...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 18, 2015

Math Incoming...


Another week, another math potpourri:

1)  Keith Devlin overviews "A Brilliant Young Mind" for NPR:
http://www.npr.org/2015/09/12/439727420/love-multiplies-at-a-math-olympiad-in-brilliant

2)  Last weekend Mike Lawler favorably pointed out something called "Idea Math" that I had not heard of:
http://www.ideamath.org/

Mike references it in this post: 
https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2015/09/16/revisiting-lines/

...I also enjoyed hearing about a meeting Mike reported on where Cathy O'Neil spoke (among his many posts this week):
https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/harvards-gender-inclusivity-in-mathematics-talk/

3)  Tim Gowers interviewed in MAA's "Math Horizons":
http://t.co/eCY5JsHRX3

4)  From last weekend, Crystal Kirch's list of helpful links for teachers from the prior week (and she should have a new list up this weekend):
http://flippingwithkirch.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-best-articles-resources-ive-found_13.html

5)  Robert Krulwich covers Tyler Vigen's wonderful "Spurious Correlations":
http://tinyurl.com/p5fp632

6) 
An oddball cryptographic find at Futility Closet this week (is there a logical, deductive answer?):
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/09/14/heart-and-head/

7) 
Meanwhile, Ben Orlin continues honing his skill at making me laugh (and not easy getting me to chuckle over trig):
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/09/16/13-trig-functions-you-need-to-memorize-right-now/

8)  Speaking of chuckling, I only discovered this "Wayward Algebra" blog this week, and it's worth some chortles:
http://waywardalgebra.tumblr.com/

9)  Another (as usual) fascinating post from Fawn Nguyen on her teaching, well, grading techniques (including a great little 'problem of the week'):
http://fawnnguyen.com/giving-feedback-with-a-highlighter/

10) The "Breakthrough Junior Challenge" prize got quite a bit of coverage this week, but in case you missed it, The Aperiodical gets you up-to-date:
http://tinyurl.com/pd7wshf
...and site for the prize here:  https://www.breakthroughjuniorchallenge.org/ 

11)  Here is the paper that just won the 2015 Ig Nobel prize for mathematics:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0085292

12)  Numberphile does it's aways fine job of introducing folks to math philosophy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA2cdHLKYB8&feature=youtu.be

13) 
I linked to a couple more reads in my prior MathTango post dealing with science and research:
http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2015/09/research-good-sometimes-often-bad-andor.html
...and Sunday here I'll be recommending a couple more recent books, so do come back then.

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

1)  Great article from "The Verge" on the war for dominance (to the death?) between Google, Facebook, and Apple:
http://tinyurl.com/nzt3xs4

2)  An interesting piece on bucket-drumming! (...yup, I said bucket-drumming):
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9323365/bucket-drumming





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