Math is messy. It is often dirty and ugly. It frequently feels coarse and rough and irritating — and it gets everywhere. But math is then beautifully displayed in LaTeX, cleaned and polished. And when a paper is very successful, its results make it to a textbook, years later, where theorems have been rewritten, ideas rephrased such that they fit better into the general scaffolding of mathematics, unified and coherent.

As someone interested in the philosophy of mathematical practice, I find it interesting to look at how new math is messy before it gets nicely cleaned up. Looking at the "mathematical trash" that will never see the light of day is fascinating. Diagrams, equations, scribbling and other forms of dirty material that nobody wants to see and whose absence from the public eye makes math look perfect, finished and universal, or at least more than what it actually is.

Math is also fun to do, and the over 500 pages of handwritten notes I upload here as part of my thesis writing process also showcase that. We just need to show the complete picture.