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

11)  A 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