...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, June 17, 2016

This and That From the Week


Friday linkfest:

1)  Nice article on mathematician/Fields-Medalist Manjul Bhargava:

 ...speaking of stats, "10 simple rules for effective statistical practice" via PLoS:

3) The 135th "Carnival of Mathematics" (good stuff):

4)  Futility Closet harks back to a variation on Monty Hall problem in an interesting post:

5)  Programming and math education (longish-read):
6)  Interview with combinatorics professor Alan Frieze:

7)  Quanta Magazine with thoughts and questions on infinity:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160616-infinity-puzzle/

8)  Not really math, but I overviewed Sean Carroll's latest book, "The Big Picture" earlier in the week:

...and in a similar vein, an interesting overview from Michael Harris of Stephon Alexander's "The Jazz of Physics" here:



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


1)  A farewell to Garrison Keillor:

2)  People may be sick of the ongoing coverage and debate, but I'll still pass along the NY Times editorial on the "NRA's complicity in terrorism":