Hello there!

I'm Steve Trettel, a mathematician who is also interested in computers, physics, and language.

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I'm currently an assistant professor at the University of San Francisco. This is both my personal and academic website, so you’ll find math I like explaining, updates on my computer graphics hobby, physics I'm learning, and some favorite meals, among other things.

Note: This website is a new redesign (as of summer 2022) for me, and my first attempt at learning hugo for site building: it’s definitely still under construction so apologies in advance for broken links or non-existent pages!

Illustration

All Art

Code

Geodesic Ripples
Equirectangular Map
Stereographic Map
Hemisphere Map
Archimedes Map
Mercator
Five Body
Geodesic Circles
Double Pendulum
Pendulum

All Code

Notes

Linking Number:
Gauss' linking number of closed curves and algebraic topology.

Winding Number:
Understanding the Algebraic Topology underlying the winding number of a closed curve in the plane.

Hyperbolic Springs:
Deriving the ODE for a spring which is pushed in hyperbolic geometry (it oscillates!)

Convolution and Differentiation of Distributions:
If F is a distribution and g is a function, why is (DF)*g equal to F*Dg?

Topologizing The Space Of Distributions:
Why do we need to require convergence of the derivatives when defining a topology on the set of distributions?

Deep Time:
Some thoughts on the importance of appreciating the immensity of earth's history.

Life in Hyperbolic Space:
The dangers of life in a negatively curved space

Cassini:
Saying goodbye to my favorite space craft, on the eve of its entry into Saturn's atmosphere.

Cubics and Braids:
The bridge between the 3-strand braid group and the trefoil knot complement

Hopf:
An old note, from my early graduate school days, explaining the hopf fibration.

All Notes

Classes

All Classes

Talks

All Talks

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Papers

All Papers

Recipes

All Recipes