...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 16, 2016

Friday Potpourri


A mishmash from the week:

1)  Only a little mention of mathematics in it, but I enjoyed this interview with mathematician/physicist Freeman Dyson:
2)  Some math book recommendations for children:

3)  Brian Hayes on a conference for Mochizuki's ABC work, and connection to Fermat's Last Theorem:

4)  Deborah Mayo honors one of her heroes, Charles Peirce:
5)  Beautiful math theorems get ranked:
6)  Rather timely, with the recent release of Cathy O'Neil's book, "Weapons of Math Destruction," last week's TED Radio Hour on NPR was all about 'Big Data':

7)  An interesting take on Bayes Theorem and neuroscience:

8)  And further speaking of neuroscience, in the "Too-good-not-to-pass-along-Dept."... this optical illusion that went viral last week (known as "Ninio's Extinction Illusion") -- one of the best and newest I've seen (there are 12 dots in the picture, but few can be viewed at any moment):


9)  "The Most Obvious Secret In Mathematics" (category-theory-related):
10)  This article (and comments) that John Carlos Baez pointed out on Twitter is fascinating (and scary, about taking down the Internet):

11)  New book is on the way from Ian Stewart, "Calculating the Cosmos":

12) Last weekend I paid tribute to Alan Sokal:

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

1)  From a couple of weeks back, an interesting little tale of music's role in a life decision for physicist Sean Carroll: 

2)  Coffee perks up engineering education (from NPR):



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