...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 4, 2018

The Friday Mixed-bag...


Am trying something ever-so-slightly different this week and next, for the potpourri (you may well notice no difference), and will explain later, if I decide to make the change permanent.
In any event, with or without any changes, you have assurances from my personal physician Vinnie Boom-Bornstein, that this blog will continue to be “astonishingly excellent,” and he also notes that at a slim & trim 6’6” and 175 lbs. of taut, lean, striated musculature I am likely the healthiest blogger in the blog-o-sphere (though adding a little Propecia to my daily routine might be in order)….

1)  Some math inspiration:

2)  Always interesting how certain math puzzles go viral:

3)  A few recent stats items from Thomas Lumley:

4) The Fluency of Geometry” from “Mathematics Rising”:

5)  2015 stats on math majors:

6)  I dare you to ask what Graham’s Number equals:

7)  Keith Devlin once again fleshing out math-understanding versus math-calculating:

8)  A nice tribute to Stan Ulam:

9) “Robust perfect adaptation”… perhaps the math behind the biology of cells:

10)  Kevin Hartnett on zeta values and mirror symmetry:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/three-decades-later-mystery-numbers-explained-20180503/

11)  A couple dozen math jokes that, surprisingly, were mostly new to me:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/math-jokes-you-wont-get?utm_term=.qppdN90WV#.sl2zWDmG3

12)  "The Incredible Palindromic Hat-trick" from Christian Lawson-Perfect:
http://aperiodical.com/2018/05/the-incredible-palindromic-hat-trick/

13)  WHOOOOAAA!!!:
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2018/05/04/a-prime-square/
(WWRD... What Would Riemann Do with this!? ;)


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

1)  Last weekend, NPR’s “On Being re-played the episode with near-poetic physicist Carl Rovelli:

2)  Strictly for you cat-lovers out there, a favorite tweet from the week:




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