Some Math From the Week Gone By

Read up!:

1)  Last Saturday, even Alex Bellos found reason to write about the then-impending Powerball lottery:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jan/09/national-lottery-lotto-drawing-odds-of-winning-maths

...and this was Scientific American's Steve Mirsky attempt to assist people playing Powerball ;-):
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/powerball-lottery-winning-made-inevitable-if-not-easy/

2)  But by far the best treatment I saw of the whole Powerball statistics genre came from Ethan Siegel (seriously, if you play Powerball, but haven't explored the math that much, read this post):
http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/01/13/the-science-of-powerball/#2715e4857a0b3f06808017a8

3)  Andrew Gelman on Paxil, statistics, and "the garden of forking paths"... Wow!:
http://andrewgelman.com/2016/01/12/paxil-what-went-wrong/

4)  Also from Gelman's blog (but not from Andrew) this concern over cancer statistics, which applies to any number of other medical conditions as well:
http://andrewgelman.com/2016/01/12/cancer-statistics-wtf/

5)  Above my pay grade but interesting bug in Intel chip discovered by the GIMPS (Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search) folks:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/11/math_bug_splatters_skylake_intel_working_on_fix/

6)  Dan Rockmore on math and art and the Museum of Math (h/t Steven Strogatz):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-rockmore/artful-geometry_b_8953564.html
 
7)  The 'Sleeping Beauty' problem can drive you nuts... if you like that sort of thing, read Quanta's newest variations on it here:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160114-sleeping-beautys-necker-cube-dilemma/

8)  I'm excited that on Sunday I'll be posting an interview here with Dr. Mircea Pitici, editor of Princeton University Press's "Best Writing On Mathematics" series... so do stop back then!

9) ADDENDUM:  A few hours after I originally posted this potpourri Brian Hayes came out with the 130th Carnival of Mathematics, and it's a good one, so tacking it on now:
http://bit-player.org/2016/carnival-of-mathematics-130 


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

1)  I enjoyed this segment from last weekend's TEDRadioHour (of course the entire hour on "building better cities" is good):
http://www.npr.org/2016/01/08/462285380/how-can-public-spaces-change-a-citys-character

2)  Physicist Max Tegmark on "consciousness" and its testability:
http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2592#.VpfEj4MQx-g.twitter