...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, September 9, 2016

Friday Mix


Weekend reads, ICYM them:

1)  Stephen Wolfram expounds on teaching "computational thinking":

2)  A quick, fun essay on teaching math:

3)  Monte Carlo methods and computer game-playing:

4)  New, free online issue of European Mathematical Society newsletter (including an interview with Andrew Wiles):

5)  For the philosophically-and-math-foundations-inclined, this discussion from Mark Chu-Carroll on some "Cantor crackpottery":
6)  John Baez on the "Struggles With the Continuum":

...and, ICYMI, Baez is now on Twitter here: @JohnCarlosBaez

7)  For a couple of fun-reads:

a.  There's always Ben Orlin:
b.  and this on "Janitor Math":
9)  p.s...: there's a rabid rumor going around that Mathbabe Cathy O'Neil has a new book out (something about mathematics intruding in our lives).... ;-)

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

1)  This "DNA Journey" video went semi-viral this week, but if you missed it, worth watching to the end:

2)  This week's "On Being" episode on NPR with Krista Tippett is a great interview with Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales:
http://www.onbeing.org/program/jimmy-wales-the-sum-of-all-human-knowledge/8916


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