsrant is called what it is, visit the updated Behind the Blog page! ↩︎
- The violin is still on the to-learn list ↩︎
- Spontaneity here is a top-notch feature, not a bug! ↩︎
- Excluding this one! ↩︎
- You can read that post here – The Missing First Page of Most Maths Notes ↩︎
Maths Rant 