...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, August 14, 2015

Math of the Week


ICYM any of these:

1)  Dan Rockmore explains the Turing test on NPR:
http://tinyurl.com/p5c9vla

2) 
The latest 'Math Gems' post from Resourceaholic:
http://www.resourceaholic.com/2015/08/gems36.html

3)
  Yet one more summation of Twitter Math Camp I'll pass along, for those interested:
https://johnberray.wordpress.com/2015/08/08/tmc15/

4) 
And as long as we're talking conferences, a couple of summaries of the recent Bridges Math Art conference:
http://blog.andreahawksley.com/bridges-math-art-2015/

http://www.ams.org/meetings/bridges-2015-conf

5)
  ICYMI, this piece about David Wees and math-learning made the rounds:
http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/08/04/seeing-struggling-math-learners-as-sense-makers-not-mistake-makers/

6)  Some simple geometric beauty from Futility Closet:
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/08/11/the-finsler-hadwiger-theorem/

7)  I blogged over a week ago about the newest pentagon found to tile a plane, and now Alex Bellos has covered it for The Guardian:
http://tinyurl.com/qjchkf4

...and plusMaths.org covers it here:
https://plus.maths.org/content/five-fits

8)  Meanwhile, Peter Cameron quickly reviews Bellos' "Alex Through the Looking Glass" (American version, "The Grapes of Math"):
https://cameroncounts.wordpress.com/2015/08/12/alex-through-the-looking-glass/

9)  More puzzle fun from the New York Times (thinking/outwitting others who are trying to think/outwit you):
http://tinyurl.com/nwo7sp6

...and John Allen Paulos' take on this sort of game:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/story?id=97632

10)  I see Alfred Posamentier is out with yet another book (he must write them in his sleep!):
http://amzn.to/1J71RKK

11A few weeks back, Presh Talwalkar of "Mind Your Decisions" blog, began doing his own "This week in math" Friday wrap-ups, and you may wish to get in a habit of checking those posts out as well, if you're not already:
http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/

12) 
And for teachers, Crystal Kirch does a weekly linkfest as well:
http://flippingwithkirch.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-best-articles-resources-ive-found_9.html


13) 
Finally, if the above isn't enough for ya, there be more links at the latest "Carnival of Math":
http://datagenetics.com/blog/august12015/index.html


p.s. -- I may(?) have a review of Gary Smith's "Standard Deviations" up here on Sunday or Monday morning; a book I loved and highly recommend.


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

1)  Just a mystery I found fascinating from NPR this week about the recent, sudden disappearance of 1000's of birds from a Florida nesting site (what could've happened?):
http://www.npr.org/2015/08/12/431807471/florida-gulf-coast-mystery-what-did-the-birds-on-seahorse-key-vanish

2)  And for your week's entertainment, I'll bet this post from "Flowing Data" blog got plenty of hits (I need more post titles like this at my blog):
http://flowingdata.com/2015/08/13/fitbit-during-sex/

...but the real fun comes with the comments to the original imgur posting:
http://imgur.com/gallery/GfRpoZb


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