Another Week in the Math Blogosphere & Beyond

ICYM any of these:

1)  Having fun teaching calculus to non-calculus people:
https://napmath.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/delicious-lessons-in-calculus/

2)  Evelyn Lamb covered the current measles outbreak this week with emphasis on a key number:
http://tinyurl.com/qffnzyk

3)  Cathy O'Neil on math and medals:
http://horizonsaftermath.blogspot.com/2015/02/i-love-math-and-i-hate-fields-medal.html

4)  "Futility Closet" offers up a paradox very reminiscent of Aristotle's "wheel paradox":
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/02/01/the-coin-paradox/

5)  If you're into some of the critical names and issues surrounding applied statistics (especially in the social sciences) then this longish Deborah Mayo post is sure to entertain:
http://errorstatistics.com/2015/01/31/2015-saturday-night-brainstorming-and-task-forces-1st-draft/
...also at Deborah's blog this week a guest post from Stephen Senn on statistically pooled data:
http://errorstatistics.com/2015/02/05/stephen-senn-is-pooling-fooling-guest-post/

6)  And a piece from the Washington Post also outlining two big issues for science: 1) explaining its findings to the public and 2) reproducibility:
http://tinyurl.com/n2sc3ek

7)  I suspect these logic tasks/puzzles (Wason Selection Task) are familiar to most readers here, but if they're not, you should work through them, or perhaps try them out on some friends:
http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/wason/Default.aspx
...and many more conundrums from this site listed here:
http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/

8)  Not math, but just some nutty, ongoing fun from Andrew Gelman this week:
http://andrewgelman.com/2015/01/15/picking-ideal-seminar-speaker-ultimate-bracket/
http://andrewgelman.com/2015/02/02/deciding-ultimate-seminar-speaker-rules/

9)  H/T to John Allen Paulos for pointing me to this interview ("The Stuff of Proof") with philosopher/writer Penelope Maddy on foundational aspects of mathematics; it's pretty 'meta' and philosophical, but if you like that sort of thing, quite interesting:
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/the-stuff-of-proof/

10)  An intro to some topology ideas from "ThatsMaths":
http://thatsmaths.com/2015/02/05/perelmans-theorem-who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire/

11)  A quick note that Max Tegmark's "Our Mathematical Universe" and Nate Silver's "The Signal and the Noise" are both newly-out in paperback.

12)  pick and choose from MikesMathPage weekly entries:
http://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/
...By the way, at the end of a number theory post today, Mike especially recommends the following 3-min. video of award-winner Manjul Bhargava, for young people interested in math:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140812-the-musical-magical-number-theorist/ 


The Potpourri BONUS (just extra NON-math links for your enjoyment) :

FOUR-for-the-price-of-1... I love bird nestcam websites of which there are now a large selection on the internet... a few current favorites:

a.  Two Great Horned Owl sites:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/57878544
http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/channel/46/Great_Horned_Owls/

b.  California hummingbird nestcam:
http://www.bellahummingbird.com/

c.  Albatross nestcam (Hawaii):
http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/channel/41/Laysan_Albatross/

(CAUTION: these live webcams can prove hopelessly addictive, rendering the viewer incapable of proceeding with work or other activities!)