...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 28, 2015

MathLinks Ahead...


...actually, several this week that are only tangential to math:

1)  More on Alex Bellos' new loop pool game:
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34015430

2)  Madore mazes, hyperbolic surfaces, and Evelyn Lamb:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/an-epic-quest-on-an-8-812-holed-donut/

3)  A new "Math Teachers At Play" blog carnival is up here:
http://mrseteachesmath.blogspot.com/2015/08/math-teachers-at-play-89.html

4)  The math of chicken nugget numbers:
http://datagenetics.com/blog/august22015/index.html

5)
  Last year's Brazilian Fields Medalist winner:
http://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/artur-vila-brazils-shining-math-star/61190

6)  The 5 latest "Mathgems" from Resourceaholic:
http://www.resourceaholic.com/2015/08/gems39.html

7)  Interesting piece on quantum cryptography:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/unbreakable-quantum-password/

8)  The phenomenal physics of friction and phone books:
https://theconversation.com/solved-the-mystery-of-why-its-impossible-to-pull-apart-interleaved-phone-books-46697

9)  Psychology, research, and replication, covered by:
FiveThirtyEight:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/psychology-is-starting-to-deal-with-its-replication-problem/

RetractionWatch:
http://retractionwatch.com/2015/08/27/yes-many-psychology-findings-may-be-too-good-to-be-true-now-what/

...and, The Atlantic:
http://tinyurl.com/ngdpf7e

10)  And pertaining to music, not math (but of course the two are intertwined): an interesting experiment in real-time "crowdsourcing" of a musical composition:
http://crowdsound.net/ 

11)  Among other things, Mike Lawler played with triangular numbers this week:
https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2015/08/27/what-math-is-like-for-me-sometimes/

12)  A lot of talk these days about the importance of STEM jobs (including math-related ones) in the near future, but this "FiveThirtyEight" piece stresses the importance of interpersonal skills as well:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-best-jobs-now-require-you-to-be-a-people-person/


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

1)  I don't follow many Quora threads, but found some interesting, thoughtful ideas in this one on 'lessons that people learn too late in life':
http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-lessons-people-most-often-learn-too-late-in-life

2)  Science writer George Johnson muses about the "bubbles," science and otherwise, we live within, in the digital age:
http://tinyurl.com/qxc7u24

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