...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, March 23, 2018

Friday Potpourri


From Donny’s standpoint tomorrow may be the perfect Saturday for a long-awaited massacre; but I think it better for catching up on some mathy reading from the week:

1)  A nice visual introduction to statistics for the right age group or knowledge level (h/t Max Roser):

2)  Tying together math illiteracy and politics:

…and another piece on teacher Eddie Woo (h/t Egan Chernoff):

3)  Wonderful interview via Erica Klarreich elucidating “Proofs From THE BOOK”:

4)  H/T to Jim Propp for pointing out this recent great David Kung video from the Museum of Mathematics on “mind-bending paradoxes” (it’s long but wonderful and well-worth it, and may give teachers some ideas for the classroom):

(the entire series of “Math Encounters” talks at MoMath look great)

5)  The mathematics of Gabriel’s Horn:

6)  When Andrew Gelman writes that “the emperor has no clothes” he is one of the few NOT referring to Donald Trump:

7)  An old ETS ratio problem via David Marain:
https://twitter.com/dmarain/status/975692996510404608

8)  NOT at all math, but folks know I'm a Scott Aaronson fan, and yesterday Scott posted a long review of Steven Pinker's latest offering (I don't personally read any of Pinker's non-language/linguistic stuff, but still really appreciate Scott's take on this):
https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3654

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

1)  Linguistic illusions… I found this recent YouTube video interesting:

2)  And keeping with a language theme, also enjoyed this recent Vsauce video using a Venn diagram to talk about words:

I stumbled upon the above video, by the way, after seeing this Vsauce tweet from the week:



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