...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, May 12, 2017

Potpourri (...such as it is)


A short potpourri from week #15 of the Trump Apocalypse:

1)  Yet another review of my favorite popular math book from last year, Cathy O’Neil’s “Weapons of Math Destruction”:

2)  Pat Ballew has amassed a lot of great historical material with his “On This Day In Math” blog and Twitter feed. I suggested earlier this week that with some organizing effort the material could probably make a great calendar or book for math fans. 
Any publishers interested ought to check with Pat:

3)  Presh Talwalkar on Viviani’s Theorem, Sperner’s Lemma, and more:

4)  An ‘intrepid’ interview with Barry Mazur:

5)  Brian Hayes points out this mathematical approach to the question “What is life?”:

6)  Today I blurbed briefly about 3 recent books:

...and just a couple of decades-old quotes to close out the week (...you know, for those too young to remember history, and thus subject to repeating it):
“Just remember that once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is going to be very tough to get it back in.”  -- John Haldeman (1973)
"We have a cancer within, close to the presidency, that is growing. It is growing daily.”   -- John Dean (1973)


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