Friday, September 2, 2016

Weekly Potpourri...



From the week gone by....

1)  Odd/interesting little genealogical study tracing back the origin of mathematicans to primarily "24 scientific families":
http://www.nature.com/news/majority-of-mathematicians-hail-from-just-24-scientific-families-1.20491
(...can't help but think how the '6-degrees of separation' notion plays into this)

2)  Math, patterns, tilings, crystals, oh my:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/mathematics/the-maths-behind-impossible-never-repeating-patterns

3)  Presh Talwalkar uses a Three Stooges pie fight to talk about modeling, game theory, and this year's presidential election:
http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2016/08/30/how-this-election-is-like-a-three-stooges-pie-fight-game-theory-tuesdays/

4)  A short, but rich, new Carnival of Mathematics:
http://tinyurl.com/h4lxys4

5)  And another rich offering from Ben Orlin this week:
https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/08/31/math-exams-with-only-one-question/

6)  I've never been able to get my mind to wrap around "category theory," but maybe next time I try I'll use this post from John Cook:
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2013/06/06/seven-dogmas-of-category-theory/

7)  Addition to multiplication, via Evelyn Lamb:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/the-beauty-of-converting-between-addition-and-multiplication/

...also, Evelyn reviewed Cathy O'Neil's new book, "Weapons of Math Destruction" this week:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/review-weapons-of-math-destruction/

...AND, an excerpt from Cathy's book was available in the Guardian this week:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/01/how-algorithms-rule-our-working-lives

8)  A fun take on Bayesian stats:
https://slackprop.wordpress.com/2016/08/28/the-three-faces-of-bayes/

...and Deborah Mayo points to this Bayes paper that she deems "superb":
https://twitter.com/omaclaren/status/771501055339171841

9)  Haven't explored it very much myself, but math fans who enjoy board games may want to check out this new one:
http://mathposs.com

10) "A Mathematician Goes to Washington" (and works for Al Franken):
http://horizonsaftermath.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-mathematician-goes-to-washington.html

11)  John C. Baez is newly on Twitter. If you're on Twitter you should follow him: @baez72033757

12)  Math-Frolic posts this week touched on Ford Circles and Lior Pachter, and a techie browser question.

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


1)  I've long thought a lot of "social science" ought more accurately be called "social studies," and beginning to feel similarly a lot of "neuroscience" might better be deemed, "neuro studies":

2)  With a long-time interest in psycholinguistics I found this recent bit of Twitter banter interesting (...may have to think about it briefly to catch what's going on):




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