...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
Showing posts with label potpourri. Show all posts
Showing posts with label potpourri. Show all posts

Friday, July 27, 2018

Final Potpourri


NOTE: This will be the last ‘Friday potpourri’ or post at MathTango. With the country in seriously deep-doo-doo I'd rather free up some collusion time to work on expunging orange-puppets or others who find 1930s Germany peculiarly appealing (…also, got some reading to catch up on ;).  [Math-Frolic posts will also decrease substantially for remainder of year, until maybe, just perhaps, we get our country back.]:

1)  This is an old (2003) piece, but Jordan Ellenberg pointed to it last week as his favorite magazine piece he ever wrote, and it is indeed wonderful:

2)  Kevin Hartnett on ‘hard problems’:

3)  plus Magazine describes “uncertainty” this week in two posts:

4)  “Squaring the square” passed along, from Reddit, by C. Pickover (and the comments at Reddit sorta remind me why I almost never read Reddit...):

5)  Interview with popular mathematician/writer/lecturer Eugenia Cheng:

6)  One of my pet peeves is food labelling (…or, mislabelling as it were). Now Vi Hart takes it on:

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

1)  A viral (of sorts) detective story, from Ed Yong:

2)  And this:

p.s.... I see Omarosa's supposedly "explosive" tell-all memoir, "Unhinged" is due for release in a couple of weeks:



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Friday, July 20, 2018

I Would or I Wouldn't...




Wasn’t sure if I would or wouldn’t compile a potpourri this week, but in the end (and with NO collusion, mind you, NONE, noooo collusion whatsoever) here it is:

1) “The biggest skill to learn moving forward…” (h/t Gary Davis):

2)  A maddening puzzle passed along by Lior Pachter this week:

3)  A checklist of statistical problems (to avoid) for researchers (h/t Frank Harrell):

4)  A “Commencement Address” from Joe Schwartz:

5)  Pillows, knitting, and mathematics:

6)  An intro to Brouwer constructivism in 2 pieces from plus Magazine:

7)  A little history of zero and the empty set:
https://thatsmaths.com/2018/07/19/the-empty-set-is-nothing-to-worry-about/

8)  The semi-finals of the Big Internet Math Off have been appropriately close with Nira Chamberlain winning a nail-biter, and voting continuing in the final pairing:
https://aperiodical.com/category/the-big-internet-math-off/

9)  Also, be sure to check out a few additional links I posted at Math-Frolic yesterday:

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

1)  A rare, negative review of Douglas Hofstadter’s “Gödel, Escher, Bach”:

2)  Tom Toles' Twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/TomTolesToons

...and a cool new Munker visual illusion via Cliff Pickover:
https://twitter.com/pickover/status/1020125527162703873





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Friday, July 13, 2018

Friday the 13th


hot air, anyone?

Been so busy this week watching Britain and U.S. race to see who can disintegrate first, that I didn’t have much time left over for compiling math bits, but here’s a few:

1)  New Alex Bellos puzzle book now available in U.S.:

2)  Null and alternative hypotheses:

3)  Numeracy/Innumeracy:

4)  Searching for primes and why it matters:

5)  Hope you all are still following and voting in The Aperiodical’s "Big Internet Math Off":
https://aperiodical.com
[my recent take on the first round was HERE.]

6)  The Aperiodical also noted the recent death of Alexander Bogomolny here:
...and I spoke of the same here:

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

1)  Articulate Alice Dreger was just one of the initial guests on Sean Carroll’s new podcast “Mindscape”:
[Am already amazed at the range of guests he is inviting.]

2)  A good one to end the week with:



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Friday, July 6, 2018

Potpourri Time


And now for some math:

1)  Sphericons!:

2)  Frank Harrell recommends this piece on Thomas Bayes’ work:

3)  “The Slippery Math of Causation” (via Quanta):

4)  Just sort of a fun tweet & comments:

5)  More selections via the 118th “Math Teachers At Play” blog carnival:

6)  New interview with John Horgan and Jim Holt:

7)  Evelyn Lamb’s chockfull latest TinyLetter is out (reviewing what she wrote and read about in June):

8)  An intro to mathematical constructivism from plus Magazine:

9)  I was expecting a slow week over at Math-Frolic, BUT, lo-and-behold, ended up with varied posts on Mon., Tues., Wed., Thur., AND Fri.! (inspired by fluid dynamics, a quirky room, a Calif. teacher ;), a contest, and Sean Carroll). So please check out whatever you missed!

