Some Reads From the week

ICYM any of these:

1)  A fun new Numberphile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvvkJT8myeI

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:

https://errorstatistics.com/2016/12/03/gelman-at-the-psa-confirmationist-and-falsificationist-paradigms-in-statistical-practice-comments-queries/

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

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/12/22/frank-ramsey-great-intellects/

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

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2016/12/human-beings-have-a-talent-for-spotting-patterns-no-doubt-this-was-a-handy-skill-to-have-in-our-early-days-if-both-ug-and-o.html

6)  Latest issue of “Math Munch”:

https://mathmunch.org/2016/12/03/nautilus-the-riddler-and-brain-pickings/

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

http://qz.com/819245/data-scientist-cathy-oneil-on-the-cold-destructiveness-of-big-data/

…and here, Cathy on Facebook and democracy:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/facebook-vs-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):

http://andrewgelman.com/2016/12/07/dear-major-academic-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”:

http://blog.ifem.co.uk/blog/2016/12/05/carnival-of-mathematics-140/

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

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

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/05/google-must-review-its-search-rankings-because-of-rightwing-manipulation 

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):