...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, August 15, 2014

Friday Bonanza


ICYMthem:

1)  Fun li'l anecdote about topologist Egbert Rudolf van Kampen from MathOverflow.net last week:
http://mathoverflow.net/questions/178104/a-topologist-is-not-a-mathematician-a-small-question

2)  New popular statistics (…I know, that sounds like an oxymoron! ;-)) book out from Gary Smith, "Standard Deviations":
http://tinyurl.com/poefeew
(haven't read it, but it's from a professor at my alma mater, so oughta be good)

3)  Another nice geometry puzzle from Presh Talwalkar this week:
http://tinyurl.com/m6pefvp

4)  Thoughts on problem-solving from Mike Lawler:
http://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/problem-solving/

5)  Not as much 'meat' here as I'd like, but still happy to see "recursion" (one of my favorite topics) wiggle its way into the popular press:
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/08/12/to-infinity-and-beyond/

6)  A little something from Vanderbilt on learning math and cognitive development:
http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2014/08/math-teaching/

7)  Again, Common Core; this time, division of fractions:
http://tinyurl.com/mnwqyu4

8)  In the math-editorial genre, Doron Zeilberger is characteristically annoyed with something… and this time it's Max Tegmark:
http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion138.html

9)  Meanwhile, Cathy O'Neil points us to a new information/assistance site, stemforums.com, that many may find useful:
http://tinyurl.com/m3qu2da

10)  Just notified that Alfred Posamentier and Ingmar Lehmann have a new book out, "Mathematical Curiosities" -- I feel fairly safe in predicting, it's GOOOD!:
http://tinyurl.com/o4glt93


11)  Will close out with a simple, fun Martin Gardner riddle tweeted by @WWMGT this week ;-):

"A bus leaves M for T at noon. An hour later a cyclist leaves T for M, moving slower. When bus and bike meet, which will be further from M?"


==> On a sidenote, CONGRATULATIONS to Numberphile for reaching 1 million subscribers on YouTube this past week… pretty impressive for a math site (and well-deserved)!!!
https://www.youtube.com/user/numberphile


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