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I don't know too many. I used to know more when I was in Scouts, but it's been eight years or so since I used them, so I don't remember a bunch of them.
My dad is the knot guy in my family. I never learned them, and it is a skill I wish I had.
C1ay, you mentioned the mathmatics of knots. I remember an article on knots in PopularMechanics that I began reading in the early 90's some time, that I never managed to find again and complete. It was a fascinating write up on the mathmatics of knots, complete with illistrations. It talked about how a knot is determined primarily by the number of times that the rope crosses itself. But the interesting part of the article (the part I never got to because I never found the magazine again!) was supposed to be how the patterns in knots (number of crosses) had been found to parallel various other phenomena. And the author hinted at a parallel with human brain function. But I never read the rest of the article! Might you be familiar with any of that?
Bill
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In mathematics, a knot is defined as a closed, non-self-intersecting curve that is embedded in three dimensions and cannot be untangled to produce a simple loop (i.e., the unknot). While in common usage, knots can be tied in string and rope such that one or more strands are left open on either side of the knot, the mathematical theory of knots terms an object of this type a "braid" rather than a knot. To a mathematician, an object is a knot only if its free ends are attached in some way so that the resulting structure consists of a single looped strand.
A knot can be generalized to a link, which is simply a knotted collection of one or more closed strands.
The study of knots and their properties is known as knot theory. Knot theory was given its first impetus when Lord Kelvin Eric Weisstein's World of Biography proposed a theory that atoms were vortex loops, with different chemical elements consisting of different knotted configurations (Thompson 1867). P. G. Tait Eric Weisstein's World of Biography then cataloged possible knots by trial and error. Much progress has been made in the intervening years.
I seem to remember reading somewhere about topologically optimized representation of information in the brain and the application of knot theory, perhaps in the article you suggested.
Editor and Forum Administrator stego anyone?
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and it's the sheet bend I know.
Re: Knot Tying 
Nothing is not connnected. ~ Roger Thelonious George 