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

1)  h/t John Carlos-Baez for this fascinating ‘bit’ of info:

2)  Longish, interesting piece on Tim Berners-Lee and today’s World Wide Web:




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Friday, June 29, 2018

Time for Another Math Grab-bag


While the Donald was spit-shining his jackboots this week, I hosed off my Crocs and compiled another potpourri:

1)  Interview with philosopher Clark Glymour on probability, causality, science, free will (h/t Sean Carroll):

2)  Some interesting history on Cantorian crankery:

3)  Andrew Gelman plans to soon discuss Deborah Mayo’s new book defending (statistical) frequentism at his blog:
…and Blll Briggs’ take on same here:

4)  Speaking of statistics, nice, simple explanation of flaw with null hypothesis testing via Jacob Cohen/Frank Harrell:

5)  I balanced a lot of centrifuges in my working life… and never, ever thought about the math involved… ’til now:

6)  Schwenk dice from Futility Closet:

7)  Cathy O’Neil on a Gates Foundation education study:

8)  Century+ old hypothesis proved, opening up fresh lines of study in number theory, quantum computing (h/t Graham Farmelo):

9)  A new review of Vicky Neale's "Closing the Gap":
http://chalkdustmagazine.com/blog/closing-the-gap/

10)  July 1st (this Sunday) is the stated onset of “The Big Internet Math Off,” so the weekend ought not be an entire waste:

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

1)  Apparently people sometimes get angry over one thing or another on Twitter:

2)  IF you’re not tired of reading about the male/female divide, a long analysis from Emily Yoffe (h/t Steven Pinker):




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Friday, June 22, 2018

A Few Bits From the Week


The "I really don't care, do u?" edition of the Friday math potpourri:

1)  Some discussion of statistics, and cause-and-effect (…and a recent book); h/t Frank Harrell:

2)  Prime numbers, kids, and math education:

3)  Some cool geometry from Patrick Honner, involving squares, points, and colors:

4)  Jim Propp on James Tanton’s “exploding dots”:

5)  Andrew Gelman on Sabine Hossenfelder’s new book, “Lost In Math”:

6)  And the latest effort from wacky cartoonist Len Robin:

 .…Potpourri BONUS! (extra NON-mathematical links of interest): 
1)  In case you didn’t hear already, Koko the Gorilla died this week:

2)  Finally, just because it's been one of those weeks:


------------------------------------
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”  
      ~ E. Burke

via HERE



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Friday, June 15, 2018

Friday Potpourri


While the Appeaser-and-Chief was working out a few details for a new Trump Tower Pyongyang, I compiled another weekly collection of math bits:

1)  A potpourri within a potpourri… the latest Carnival of Mathematics blog carnival is out:

2)  A recent video interview with Ed Frenkel:

3)  Math, science, engineering… and origami (via Erik Dermaine):

4)  Brief interview with Eli Maor, author of “Music By the Numbers”:

5)  “Statistics — the Rules of the Game”:

6)  Just a little quickie commentary about commentary (…and causation):

7)  The Mediterranean Diet, clinical studies, randomization, oh my…:

8)  Economist Gary Smith, who I interviewed last week, has a new column for Marketwatch on the probability of a good company becoming a great company… and, the Feynman trap:

10)  Meanwhile, early in week I was enamored of Jim Holt:

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

1)  Physicist Frank Wilczek with Krista Tippett on “On Being”:

2)  Just what we all need at the end of a long week, more street posters:
https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2013/05/03/30-amazing-street-posters/


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Friday, June 8, 2018

Mathy Things You May Have Missed


After pardoning myself for all the things I’ve said, or will in the future say (or think or whisper) about our dysfunctional (to put it kindly) President, I proceeded to compile another weekly math potpourri:

1)  Eli Maor on math & music:

2)  Fermat primes and almost Fermat primes:

3)  Michael Harris on Peter Scholze and more:

4)  John Golden recommends these calculus videos from Paula Krieg as “beyond fabulous… beautiful and ingenious”!:

5)  Biking, mathematics, and Keith Devlin collide:

6)  An interesting tweet and some followup comments (on coincidences & math):
https://twitter.com/Stevehinds57/status/1004410900168740864

7)  Peter Woit reviews Sabine Hossenfelder's new (physics) book, "Lost In Math" here:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=10314

...also reviewed in Science magazine this week:
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2018/06/04/lost-in-math/

8)  Meanwhile, this week I had fun rambling around from language & gender HERE, to a couple of books HERE, and about cartoons and humor HERE.


