...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, January 1, 2016

New Year, Fresh Potpourri


After a nice 2-week respite from the Friday math-mix (hope everyone caught most of the GREAT math that was out there though), starting the new year with this fresh set of weekly picks:

1)  Resourceaholic offered up a selection of 10 favorite 2015 blogposts for teachers from math education blogs:
http://www.resourceaholic.com/2015/12/2015blogs.html

2) 
Speaking of math education, in his own newsletter, James Tanton offered his take, following recent experiences, on the ongoing "math wars" over math education reform:
https://t.co/JHUaEGmoJX

3) 
Teaching discrete math... and having fun:
https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2015/12/27/why-is-discrete-math-hard-to-teach/

4)  Lance Fortnow wrapped up the year in computational complexity thusly:
http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2015/12/complexity-year-in-review-2015.html

5)  Another fabulous post from Evelyn Lamb on 2 recent stories in the math news-sphere:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/contrasts-in-number-theory/

She quickly followed that post with an instructive-and-speculative one on the "three-torus":
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/a-few-of-my-favorite-spaces-the-three-torus/
Dr. Lamb is just hitting one home-run after another with her posts these days.

6)  NPR did a story on "the gambler's fallacy" this week:
http://www.npr.org/2015/12/29/461352879/how-the-bias-known-as-gamblers-fallacy-effects-our-lives

7)  Worth noting that academic publisher Springer recently made MANY college-level math books (and others) freely-downloadable (pdf):
https://gist.github.com/bishboria/8326b17bbd652f34566a

Included is "The Joy of Sets" from Keith Devlin:
http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4612-0903-4

8)  When Ben Orlin resolves... I dissolve... into laughter:
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/12/30/a-mathematicians-new-years-resolutions/

9)  "Coding For All"... this seems pretty obvious to me, but some apparently take issue with it (...I, on-the-other-hand, take issue with Shakespeare or English lit. for all):
http://blog.mathedpage.org/2015/12/coding-for-all.html

10)  Kevin Knudson wraps up the year in math with a focus on the "Graph Isomorphism Problem":
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinknudson/2015/12/31/2015-the-year-in-math/

11)  This week, American Scientist magazine named the below post, on using mathematical modeling in teaching, as one of its favorite postings for the entire year:
http://www.americanscientist.org/blog/pub/5-reasons-to-teach-mathematical-modeling/

12)  Dylan Kane posts about "Project-based Learning":
https://fivetwelvethirteen.wordpress.com/2015/12/31/thinking-through-project-based-learning/

13)  A recent conference on methodology in physics that was covered initially by Natalie Wolchover for Quanta Magazine has now also been summed up a bit by the Math Drudge blog:
http://experimentalmath.info/blog/2015/12/data-vs-theory-the-mathematical-battle-for-the-soul-of-physics/

...and Mathematics Rising blog also ended the year contemplating the same conference:
http://mathrising.com/?p=1364


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

1)  For Seinfeld fans, his new coffee-infused Web season began this week in the company of a certain world leader:


http://comediansincarsgettingcoffee.com/president-barack-obama-just-tell-him-you-re-the-president

2)  And finally I'd hate for any of you to miss this week's viral story of the dog with a slice of ham on his face (is the Internet a wonderful thang or what!):
http://mashable.com/2015/12/30/dog-with-ham-on-face/#8AdKb0IvKOqr




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