...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, July 31, 2015

Friday's Big Grab Bag


LOTSA links to ponder!:

1)  Fun Evelyn Lamb post that predicts your personality:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/kisrhombile-tiling-rorschach-test/
(next week, watch for her new horoscope column for Scientific American.... kidding!)

2)  A new "Math Teachers At Play" blog carnival here:
http://blog.ifem.co.uk/maths-teachers-at-play-88/

3)  Just a few of the many wrap-ups from last week's successful Twitter Math Camp in southern California:

http://samjshah.com/2015/07/27/my-thoughts-about-the-evolution-of-the-mtbos-2015-edition/
http://www.teachesmath.com/?p=795
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlHf06upPDo

(p.s. -- from what I've read, Fawn Nguyen has earned a lifetime appointment as Keynote-Speaker-To-The-World-Of-Math-Teachers! -- I hear-tell that her address was Fun, Useful, Charismatic, and Knowledgeable -- uhh, just telling what I've been hearing folks...)

4)  Close enough to math to get a mention here... Peter Woit's positive review of physicist Frank Wilczek's new book, "A Beautiful Question":
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7881

5)  And a new Alex Bellos book is on the way in September:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Snowflake-Seashell-Star-Adventures-Numberland/dp/1782117881

6)  Applying infinity to spiral optics:
http://skullsinthestars.com/2015/07/24/infinite-hotels-in-swirling-beams-of-light/

7)  From "Gödel's Lost Letter..." a (longish) bit on Raymond Smullyan, and chess-playing (human and otherwise):
https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/playing-chess-with-the-devil/

8)  If you like mixing in some biology with your math/statistics, then some interesting commentary from Gelman here:
http://ow.ly/Qbnbj
(it all relates back to a highly-discussed 2-month-old Lior Pachter post HERE.)

9)  The latest Journal of Humanistic Mathematics edition is available online:
http://scholarship.claremont.edu/jhm/

10)  Ben Orlin explores infinite series some more:
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/07/29/where-the-laws-no-longer-hold/

11)  A puzzle via Terry Tao:
http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/tao/?_r=1


12)  And a somewhat classic Futility Closet problem:
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/07/29/knife-act/

13)
  Not for beginners, but some Category Theory expounded here:
https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2015/07/internal_languages_of_higher_c.html

14)  Richard Green with some observations on the Ulam Sequence:
https://plus.google.com/101584889282878921052/posts/KthXFvoHbyX

15)  Quanta Magazine with a probability conundrum for its latest splendid monthly puzzle:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150730-the-slippery-eel-of-probability/


Potpourri BONUS! (extra NON-mathematical links of interest):

1)  Half-hour interview with E.O. Wilson on Jim Al-Khalili's "The Life Scientific" podcast series:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0639kzv

Lastly, just to show how little times have changed, this 1950's quote from Adlai Stevenson:
"I will make a bargain with the Republicans. If they will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them." ;-)


3 comments:

  1. I think that link number 15 was intended to be: . In any case, thanks for the wonderful list, as usual!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Link eaten by anti-spam filter. Let's try again: quantamagazine (dot) org (slash) 20150730-the-slippery-eel-of-probability

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