The Friday Weekly Grab-bag

While Trumpie was kept busy all week laundering money, I put together another Friday potpourri, in-between washing tie-dye T-shirts:

1)  Last week’s TED Radio Hour (on NPR) re-ran a popular entertaining excursion into numbers and math (and includes Randall Munroe):

https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/?showDate=2018-01-05

2)  Interesting take on leaving the Langlands program:

http://blog.jpolak.org/?p=1891

3)  Nice introduction to some very basic statistics concepts and uncertainty:

http://flowingdata.com/2018/01/08/visualizing-the-uncertainty-in-data/

4)  Peter Cameron on bees, Bayer, and publication:

https://cameroncounts.wordpress.com/2018/01/08/bees-replication-and-academic-publishing/

5)  Andrew Gelman on ‘randomized controlled trials’ (…as if there is such a thing):

http://andrewgelman.com/2018/01/08/benefits-limitations-randomized-controlled-trials-agree-deaton-cartwright/

6)  20+ introductory videos on statistics from the “Statistics Learning Centre”:

https://learnandteachstatistics.wordpress.com/2018/01/09/videos-for-teaching-and-learning-statistics/

7)  A listing of (mostly British) math podcasts you may enjoy:

https://mathsedideas.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/on-mathematics-to-listen-to.html

8)  A tribute to John Cook upon a decade of blogging:

https://tdhopper.com/blog/ten-year-endeavor/

9)  A new episode of the “My Favorite Theorem” podcast is up:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/mohamed-omars-favorite-theorem/

10)  A little trigonometry and a problematic road intersection (h/t Adam Kucharski):
http://singletrackworld.com/2018/01/collision-course-why-this-type-of-road-junction-will-keep-killing-cyclists/amp/

11)  Finally (because there is most certainly math involved), science journalist learns poker from scratch and wins national championship:

https://www.pokerstars.com/en/blog/tournaments/2018/pca-2018-konnikova-and-seidel-aim-for-ma-169889.shtml

…perhaps worth noting, some may want to follow along the ongoing Joint Math Meetings in San Diego through tomorrow, on Twitter or Facebook with hashtag #JMM2018

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

1)  Interesting piece, a bit ago, with philosopher Peter Unger:

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/philosophy/is-modern-philosophy-just-empty-ideas-an-interview-with-peter-unger

2)  You either are or are not a Jerry Seinfeld fan… if you’re the former you’ll enjoy this audio interview with the New Yorker:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/jerry-seinfeld-gets-technical/