...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, May 11, 2018

Some Miscellaneous Stuff From the Week


Friday may be money-laundering day at the White House, but at MathTango it’s math-potpourri day. 
(…when I can find time I’ll explain a few changes I’m making to the Friday potpourri):

1)  Possibly a good thread for teachers to contemplate:

2)  Somewhat related, a few, brief teaching “meta-lessons” from Kalid Azad:

3)  Some tidbits from John Cook this week:

“Robust Statistics”:

…applications of “Benford’s Law”:

4)  Not sure exactly why I find palindromic numbers interesting but I do, and Gary Davis has been referencing them lately:
…also, this OEIS entry:

5)  “Robinson Tiles”… some quirkiness from Futility Closet:

6)  Just a little Elon Musk commentary from a statistician… I’m constantly amazed by both Musk’s performance(s) and the opposing viewpoints of him:

7)  ICYMI, my post last weekend that Patrick Honner later pointed out to me was especially appropriate for this official Teacher Appreciation Week:

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

1)  Errol Morris, Hilary Putnam, Noam Chomsky, Thomas Kuhn… interesting piece for the philosophically-inclined:

2)  The still-interesting-at-94 Freeman Dyson, via John Horgan:

…while I’m at it, many tributes to Feynman this week of his 100th birthday (here are 2):
From Tom Siegfried:

3)  Finally, h/t to Derren Brown for passing this incredible bit along:


And this fellow has a YouTube channel here:




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