...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, December 9, 2016

Some Reads From the week


ICYM any of these:

1)  A fun new Numberphile:

2)  Sort of a cool (unexpected?) factoid that Colin Wright tweeted out this week:
Except in exactly one case, the digit sum of the product of twin primes is always 8.
[The exception, btw, is 3 and 5.]

3)  Andrew Gelman and Deborah Mayo, frequentism and Bayesianism:

4)  New book on Frank Ramsey, one of the great mathematicians of the 20th century:

5)  Nice tribute to Richard Guy, on his 100th birthday! (h/t John Allen Paulos):

6)  Latest issue of “Math Munch”:

7)  More of Cathy O’Neil and “Weapons of Math Destruction”:

…and here, Cathy on Facebook and democracy:

8)  It sometimes bothers me when bloggers beat around the bush with their opinion… THIS isn’t one of those occasions (Gelman ranting on a statistics text and publisher):

9)  Evelyn Lamb has suggestions for the "Breathrough Prize" awards (concurring in part with Peter Woit):
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/what-i-would-do-with-3-million-for-math/

...and here she writes about the "Pseudocontext" notion of Dan Meyer:
http://blogs.ams.org/blogonmathblogs/2016/12/07/the-pseudocontext-2016-deserves/#sthash.FnrubBQ6.1efYx5jT.dpbs
10)  A new “Carnival of Mathematics”:

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

1)  The issue of right-wing manipulation of fake news and Facebook:

2)  If you missed this powerful viral video from the week, you ought see it, especially if you’re a teacher, parent, or student (…but warning, while it’s an important message, it’s NOT a joyous Holiday one):



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