...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, April 11, 2014

Week's Additional Links


Some additional links to pass along, that I didn't already mention in blogposts this week:

1) just yesterday Sol Lederman linked to this recent Math StackExchange page of "Visually stunning math concepts which are easy to explain" -- that says it all:

http://tinyurl.com/pkxjzax

(nice examples and variety)

2) Long, interesting 1999 piece from Alfie Kohn (pointed out by "Matthew Maddux" this week) arguing for the "constructivist" approach to teaching mathematics.

http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/math.htm

3) Platonism vs. Nominalism vs. Aristotelian realism in mathematics… philosophical discussion from Aeon:

http://aeon.co/magazine/world-views/what-is-left-for-mathematics-to-be-about/

4) Lots of probability stuff via this webpage, "Chance News 98" (passed along by Steven Strogatz):

http://test.causeweb.org/wiki/chance/index.php/Chance_News_98

5) an older Quora question on paradoxes that just crossed my email this week; includes some interesting, mostly fairly standard, stuff:

http://tinyurl.com/laknlwt

6)  MIT takes first place in 2013 Putnam Contest:  http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N16/putnam.html

7) And for a last bit of entertainment, Cliff Pickover tweets this 3x3 magic square from Harry Nelson that is composed of ONLY consecutive primes (pretty impressive!):

https://twitter.com/pickover/status/454363196925554688/photo/1
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