...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, August 11, 2017

Some Math Bits


Week #28 of the Trumpocalypse came and went, and so far not a single nuclear exchange has transpired… so on with some math:

1) Explaining Gödel to lay folks:

2)  From Will Gervais one of the more fun, entertaining, and thoughtful reads I’ve come across since the whole psychology-replication issue hit the fan:

3)  If you love baseball… and Paul Erdös, you’ll love this Numberphile episode from a few days back:

4)  Kevin Hartnett reports on two new ‘rare mathematical jewels’:

5)  An interview with always-exuberant James Grime:
(…it reminded me of one of my earliest interviews which was also with James:

6)  A rough year for a math teacher:
…I wish I felt more confident that the next 3 will be any better :(

8)  I offered up a quick list of my favorite books for a desert isle… or, more likely a Trump-induced exile:


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

1) Last weekend, NPR’s RadioLab re-ran their incredible story of Lucy… the chimp… but by the end have some kleenex ready:

2) Peter Woit worries over the current state of physics/cosmology/science:


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