...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, February 20, 2015

Another Week's-worth of Schtuff...


See which of these you've missed...:

1)  A Marcus du Sautoy "In Our Time" podcast on the work of Kurt Gödel:
https://soundcloud.com/marcusdusautoy/in-our-time-godels-incompleteness-theorem

2) 
"Medical research is in bad shape" -- that's the first line in this interesting retrospective of John Ioannidis' crusading work since he first noted 10 years ago that "...most published research findings are false":
http://www.vox.com/2015/2/16/8034143/john-ioannidis-interview

3)  Alex Bellos profiles Fields Medalist Cedric Villani and his work here (H/T to Egan Chernoff for this one):
https://cosmosmagazine.com/mathematics/seduced-calculus

4)  Patrick Honner carried on a Google+ conversation this week over the question of why there is so much more editorial criticism of K-12 math education in the U.S. than there is of college math education (several viewpoints expressed):
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+PatrickHonner/posts/8akbT2M9jec

5)  Interesting history and tribute to R.A. Fisher ("father of modern statistics") here:
http://errorstatistics.com/2015/02/17/r-a-fisher-how-an-outsider-revolutionized-statistics-aris-spanos/

6)  Keith Devlin on R.L. Moore and the "Moore Method" of teaching (better known today as "inquiry-based learning" or IBL):
http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-greatest-math-teacher-ever.html

7) 
Cathy O'Neil summarizing some of the problems in the "practices of 'big data'":
http://mathbabe.org/2015/02/18/aapor-big-data-report/

8)  A brief summary from MAA of the annual joint math meetings held in San Antonio last month:
http://www.maa.org/news/feasting-on-mathematics-at-the-joint-meetings

9)  New "Wild Cool Math" from James Tanton:
http://tinyurl.com/pzml7pw

10)
  The latest "opinion" from Doron Zeilberger relates to the future of mathematical proofs:
http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion141.html

11)  "Ask A Mathematician..." site offers a nice tutorial on quaternions, octonions, and beyond:
http://www.askamathematician.com/2015/02/q-quaternions-and-octonions-what/

12)  Nautilus Magazine has been putting out consistently GREAT stuff of late, including now, this fabulous interview (both video and transcribed) with computer scientist Scott Aaronson (of the blog "Shtetl-Optimized"):
http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/ingenious-scott-aaronson

13) 
Over at AMS blogs Evelyn Lamb introduces us to a blog, "Social Mathematics," that looks good, that I'm ashamed to say I was unfamiliar with even though it's been around since 2007! Check out Evelyn's post and the blog itself:
http://blogs.ams.org/blogonmathblogs/#sthash.cVfAVMKr.WDIxxyjX.dpbs
http://socialmathematics.net/

14) 
Keep an eye on what Mike Lawler is up to:  https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/

15)  Not mathematics, but a fascinating geeky, historical piece from Amanda Gefter for Nautilus about William Pitts (previously unknown to me and apparently many other readers):
http://m.nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic

16)  Finally, last Sunday, over at MathTango, I reviewed the new book from Michael Harris, "Mathematics Without Apologies" (...I kinda liked it):
http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-review-without-apologies.html

Meanwhile, THIS Sunday MathTango will have a new interview with another delightful instructor from the math blogosphere. Stay tuned....
[p.s. -- I think I've now repaired links to ALL the other interviews as well, in case anyone had tried those recently only to find several broken.]

Potpourri BONUS (extra NON-mathematical links of interest):

1)   Another incredible podcast from NPR's RadioLab last week... amazing segments on surviving rabies, and on what major medical procedures DOCTORS choose to have carried out on THEMSELVES (almost none) toward the end of life:
http://www.radiolab.org/story/dead-reckoning/

2)  Speaking of end-of-life, ICYMI, in this NY Times piece Oliver Sacks, who has entertained and enlightened people for so long with his writings and talks, faces the same subject with his usual thoughtful perspective:
http://tinyurl.com/or8e39y


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