"For Vi Hart, her mind pondered the mathematical implications. "There's a packing puzzle here," she said. "This is the kind of thing where if you're accustomed to thinking about these problems, you see them in everything."
Mathematicians over the centuries have thought long and deep about how tightly things, like piles of oranges, can be packed within a given amount of space.
"Here we've got even another layer," Ms. Hart said, "where you're allowed to overhang off the edge of your square. So now you have a new puzzle, where maybe you want the big things near the edge because you can fit more of them off the edge before they fall off."
Ms. Hart - her given name is Victoria, but she has long since dropped the last six letters - has an audacious career ambition: She wants to make math cool. "