The SQuaREs team, clockwise from the top: John Voight, Ursula Whitcher, Steven Sperber, and Tyler Kelly.

Collaborating and coauthoring are quite common in math. Most often, however, mathematicians tend to work on their own or with only a few other collaborators. If you check the math arXiv you will notice that most papers have less than four coauthors. For the last year or so I have been working on a research project that, when finished, will have at least six coauthors, which in some ways is very rare. I have recently started calling this my “Ocean’s Eleven” project (and technically, eleven people have been part of the project at one point or another, I counted!), hence the title. Although, to be fair, the masterminds of this project are Ursula Whitcher and Chuck Doran, so it should probably be their eleven… Continue reading →