Final Math Potpourri of 2017

While tax, draft, and responsibility-evader Donald played President for another week I pieced together the last potpourri of the year:

1)  3blue1brown was joined by some of your favorite videographers last week for this topological puzzle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvCytJvd4H0

2)  As always, Brian Hayes continues to cover the most pressing issues of the day ;) :

http://bit-player.org/2017/sir-roger-penroses-toilet-paper

3)  News for KenKen fans:

https://mathjokes4mathyfolks.wordpress.com/2017/12/26/2017-kenken-international-championship/

4)  3 geometry puzzlers via Alex Bellos/Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/dec/18/can-you-solve-it-feast-on-these-mathematical-snacks

5)  Russell’s Paradox... and centuries earlier “Panza’s” paradox (from Don Quixote):

https://quantumfrontiers.com/2017/12/26/panzas-paradox/

6)  Fantastic and timely piece from Evelyn Lamb this week on the ABC conjecture:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/do-you-know-your-abcs/

7)  Luckily, since by now you all already follow Ben Orlin, there’s no need for me to link to this latest post of his looking ahead to 2018:

https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2017/12/27/things-to-know-about-the-year-2018/

8)  One overview of the year gone by in math:
https://blogs.ams.org/blogonmathblogs/2017/12/25/best-and-worst-of-2017/

9)  The final 2017 'My Favorite Theorem' podcast highlights a professor from my own alma mater:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/ami-radunskayas-favorite-theorem/

10)  And a lovely post about math entrancement (it's a couple of months old, but just tweeted out by Nalini Joshi & Peter Price this morning):
http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/to-sir-with-love-the-story-of-a-maths-teacher-and-his-passion/article19820885.ece

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

1)  Too late for me and my mouthful of mercury-amalgam fillings, but thought this was interesting:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/scientists-have-found-a-drug-that-can-repair-cavities-and-regrow-teeth?

2)  Finally, since I often tout books here, I’ll add another, just not a math book — haven’t read it myself, but a well-read friend of mine tells me that Robert Sapolsky’s  (evolutionary biologist) “Behave” is THE best book, bar none, he has ever read. That’s good enough for me to give it a look. Just passing it along.

…also, currently reading/enjoying “The Jazz of Physics,” by Stephon Alexander, newly out in paperback.

Pre-Festivus Potpourri ;)

While Congressional Republicans were busy mugging America, and the Trumpster occupied himself sticking pins into his Bob Mueller doll, I found these math stories to pass along:

1)  Some of what John Baez is thinking about lately:

https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2017/12/16/the-600-cell/

2)  More analysis of the success of Google’s AlphaGo from K.W. Regan:

https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/truth-from-zero/

3)  Jim Propp’s latest monthly offering (on “the roots of unity”) is up:

https://mathenchant.wordpress.com/2017/12/16/the-roots-of-unity/

4)  Risk-reward and innovation (…and monkeys) from Bill Gasarch:

http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2017/12/monkey-first.html

5)  Why parameters are problematic in statistics:

http://wmbriggs.com/post/23267/

6)  H/T to Egan Chernoff for noting this story/controversy I’d not seen reported on much:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/mathematics/infinite-paper-no-jest-say-angry-mathematicians

7)  Two from Quanta Magazine this week:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-find-wrinkle-in-famed-fluid-equations-20171221/
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-mathematician-who-decodes-the-patterns-stamped-out-by-life-20171220/

8)  And new video from "Infinite Series" (on topology):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdOaMOcxY7U

9)  I’ve been reading a little more foundational and analytical philosophy lately, so this end-of-year book, "Exact Thinking In Demented Times" on such, looks interesting (and Douglas Hofstadter writing the Preface is a pretty good endorsement):

http://amzn.to/2BN1CrU

(Anyone already read it and care to comment on it?)

10)  I re-posted a fun logic problem/riddle yesterday at Math-Frolic.

11)  Shinichi Mochizuki’s controversial/difficult proof of the ABC conjecture continues its wild ride, having been submitted to a prestigious math journal… which Mochizuki himself edits!... what one writer calls “poor optics.” So even if refereed properly this could taint its wider acceptance. Stay tuned.

https://galoisrepresentations.wordpress.com/2017/12/17/the-abc-conjecture-has-still-not-been-proved/

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=9871

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

1)  perhaps my favorite tweet-with-comments this week:

https://twitter.com/SBNation/status/943153955395260416

2)  I enjoy videos of “Canon Rock” performances (the rock version of Pachelbel’s Canon) and recently someone sent me this YouTube of a young female Japanese drummer joyously going-to-town with it. So will sign off with this:

…Have a joyous long weekend ahead everyone!

Potpourri is back (...after a couple weeks off)

While you were sleeping, and Aryan Anti-Christ Donald was busily colluding, obstructing, and weeping over fellow-harasser Roy Moore’s loss, I was once again hard at work pulling together another Friday math potpourri:

1)  Great New Yorker profile of Jim Simons, mathematician and billionaire hedge fund manager, and his Flatiron Institute:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/18/jim-simons-the-numbers-king

2)  The latest blog “Carnival of Mathematics”:

http://chalkdustmagazine.com/blog/carnival-mathematics-152/

3)  A very basic post on “the importance of statistics”:

http://statisticsbyjim.com/basics/importance-statistics/

4)  Even if you’ve already read about AlphaZero’s “staggering” chess success, still worth reading John Baez’s post:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+johncbaez999/posts/Xk36jKsosGT

5)  Wonderful Patrick Honner post for Quanta Magazine explaining the marvels of pentagon tiling:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-math-problem-with-pentagons-20171211/

6)  A couple of new books on the way:

 “Closing the Gap” (about prime numbers), by Vicky Neale:

https://plus.maths.org/content/closing-gap

...and “The Calculus Story” by David Acheson

7)  New “Infinite Series” episode this week on encryption:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOs34_-eREk

8)  An odd geometric conjecture proved (h/t Mike Lawler):

https://phys.org/news/2017-12-mathematicians-year-old-problem.html

9)  This year's Christmas lecture (recommended by The Aperiodical) from Donald Knuth at Stanford:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxQw4CdxLr8

10)  The power of graphics... Keith Devlin's latest:
https://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2017/12/clash-of-representations.html

11)  For some levity, this is old, but I only ran across it this week… an Andrew Gelman lexicon:

http://andrewgelman.com/2009/05/24/handy_statistic/

…which in turn leads to these “definitions” from Stephen Senn:

http://www.senns.demon.co.uk/wdict.html

12)  Finally, not a pleasant read, but a needed reminder that this in-the-news problem is long-standing and cuts across all fields:
https://medium.com/@kristianlum/statistics-we-have-a-problem-304638dc5de5

...and there is followup to Kristian's post at Gelman's blog:
http://andrewgelman.com/2017/12/14/need-stop-sacrificing-women-alter-deeply-mediocre-men-isba-edition/

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

Just a couple of Twitter threads from the week I found entertaining:

https://twitter.com/sadgirlkms/status/940006885914300416

https://twitter.com/rachsyme/status/940641484356947971