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

1)  A tweet (and comments) that may contain some interesting links:

2)   Reporting on a conference on consciousness:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/is-this-the-world-s-most/243599




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Friday, June 1, 2018

New Month, New Potpourri


Just for a change this week I won’t open with any insults whatsoever of our Knuckledragger-and-Chief pseudo-leader… but simply go straight to the latest Friday potpourri:

1)  YOU too can take a Harvard “Introduction to Probability” course:

2)  H/T to Steve Strogatz for passing along this somewhat interesting useful page of lists:

3)  IBM’s Watson early on received a LOT of positive hype for its healthcare successes and promise… not so much lately though:

4)  Gelman on the problem of “noisy” studies:

5)  A great little piece (and puzzle) on the complexity of causation (assuming such a thing even exists!):

7)  And hey, soon there may be a half-dozen-or-so academic journal papers on the “cold-hand” phenomena in basketball:

8)  Managing a house or a classroom Fawn Nguyen knows what to do (…or at least has an opinion ;)
http://fawnnguyen.com/house-cleaning-and-lesson-planning/

9)  Videos from the recent Abel Lectures honoring Robert Langlands here:
http://www.abelprize.no/artikkel/vis.html?tid=73149

10)  Fresh off the press, Evelyn Lamb's June TinyLetter:
https://tinyletter.com/evelynjlamb/letters/stuff-evelyn-wants-you-to-read-17

11)  Need more?... plenty additional from the 117th Math Teachers At Play blog carnival:
http://mathhombre.blogspot.com/2018/06/math-teachers-at-play-117.html

...that all should hold you 'til next Friday.

sidenote:  if you're not already following @BenOrlin on Twitter, well, you should be -- as he might say, his feed is worth the price of admission... he's been on fire recently (and somehow found time to write a book too), 

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

1)  TED Radio Hour last week was on the battle for our attention in the digital age:

2)  Relatedly, I never have time for all the podcasts I want to hear, but one I’ll pass along, for any not familiar with it, is Julia Galef’s “Rationally Speaking”:

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Friday, May 25, 2018

Yet Another Friday Math-mix


Neither I nor Donald Trump were invited to the big wedding last weekend; Donald stayed busy dismantling America, while I busied myself working on a fresh math potpourri:

1)   Richard Guy, still working and interviewed at age 100:

2)  Excerpt from Deborah Mayo’s upcoming book on statistics’ “severe testing”:

3)  “White rabbits”… Pat Ballew reruns (and updates) a post he originally wrote 10 years ago:
(…a reminder, me-thinkest, of how timeless, interesting mathematics is)

4)  Of Math Men, Mad Men, and the rest of us via the New Yorker:

5)  Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh boy! Ben Orlin has a book forthcoming (it may be short on plot and character-development, but I hereby advise buying a few copies anyway):

6)  58 authors urge the axing of p-value thresholds in research papers:

7)  Meanwhile, I took note of a few books on my radar at Math-Frolic yesterday:

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

Just a few favorite recent tweets:

A little Duchess of Sussex back story:

A tweet for Paul Simon fans:

And if you enjoy podcasts in general, LOTS of good recommendations here:



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Friday, May 18, 2018

Friday Potpourri


Maybe this week’s viral Laurel/Yanny episode can finally help explain how it is that some people listening to a certain Donald hear a purported President speak, while others more correctly hear a venal Demagogue blathering. 
...In any event, a new Friday potpourri:

1)  Michael Harris, interesting as always, on the uses and responsibilities of mathematics:

2)  The 157th “Carnival of Mathematics” here:

3)  Again, a hint of linkage between prime number patterns and physics (via Natalie Wolchover and Quanta):

4)  More physics than math, but I’ll still include it here… The winning essay in FQXi’s latest essay contest asking “”What Is fundamental?”:

All the runner-up essays HERE.

