Weekly Linkfest

Some mathiness you might've missed:

1)  More and more of these 'traveling salesman'-like algorithm stories are showing up in the popular press:
http://tinyurl.com/oslersw

2)  John McGowan reviews (and recommends) "Statistics Done Wrong: The Woefully Complete Guide" by Alex Reinhart:
http://math-blog.com/2015/05/04/review-of-statistics-done-wrong-the-woefully-complete-guide/

3)  Spurious correlations (I'm shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!) via Deborah Mayo:
http://tinyurl.com/mhhdrrj

4)  Teaching 'mathematical modeling' to improve the experience of middle and high school students:
http://www.americanscientist.org/blog/pub/5-reasons-to-teach-mathematical-modeling

5)  Ben Orlin (and his doodles) on why 'good questions' are the ammo and fuel of mathematics, and thus a precious resource:
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/05/06/america-will-run-out-of-good-questions-by-2050/

6)  How computers have changed the nature of mistakes in math:
http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/in-mathematics-mistakes-arent-what-they-used-to-be

7)  Interesting piece on number glitches leading to computer malfunctions:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150505-the-numbers-that-lead-to-disaster

8)  Jo Boaler's latest piece trying to debunk commonly-held misconceptions:
http://hechingerreport.org/memorizers-are-the-lowest-achievers-and-other-common-core-math-surprises/

...and, by the way, Keith Devlin writes supporting (again) Jo's work here:
http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2015/05/time-to-re-read-or-read-whats-math-got.html

9)  Eugenia Cheng's new book "How To Bake Pi" is getting plenty of well-deserved attention around the Web. Almost certainly the best introduction to 'category theory' around for a general audience. (I'll have a review up at some point.)
...and perhaps my favorite tweet-of-the-week (with a link to xkcd) came from Dr. Cheng :-):
https://twitter.com/DrEugeniaCheng/status/596538673736192000

10)  On Twitter, Edmund Harriss passed along this recent YouTube clip of Philip Wadler explaining a lot about "computability theory" in under 9 minutes of education + laughs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnpcMCW0RUA

11)  Lest I forget, someone named Mike usually has some interesting lessons going on at his domicile:
https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/


Potpourri BONUS! (extra non-mathematical links):

  Last week, TEDRadio Hour replayed this 12-minute episode with the incredible Diana Nyad:
http://www.npr.org/2014/07/18/331332721/what-does-it-take-to-dive-into-dangerous-waters