...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, December 29, 2017

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:

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

3)  News for KenKen fans:

4)  3 geometry puzzlers via Alex Bellos/Guardian:

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

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

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:

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:

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.



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