...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, March 17, 2017

Weekly Potpourri

It's Friday, and time to mention a few of the things I didn't cover over at Math-Frolic this week:

1)  A quick intro to trigonometry (h/t Robert Talbert):

2)  Evelyn Lamb finds serenity in places others might not think to look, including the ‘Kakeya needle problem’:

3)  9-minute audio intro to public key cryptography:

4)  Nice new Numberphile with Terence Tao:

5)  I liked this quick mid-week take on 'null-hypothesis-significance-testing from Andrew Gelman: 

6)  An essay from Noson Yanofsky, entered in the 2017 FQXi essay contest:

7)  A mathematician (and no, not Tim Chartier, but Ken Ono) talks March Madness… and predicts Villanova for the win (h/t Anthony Bonato):

8)  And for something completely different, brand new from always-engaging Jim Propp:

9)  I briefly looked at three current books last Sunday, and I'll reiterate another strong recommendation for Edward Scheinerman’s volume:
https://mathtango.blogspot.com/2017/03/3-books-in-queue.html

...in other book news will just note that Daniel Levitin's critical-thinking volume "A Field Guide to Lies," that I highly recommended a short while back, is now out in paperback but, given our current Trumpian/demagogic world, with a new title, "Weaponized Lies."


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


1)  ICYMI, this recent story (and court outcome) about the 'Oxford comma' is making the rounds:
http://tinyurl.com/mo5rp62

2)  Thoughtful physicist/author Carl Rovelli on Krista Tippett's "On Being" radio show this week:
http://www.onbeing.org/programs/carlo-rovelli-all-reality-is-interaction/

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