FEATURE: SCIENCE & CROCHET

THE SCIENCE of crochet

If you understand crochet, you’re actually well on your way to understanding various scientic and mathmatical concepts – they’re more similar than you might think!

Some see artistic and STEM subjects as opposite ends of the school-subject spectrum, but when it comes to crochet, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Crochet is being increasingly used to explain and teach about various STEM (that’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) fields. In fact, recent research suggests that a sensory learning experience, such as illustrating a concept through crochet, can greatly increase understanding. We speak to three STEM professionals, each with a different area of expertise, to discover how they use our beloved craft to teach others.

DAINA TAIMIA, RETIRED MATHEMATICIAN As a maths educator, Daina has used fibre arts and the mathematical themes underlying them as a teaching device throughout her career. “Both knitting and crocheting are about creating patterns and my field – mathematics – is a study of patterns,” says Daina. In fact, she’s known for pioneering the use of crochet models to explain the geometry of a hyperbolic plane, or a surface that curves away from itself at every point.

“I crocheted the first hyperbolic plane in 1997,” says Daina. “I just realised that crochet is a very good medium for visualising exponential growth, which is crucial in creating hyperbolic surface, or a surface which is so crenulated (irregular or wavy) that it cannot be flattened on a table.”

Daina continued on to write a book on the topic, Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes. “This book actually was written to give answers to questions people usually asked me after my talks, confiding that that they were scared of maths in school, but after seeing these crocheted soft models, maths seemed so much more understandable. My aim in using crochet in creating models was exactly [this] – to help to visualise.” Find more at hyperbolic-crochet.blogspot.com

MERCEDES BERNARD, SOFTWARE ENGINEER A keen crocheter, Mercedes learned the craft at around age eight. After studying computer science in college, she saw a lot of parallels between crochet and coding and was ultimately inspired to explore the topic more.

“We often forget that the very first people who wrote computer code were women (on the ENIAC during WWII). And the technology industry continues to struggle with sexism,” says Mercedes. “Crafts and handiwork – crochet included – are usually thought of as women’s hobbies. It feels important to me to use my love of crochet to connect coding with its feminist history.”

As we know, a crochet pattern is written so that the crocheter knows which stitches to make, how many to make and where to make them. A computer program is a series of lines of code compiled to tell a machine what to do, how many times, and when. “In both cases, it’s a set of instructions to be executed in a particular order,” says Mercedes. “A crochet pattern is essentially a program; a program is a pattern. When you’re crocheting, it’s like you are creating a physical, real-world instance of the designer’s algorithm.”

Likewise, a crochet stitch abbreviation can be compared to a code method. “Both are a small set of instructions that we give a name so we can invoke it repeatedly from various places within the larger program or pattern – for example, a back post double [stitch]. Then, when you’re crocheting, you often encounter stitch repeats to indicate a set of stitches should be repeated X number of times,” explains Mercedes. “In programming, we call this a loop, which we use when we want to run the same piece of code multiple times.”

In Mercedes’ eyes, crafting and coding have always been connected. “The Jacquard Loom and its punch cards are essential to computing history. It is often considered the

Daina is known for her pioneering use of crochet models to illustrate and teach geometric concepts

Clockwise from top left: Alex says corner-to-corner crochet reminds him of how computers store images using grids of coloured squares; Katherine used crochet to illustrate the Covid-19 R number; Katherine even crocheted a little coronavirus

first computer because it was the first instance of using binary code to instruct a machine to perform automated tasks (in this case, weaving),” she says. “Realising that, we find connections between other crafts and how programming has evolved. Binary code (0s and 1s) is not very human-friendly, so we’ve found other ways to instruct computers. Crochet patterns are all about communicating complex instructions as simply as possible. Crochet patterns and computer code share the same goals.” Find out more at www.mercedesbernard.com

ALEX HADWENBENNETT, ACADEMIC Alex always enjoyed being creative and started crocheting around five years ago, when he began his PhD, as a way to relax.

Alex’s research currently focuses on looking at how providing different ways to engage with computing concepts can make the subject more inclusive. “Crochet provides an excellent medium for engaging with many computing concepts,” says Alex. “It employs multiple STEM principles and can provide an alternative way of engaging with them.” Like Mercedes, Alex says that crochet patterns employ several principles that are also used in coding. “Like a computer program, crochet patterns use standard notation to describe the precise steps that need to be followed,” he says. “Additionally, when steps need to be repeated, the number of repetitions is given rather than writing out the steps multiple times needlessly. An example is corner-tocorner crochet, which shares similarities with the way that computers store images using grids of coloured squares.” Find out more at www.physicalcomputing.co.uk

KATHRINE FREY FRØSLIE, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN BIOSTATISTICS AT THE NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF LIFE SCIENCES Kathrine grew up on a small farm on the island of Frei on the west coast of Norway and went on to a career in maths, statistics and biostatistics. “I had been teaching since uni, and had little time for handcrafting for two decades, so I decided to start a popular science knitting (and crochet) blog called Statistrikk in 2016.”

Katherine always strives to develop self-explaining examples and good visualisations so that complex facts, thoughts or concepts become easy to understand. For instance, Kathrine used crochet to explain statistics during the pandemic, when she employed it to illustrate how the R number worked. “For epidemiologists, biologists and mathematicians, ‘reproduction numbers’ are elementary knowledge that can be communicated by numbers, formulas and graphs,” she says. “The general public, in contrast, needed alternative visualisations and explanations to understand the R number. I used crocheted patches to show how the number of infected people develop [grow, shrink or stay the same] over nine generations of infection, for different values of the R number. I made a video of it which went viral in Norway.

“The art of crochet and the art of biostatistics do not relate to each other any more than war relates to photography,” says Kathrine. “But as we know, photos can be forceful communication tools in a conflict. Similarly, I have found colourful, playful, soft and tactile crocheted and knitted designs to be forceful tools in the communication of science – statistics in particular. I call it ‘hard facts in soft materials’.” Find out more at www.statistrikk.no Written by Colette Earley