...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, October 14, 2016

Potpourri

From the past week:

1)  Presh Talwalkar offers up a semi-classic logic problem:
2)  Tadashi returns to Numberphile with some shoelace knotology:
3)  There's a new 'Gathering For Gardner' ("Celebration of Mind") rapidly approaching  ~Oct. 21, Martin Gardner's birthday:
4)  Ben Orlin touched a nerve when he argues in favor of public over private education this week:
5)  Great Quanta longread (from 4 great writers) on four math and science teachers:
6)  More p-value discussion:

...and a more technical piece:

7)  Another mathematician reporting that the math that turns so many off in school, is NOT real math:

8)  More on algorithms and big data:
9)  The importance of mathematics, past and future, via Keith Devlin:
10)  New (pricey) book for serious logicians/philosophers-of-math, "Gödel's Disjunction":


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

1)  For anyone deeply-entrenched in linguistics, this long David Berlinski piece on Chomskyean fare:

2)  It's gone viral so am sure you've already seen it, but that won't stop me from including such a great song put to great use:



[...blogging may continue to be light next several weeks, while I watch the U.S. Presidential campaign in utter disbelief!]



No comments:

Post a Comment