On the mathematics of juggling: teaching an old dog new tricks

Mathematicians have developed notations for juggling, including something called Site-Swap Notation. It turns out that a formal language has helped discover tricks that had eluded jugglers for thousands of years.

In his book Alex's Adventures in Numberland, Alex Bellos quotes Colin Wright.

"Once you have a language to talk about a problem, it aids your thought process. Maths is not sums, calculations and formulae. It is pulling things apart to understand how things work."

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• Peter J. Beek and Arthur Lewbel, The Mathematics of Juggling. Scientific American 1995.
• Alex Bellos, The Science of Fun. Guardian May 2008. Revised version is included in Alex's Adventures in Numberland, Bloomsbury 2010. The quote from Colin Wright is on page 251.
• Bill Donahue, The Mathematics of . . . Juggling, Discover December 2004
• B. John Sommers, Juggling as Performing Mathematics. 2000.

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Casual readers of Alex's piece might get the impression that Colin Wright was the chief creator of sideswap theory, but Colin himself disavowed this on a juggling newsgroup in December 2008, and provided a brief sketch of sideswap history.