...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 17, 2015

Grab Bag From the Week


The week gone by:

1)  enjoyed this tweet from last weekend:

...and Presh Talwalkar tackled the above problem here:
http://tinyurl.com/o9e7z9g

2)  A profile of 6 Indians following in the "footsteps" of Ramanujan:
http://mintonsunday.livemint.com/news/meet-the-heirs-to-ramanujan%E2%80%99s-genius/2.3.3593071363.html

3)  During the week, Fawn Nguyen found this nice problem-solving site for young people:
http://www.1001mathproblems.com/

...and here, another interesting-looking puzzle site that popped up on Twitter:
http://dave.uktv.co.uk/shows/dara-o-briain-school-of-hard-sums/seeall/2194/

4) 
Evelyn Lamb on prepping for the International Mathematical Olympiad:
http://tinyurl.com/q6tqtxd

5)  Using math to untangle "controlled chaos":
http://blog.cosmosmagazine.com/blog/2015/7/14/mathematician-devises-equations-to-untangle-controlled-chaos

6)  Colm Mulcahy's wonderful review of the new John Conway biography:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colm-mulcahy/john-h-conway-genius-at-p_b_7749796.html

7) 
Ben Orlin on the harmonic series, 9's... and, the DMV:
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/07/15/the-strange-music-of-the-harmonic-series/

8)  Of network complexity and "explosive percolation, via Quanta Magazine:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150714-explosive-percolation-networks/

9) 
Interview with Ben Goldacre on statistics here:
http://tinyurl.com/ps724n8

10)  Some interesting references/links (on Grothendieck, and some French mathematical unification) included in the latest post from Peter Woit:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7854

11) 
A bright future ahead likely for applied math jobs built upon internships (via American Scientist):
http://www.americanscientist.org/blog/pub/internships-connect-math-students-to-new-career-paths

12)  I haven't honestly explored these enough to even understand them, but looks like something several readers might find interesting:
http://themathkid.tumblr.com/post/124195368919/theres-some-fascinating-research-happening-now

13)  And more than a little math goin' on here:
https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/



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

1)  TEDRadioHour replayed a fascinating old segment on Luis Von Ahn and his "Captcha" and "duolingo" collaborative projects:
http://www.npr.org/2013/10/04/191620023/can-you-crowdsource-without-even-knowing-it

2)  Richard Elwes posts his thoughts on learning from babies:
http://richardelwes.co.uk/2015/07/16/learning-to-learn-from-babies/



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