This Week's Math Potpourri

Another mix of miscellaneous math leftovers from the week:


1) Lots of Common Core stuff going on, starting with this brand new, interesting interview at Mathbabe's blog, with a New York school principal on CC:

http://tinyurl.com/m9ow69m

2) When Keith Devlin says something is a "must-read" and "must pass-on," I take it very seriously. Interesting piece, related to math Common Core:

http://themindfulmathematician.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-letter-to-frustrated-parents-of.html?m=1

3) On the exact same theme (as above), this discussion of a Common Core math problem made its way around the 'Net this week as well (...with PLENTY of comments):

http://tinyurl.com/lyukvc9

4) Meanwhile, Khan Academy announced its own new set of Common Core resources at their site:

http://gettingsmart.com/2014/03/new-common-core-math-missions-launch-khan-academy/

5) h/t to The Aperiodical for pointing out this new "matheducators" adjunct to Math Stack Exchange, for questions specific to teaching mathematics:

http://matheducators.stackexchange.com/

6) Jason Rosenhouse has a second post up now regarding his new tribute book to Raymond Smullyan, "Four Lives." The post explains the basic 'knights and knaves' puzzles Smullyan was famous for, but then branches off to discuss further variations. If you're into puzzle logic, a good read:

http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2014/03/26/non-classical-knights-and-knaves/

7) Patrick Honner tweeted a PISA study indicating that students under authoritarian educational systems scored better on math than more democratic systems:

http://tinyurl.com/kn4n82c

8) I don't know when Ed Frenkel ever finds time to teach (let alone write books!), he seems to spend all his time on the internet somewhere… this week we find him giving a wonderful podcast interview at "Rationally Speaking":

http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs104-edward-frenkel-on-love-and-math.html

9) Here, another blogger peeved with p-values (…is there anyone left who likes p-values?):

http://www.dcscience.net/?p=6518

10) Cliff Pickover tweeted a link to this nice pictorial Venn diagram of number categories:

https://twitter.com/pickover/status/448927165057228800/photo/1

11) As most have likely seen, the Abel Prize (often called the Nobel of mathematics) was awarded this week to a pioneer of chaos theory:

http://www.nature.com/news/chaos-theory-pioneer-nabs-abel-prize-1.14935

12) Matt Parker tweeted a link to (and highly recommended) an older David Acheson book that I'd never heard of, "1089 and All That: A Journey Into Mathematics"… looks good and worth passing along:

http://www.amazon.com/1089-All-That-Journey-Mathematics/dp/0199590028

13) And Murray Bourne tweets a link to this pageful of math books (in different categories) freely downloadable from the Web:

http://magmath.com/problems/math/textbooks

14) I'll end with an interesting tabletop geometry puzzle from Presh Talwalkar:

http://tinyurl.com/nvx2n3a

...Everyone have a good weekend! (…just maybe, perhaps, possibly, Spring will arrive to stay).

[...and let me know ASAP if any of these links are broken or don't work right.]