[8xeh]

This is a way to show off someone's mathematical work to a non-mathematical audience and to promote the college. Would you prefer "Our scientists wrote a paper about some math they did called 'An Improved Calendar Ring Hole-Count for the Antikythera Mechanism'", you should read it." ?

That doesn't seem as likely to grab the attention of people who watched Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

The antikythera mechanism is a (bad) predictor of planetary locations. People have recreated it in its entirety using legos. There isn't much mystery about what it does.

However, a new high resolution X-ray of the device inspired some scientists to do some neat math on it. I read the paper, it's good work. I'd love to a chance to get an article published about one of my papers, even more if regular people had even the slightest chance to understand it.

[Accujack]

Precision matters, and legos only have a certain amount of precision.

Besides that, things like the number of holes in the calendar ring matter.

Check out Clickspring on youtube, he's one of the people who narrowed the hole count down to 2 numbers, and this paper argues hard for one of those.

He's building a replica of the mechanism using period tools, and it's amazingly precise so far.

[cwillu]

Making a technically true statement that you know will be misinterpreted by its intended audience is not meaningfully distinct from lying to that audience.