New Year Potpourri

Happy 2015, all... and with no further adieu, some of the surprisingly full week of math posts that were out there:

1)  Yet another remembrance of Alexander Grothendieck:
http://education.lms.ac.uk/2014/12/alexander-grothendieck-some-recollections/

Also, a reminder, if you haven't already read Lior Pachter's incredible longread post (inspired in part by a Grothendieck obituary) about the disparate "two cultures" of math and biology, DO IT:
https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/12/30/the-two-cultures-of-mathematics-and-biology/

2)  IF you're deep into chess, specifically machine-chess, you won't want to miss this Ken Regan post:
http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/the-new-chess-world-champion/

3)  Blogger Kristin tries to analyze the meaning and role of "intuition" in math-learning in a post that was inspired by a Twitter "conversation":
http://mathmindsblog.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/intuition-in-learning-math/

4)  Presh Talwalkar solves an infinite exponential in less than 60 seconds (video)... be sure to read the comments as well:  http://ow.ly/GwcV9

5)  Deborah Mayo goes down memory lane with a post on power in error statistics:
http://tinyurl.com/jwffkan

6)  Mike Lawler reviewed his blogging year (although he's posted so much great stuff, I think he barely scratches the surface here):
http://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2014/12/29/blogging-year-in-review/
(...and of course check out Mike's other posts from the week, as well)

And Evelyn Lamb likewise did a year-in-review for her blog:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/2014/12/31/year-in-review/

7)  Another "Cavmaths" geometry problem:
https://cavmaths.wordpress.com/2014/12/29/a-nice-area-puzzle/

8)  This recent analysis of a year-old Marilyn vos Savant puzzle is a bit hard to follow, but perhaps interesting if you can follow it:
http://gottwurfelt.com/2014/12/29/one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others/

...and for some entertainment read the comments at one of the forums where this was originally discussed:
http://usa.rightwingamerica.com/index.php?topic=6458.0

9)  Longish-read: some backstory on Common Core (h/t to Frank Noschese for this one):
http://tinyurl.com/pghy5nf

10)  Keith Devlin's latest post on the need for "radical changes" in education here:
http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2015/01/your-fathers-mathematics-teaching-no.html
...and I've just posted a response to it at Math-Frolic as well:
http://math-frolic.blogspot.com/2015/01/teach-children-well.html

11)  I'll end with a fun post from M.C. Burke closing out last year:
http://mrburkemath.blogspot.com/2014/12/two-taylor-swifts-and-sliding-yardstick.html