5)  Patrick Honner reflects on the story of his journey in mathematics for Story Collider:

6)  Jim Propp’s latest, for geometry and Madeleine L’Engle fans, on “Time and Tesseracts”:
https://mathenchant.wordpress.com/2018/05/16/time-and-tesseracts/

7)  Walt Hickey is leaving FiveThirtyEight to begin his own daily newsletter, “Numlock,” highlighting "the context and importance of the numbers you read about in the news”:


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

1)  Hey Arachnophobes… don’t kill spiders:

2)  Will just close out the week, as seems appropriate, by rising up off my Laurels to post a favorite old Yanni tune:





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Wednesday, May 16, 2018

A Few Potpourri Housekeeping Changes


To slightly streamline my own blogging time am making a few changes to the 'Friday Potpourri' that perhaps readers ought be apprised of (way back I originally conceived of the potpourri as a compendium of slightly off-the-beaten-track math bits, and ever since reading/enjoying David Wells’ quirky “Book of Curious and Interesting Mathematics” have thought of attempting more of that):

I will no longer routinely include some of the best-known, most prolific/frequent and favorite math writers out there for the Friday listings on the assumption that readers are already following them, and it may be redundant for me to cite them on Friday if they are already well-linked to. (they will still be in my Twitter feed and sometimes in Math-Frolic posts). 

Similarly, the growing arena of videos and podcasts is beyond what I can keep up with and hope readers have by now latched onto their favorites. I continue to love 3Blue1Brown, Mathologer, Numberphile, Infinite Series, and others, but won’t automatically cite them on Fridays, since they get plenty of buzz without me piling on (I may call attention to newer/lesser-known ones that come along).

Statistics (and research methodology) is such a significant branch of math these days that I may(?) continue to cite some of Andrew Gelman’s very prolific posts, because he is so often accessible to a general audience and is one of only a handful of statisticians I follow regularly. 

And I WILL continue to cite, on Fridays, bloggers who, while well-known, are less prolific (generally posting once or less per month). I may also continue to cite pieces from Quanta Magazine which, even though now widely-cited, derive from a stable of fantastic writers, no one of whom is all that frequent (again though, if say an Erica Klarreich post comes out on Tues. and by Friday I've seen it cited innumerable times, I may assume readers here don't need me mentioning it).

All of this will allow me to spend slightly less time on the potpourri, keep it perhaps a little briefer and less redundant, focusing on interesting pieces readers may actually have missed through the week over pieces that get extensively publicized across social media.
None of these are hard-and-fast rules, but just new rough guidelines.


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Friday, May 11, 2018

Some Miscellaneous Stuff From the Week


Friday may be money-laundering day at the White House, but at MathTango it’s math-potpourri day. 
(…when I can find time I’ll explain a few changes I’m making to the Friday potpourri):

1)  Possibly a good thread for teachers to contemplate:

2)  Somewhat related, a few, brief teaching “meta-lessons” from Kalid Azad:

3)  Some tidbits from John Cook this week:

“Robust Statistics”:

…applications of “Benford’s Law”:

4)  Not sure exactly why I find palindromic numbers interesting but I do, and Gary Davis has been referencing them lately:
…also, this OEIS entry:

5)  “Robinson Tiles”… some quirkiness from Futility Closet:

6)  Just a little Elon Musk commentary from a statistician… I’m constantly amazed by both Musk’s performance(s) and the opposing viewpoints of him:

7)  ICYMI, my post last weekend that Patrick Honner later pointed out to me was especially appropriate for this official Teacher Appreciation Week:

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

1)  Errol Morris, Hilary Putnam, Noam Chomsky, Thomas Kuhn… interesting piece for the philosophically-inclined:

2)  The still-interesting-at-94 Freeman Dyson, via John Horgan:

…while I’m at it, many tributes to Feynman this week of his 100th birthday (here are 2):
From Tom Siegfried:

3)  Finally, h/t to Derren Brown for passing this incredible bit along:


And this fellow has a YouTube channel here:




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