...a companion blog to "Math-Frolic," specifically for interviews, book reviews, weekly-linkfests, and longer posts or commentary than usually found at the Math-Frolic site.

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"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show." ---Bertrand Russell (1907) Rob Gluck

"I have come to believe, though very reluctantly, that it [mathematics] consists of tautologies. I fear that, to a mind of sufficient intellectual power, the whole of mathematics would appear trivial, as trivial as the statement that a four-legged animal is an animal." ---Bertrand Russell (1957)

******************************************************************** Rob Gluck

Friday, July 11, 2014

Friday Selections...


A few more mathy links for the weekend:

1)  If you missed Ed Frenkel on NPR's "Science Friday" a week ago, catch it here:
http://tinyurl.com/lsb6oxo

2)  From The Guardian, the statistics of medical tests:
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28166019

3)  The Pigeonhole Principle made it into some popular press this week:
http://io9.com/why-the-pigeonhole-principle-is-one-of-maths-most-power-1601025172/+estheringlis-arkell

4)  H/T to Steven Strogatz this week for tweeting a YouTube link to a U.S. Congressman (and mathematician) talking about the prime number gap problem to the House of Representatives (the audience isn't shown, so one has to imagine the yawns):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh6GCY9i6tY&list=UUlUOx6F8GKshxGBUBLkisug&index=13
…a little more background on this speech here:  http://tinyurl.com/nrf3rvk

5)  Fascinating NY Times portrait of billionaire mathematician/philanthropist James Simons:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/science/a-billionaire-mathematicians-life-of-ferocious-curiosity.html?_r=0

6)  Mathematicians and the NSA…  discussion in AMS Notices:
http://www.ams.org/notices/201406/rnoti-p623.pdf

7)  Patrick Honner introduces his "Grand Challenge For Mathematics Education" here:

http://mrhonner.com/archives/13828

8)  Evelyn Lamb writes about infinity here:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/2014/07/10/the-fault-in-our-stars-infinities/

And, if you missed it, my own prior posting right here at MathTango also dealt with infinity... and award-winning writer David Foster Wallace:
http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2014/07/infinity-and-angst-david-foster-wallace.html

9)  Finally, when you're finished with this li'l math potpourri, the brand new 112th Carnival of Mathematics beckons with plenty more good stuff ready-and-waiting for you:
http://www.theoremoftheday.org/SpecialEvents/CoM112.html


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