...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 10, 2017

Weekly Wrap-up of Mathy Miscellany



1)  A little history... his own history that is... from Keith Devlin:

…Keith seems to be on a Fibonacci kick. He wrote a volume on the popular Italian medieval mathematician a few years back, and now has a new book out about writing the first book:

2)  An excerpt from Luke Heaton’s, “A Brief History of Mathematical Thought”:

3)  The problem with science-reporting and hype:

4)  Evelyn Lamb interviews a trans mathematician with a lot of interesting answers:

…and here, another interview with a mathematician (who is married to yet another mathematician):

5)  There's something about infinity! ....

One primer on infinity here:

…and another from Aeon here:

I’m currently reading Eugenia Cheng’s newest work, “Beyond Infinity,” so will have something to say about it in the future.

...and apparently Ian Stewart also has a new intro to infinity out as well:
https://plus.maths.org/content/node/6795

6)  Deborah Mayo reviews a bit of the p-value discussion over the last year:

7)  Ben Orlin teaches lines:
https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2017/03/08/lines-beyond-y-mx-b/

8)  The 'connectedness' of mathematical areas, via John Cook:
https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2017/03/09/how-areas-of-math-are-connected/?

9)  There's some math buried in the curve of a child's early speech learning (h/t Adam Kucharski):
https://www.good.is/articles/first-words-spreadsheet

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

1)  Fun from the New Yorker and the retiring Bob Mankoff (cartoon editor):

2)  Old, but still one of my favorite pieces ever, whenever I need a laugh (…which is pretty often these days). So read it and weep, all ye minimal Bauhaus clownfaces!: 




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