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!