...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, September 11, 2015

Math From the Week...


A little of this, a little of that:

1)  A review of Ed Frenkel's "Love and Math" that touches upon a surprising number of thoughts/ideas:
http://www.science20.com/physics_foundations/love_math_a_review_of_edward_frenkels_bestseller_a_math_planetarium-157069

2)  At the 4-year anniversary point, Deborah Mayo posts a summary of her "Error Statistics" blog:
http://errorstatistics.com/2015/09/05/all-she-wrote-so-far-error-statistics-philosophy-4-years-on/

3)  Scott, Scott, Scott!!

Scott Aaronson did an "Ask Me Anything" posting at his blog "Shtetl-Optimized" and at least some of the 150+ questions/answers are math-related:
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2458

 Nautilus ran a little intro to P vs. NP also featuring Scott:
http://nautil.us/blog/what-if-solving-math-problems-were-as-easy-as-checking-solutions

And finally, speaking of Scott, I recently re-visited a post of his I loved and linked to several weeks ago, and discovered there were now well over 100 comments to it (many interesting ones, though may be too-meta for many readers):
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2410

4)  Don't know if this will catch on or not, but one blogger suggests that MTBoS folks generate their own collection of math stock photos:
http://mathybeagle.com/2015/09/05/hey-mtbos-its-stockphoto-time/

5)  Natalie Wolchover updates us on quantum computing and encryption:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150908-quantum-safe-encryption/

6)  "The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics" is now out:
http://experimentalmath.info/blog/2015/09/the-princeton-companion-to-applied-mathematics-is-out-at-last/

7)  Ben Orlin explains exponentiation (in his own inimitable way)... and also explains why he does what he does:
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/09/09/the-exponential-bait-and-switch/

8)  Numberphile tackles infinitesimals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYijIV5JrKg&feature=youtu.be

9)  Another review (in Harvard Magazine) of one of my favorite books from the year, Michael Harris's "Mathematics Without Apologies" (h/t Jordan Ellenberg):
http://harvardmagazine.com/2015/08/mathematics-from-the-inside-out

10)  Yesterday, Cathy O'Neil linked to a couple of interesting reads on gender stereotypes and inclusivity in STEM:
http://mathbabe.org/2015/09/10/bloggy-young-nerd-women/

11)  Tim Gowers, who spearheaded an earlier boycott of publisher Elsevier, announces a new "arXiv overlay journal," "Discrete Analysis":
https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-overlay-journal/

12)  Ken Ono, his students, and the Ramanujan story:
http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_MAGAZINE/issues/2015/summer/features/Ono.html#Ono


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

1)  If you missed it, an interesting FB entry from a Duke University neuroscience post-doc this week, announcing his resignation and academic exasperation (...among other things, he'll be pursuing a proof of the Goldbach conjecture!):
https://www.facebook.com/jfgariepyneuro/posts/466442776860755


2)  In a sort of twist on some other 'bias' studies, a fellow named Michael was unable to get his poetry published 'til he changed his name to "Yi-Fen Chou":
http://tinyurl.com/q4kn9p6

(...as always, let me know ASAP of any broken/incorrect links.)


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