...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, November 13, 2015

Friday Math Wrap-up


Math from the week...

1) 
Evelyn Lamb covered the topologist winner of the Breakthrough Prize award this week:
http://tinyurl.com/q4cpbwb

 ...and long, interesting Michael Harris post on the Breakthrough Prizes here:
https://mathematicswithoutapologies.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/working-the-red-carpet-part-2/

2)
  From fivethirtyeight blog a cautionary tale on scientific method:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-to-tell-good-studies-from-bad-bet-on-them/

 
3)  For M.C. Escher fans:
https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/15386

4) 
For those who like a little cosmology in their potpourri, this piece on Bayesian probability and the Anthropic Principle:
https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/life-as-a-condition-of-cosmology/


5)  A very simple introduction to statistical inference:
https://learnandteachstatistics.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/understanding-statistical-inference/

6)  ICYMI, Mathaloger explored various curves, cardiods, and more on YouTube this week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhbuKbxJsk8

7)  This one's a couple weeks' old, but I just learned of this wonderful Colm Mulcahy piece on another recreational math problem:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colm-mulcahy/the-search-for-a-most-mag_b_8341550.html

8)  The big news in complexity theory:
http://news.sciencemag.org/math/2015/11/mathematician-claims-breakthrough-complexity-theory

...and great write-up by Jeremy Kun:
http://jeremykun.com/2015/11/12/a-quasipolynomial-time-algorithm-for-graph-isomorphism-the-details/
 
 
9)  Math is so useless, it's useful... as Ben Orlin explains:
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/11/11/theres-no-such-thing-as-triangles/

10) 
Not new, but I don't think I've linked to these math podcasts before:
http://furthermaths.org.uk/podcasts


11)  Hey!, I love Bob Ross's old painting show too (403 episodes), but I still think maybe this guy had a wee bit too much time on his hands ;-):
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-statistical-analysis-of-the-work-of-bob-ross/

12) This month's puzzle from Quanta Magazine:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151112-integer-sequence-puzzle/

13)  H/T to John Golden for pointing out this interesting Dan Meyer post and series of comments (on "understanding" and "explaining" math):
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/2015/understanding-math-v-explaining-answers/#comment-2414104 

14)  Lastly, in case some of you have never heard this one, Futility Closet crossed over into the math-humor business last week:
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/11/08/reckoning/



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

1)  A fascinating Nautilus read on first (or native) languages:
http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/the-strange-persistence-of-first-languages

2)  This Oatmeal comic made quite a few rounds this week, as well it should... but in case you missed it:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/plane



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