...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.

*********************************************************************************************
"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, August 12, 2016

Math Potpourri Served Up


End-of-week mishmash of math miscellany:

1)  Medical tests... false positives and negatives:

2)  Exploring Mersenne numbers a bit:

3)  Donald Knuth wins the John von Neumann Lecture Prize:
4)  Evelyn Lamb lists a few keen educational math blogs (for different levels) here:

5)  Deborah Mayo on Popperian falsification etc.:

6)  A review (pdf) of the latest volume from Raymond Smullyan, "Reflections: the magic, music, and mathematics of Raymond Smullyan":
https://andrescaicedo.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/smullyan-review.pdf

7)  Speaking of booksI wrote this week about an older volume from Keith Devlin that, if you can find it, is worth having:

8)  And of course if you need more math for your weekly fix, you can always visit "Mike's Math Page":


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

1)  One physicist's interesting take on the LHC results:

2)  ICYMI, "60 Minutes" Anderson Cooper met playful Bonobos in the Congo last weekend:

...and lastly, perhaps my favorite tweet from the week (from @AdamSacks):
"The party of Lincoln is now the party of John Wilkes Booth."



No comments:

Post a Comment