Weekend Potpourri

Some math links from the week:

1)  Evelyn Lamb interviews one of the first-ever African-American math PhDs in the country:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/2014/09/05/mathematics-live-evelyn-boyd-granville/

2)  Folding pizza… and Gauss:
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/curvature-and-strength-empzeal/

3)  Interesting thoughts from a one-time math-phobe:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/09/05/how-to-excel-in-stem-math-and-science

4)  Some Common Core Common Sense:
http://www.mathforgrownups.com/common-core-common-sense-the-series/

5)  Word choice in STEM fields (at least somewhat more interesting than I was expecting):
http://tinyurl.com/pq2pteh

6)  Fawn Nguyen is resurrecting her mathtalks site:
http://fawnnguyen.com/mathtalks-net/

7)  Is homotopy theory a new foundation for mathematics:
https://www.rdmag.com/news/2014/09/new-foundation-mathematics

8)  I love quirky stories about the genius of great mathematicians. Here's a quickie that John Golden passed along this week that I'd not heard before (about John von Neumann):
http://curiosamathematica.tumblr.com/post/96957528974/there-was-a-seminar-for-advanced-students-in

9)   A snarky problem from Futility Closet this week:
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2014/09/08/wheres-the-father/

10)  Here's a bit of a mind-stretcher from R.J. Lipton taking on a challenge from Freeman Dyson:
http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/a-challenge-from-dyson/

11)  Terry Tao offers some simple statistical/paradox discussion here (h/t to Nalini Joshi for this):
https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z12ewdbivreculcqh04cdvvwas3egfs4dhs

12)  If you want a little philosophy with your weekend coffee, try this from Nautilus ("Angst and the Empty Set"):
http://m.nautil.us/issue/16/nothingness/angst-and-the-empty-set

13)  Lastly, just two days ago I took a look at a couple of math history books here:
http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2014/09/so-you-want-some-math-history.html