Weekly Grab Bag

Have some other projects eating up my time these days so another short-list of mathy links for this week (...hope to have another interview up on site, though, sometime Sunday):

1)  Correlation is not… 50%…. Jordan Ellenberg takes issue with some New Yorker statistics:
http://quomodocumque.wordpress.com/2014/09/20/what-correlation-means/

2)  Another voice FOR Common Core:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/09/15/common-core-math-education-standards-fluency-column/15693531/

3)  Keith Devlin talks about the 5th incarnation of his MOOC "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking":
http://mooctalk.org/2014/09/21/here-we-go-again-2/

4)  Who doesn't like math podcasts!? (…uhh, don't answer that, it's a rhetorical question)… anyway, Sam Hansen has a new kickstarter project to fund a second series (anywhere from 8 to 16 episodes) of his math podcast "Relatively Prime":
http://aperiodical.com/2014/09/relatively-prime-podcast-series-2-kickstarter/

5)   Colm Mulcahy, in the Huffington Post, looks at the math connections to 5 of this year's MacArthur Fellows:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colm-mulcahy/you-dont-have-to-be-a-gen_b_5834768.html

6)  In the news: some (potential) math behind the Ebola outbreak:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-26/ebolas-deadly-math

7)  Will end with a fun piece today from Evelyn Lamb on a friggin' failure from Fermat:
http://tinyurl.com/k8hxg6n


  

Weekly Potpourri

A short compilation of math bits this week (been busy on other things):

1)  RJ Lipton's blog posted a little tribute to the interesting work of Stanislaw Ulam:
https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2014/09/14/some-strange-math-facts/
(and on a side note, worth mentioning that RJ Lipton was recently awarded the 2014 Knuth Prize for contributions to computer science)

2)  Stephen Wolfram announced an online (cloud) version of Mathematica this week:
http://blog.wolfram.com/2014/09/15/launching-today-mathematica-online/

3)  Mathbabe takes Christian Rudder's new "Dataclysm" book to task:
http://mathbabe.org/2014/09/16/christian-rudders-dataclysm/

and on another day she offered this thought experiment (which, like any good conundrum, drew LLLOTS of comments):
http://mathbabe.org/2014/09/17/the-green-eyed-blue-eyed-puzzle-conundrum/

BUT (again a side-note), her most powerful post of the week, was NON-math (and very personal) here: http://tinyurl.com/k6pql3l

4)   Interesting 'language of math' article:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-best-language-for-math-1410304008

5)  Jacob Lurie, the Harvard math prof., who won a MacArthur Fellowship this week:
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2014/09/a-macarthur-for-math-prof/

6)  My own review of William Poundstone's latest book, "Rock Breaks Scissors" precedes this post.

Poundstone on People and Predictions

"Rock Breaks Scissors"  by William Poundstone



I keep seeing William Poundstone's latest book, "Rock Breaks Scissors" in the 'business' sections of bookstores… which I think is ashamed, because a lot of readers who would enjoy it may miss it there. More appropriately, and like most Poundstone books, it should be in a science/math area, or perhaps under psychology. Poundstone is one of my favorite authors; a good writer, dealing with subjects I find interesting, and at a level accommodating a lay readership.

Some of his volumes are deeper and richer, and others less so, but interesting and timely. This new book is in the latter category. It is yet another of the surprising array of recent volumes dealing with probability and numbers to hit the popular book market. Poundstone isn't dealing with math or probability in an academic context, as some popular volumes have attempted, but in a very reader-friendly, real-life practical sort of way.

The book is divided into two broad parts: Part 1 relates to "randomness" and part 2 relates to 'hot hand theory' -- the author tries to get across two opposing ideas that govern our actions: i.e., we often perceive things as random when in fact there is actually a pattern involved, and conversely, in other contexts of life we perceive patterns, where none exists and greater randomness is at work.

I'll briefly mention several chapters of the book:
The Prologue begins with some discussion of the work of information theorist Claude Shannon, but also includes mention of Bernie Madoff, as well as an entertaining, famous example from the retailer Target, a couple years back, when one of their purchasing algorithms deduced that a certain young lady was pregnant long before even her parents knew -- I mention all this simply to indicate the sort of diversity of subject that typifies this volume all the way through.

Chapter 1 is a little introduction to randomness, with some focus on examples from parapsychology, and also a well-known example from psychology of how poor, people are at creating "random" sequences when asked to do so (a knowledgeable individual or professor can pick out a human-created sequence from a truly random sequence).

Oddly, the title of the book stems from the quite short chapter 2 which is a treatment of the betting game, "Rock, paper, scissors," and various strategies to employ for greater success.

Chapter 3 covers some of the oft-used strategies (and patterns to look for) when taking multiple-choice exams, such as the SAT.

Chapter 4 offers strategies for playing lotteries -- I didn't find these very convincing (but then I don't play lotteries, so what do I know).

Some chapters follow delving into certain sports actions (tennis and soccer), and then card games, again always about how to better recognize, as a player, human predictability.

Chapter 9 is a practical one on creating passwords for the internet (especially after the author informs us that one "free hacking program, can test millions of passwords a second," and another "forensic" program "claims it can check 2.8 billion passwords a second." :-(

Chapters 11-13 are some of the most interesting ones, centered initially around Benford's Law (of integer distribution), and the ways it can be used to detect fraud, financial malfeasance, or just manipulated numbers.

Chapter 14 begins the second part of the book focused on "hot-hand theory." Hot-hand notions have been written about a lot in recent years (popularly in relation to basketball scoring runs), and it remains a controversial subject. Poundstone also notes that "hot-hand" notions are exactly opposite of another oft-cited prediction failure: "the gambler's fallacy" -- in the former, people overly believe a trend (sinking basketball shots) will continue to occur because it has in the recent past, but in the latter people erroneously believe a change will happen because of a non-probable trend that has just transpired (i.e., a roulette wheel will come up "red" because it just had 6 "blacks" in a row and is 'overdue.')
Anyway, chapter 15 moves on from specific hot-hand ideas to basketball betting pools (as in the NCAA March Madness tournament) -- oddly there is no mention of Tim Chartier's methods here, though they've received a lot of publicity the last couple of years.

Chapter 16 moves along to football pools, and I'll relate one quote I enjoyed from it:

"One problem with sports betting systems is that anyone who looks hard enough for a pattern tends to find one. It might be that the Denver Broncos always won on odd-numbered days in February when playing teams named after animals. Analytics is good at finding such patterns. It's not good at saying whether you should believe in them."

I think that more-or-less captures the message or sentiment of the whole second half of Poundstone's book.

Chapter 18, on 'Big Data' (everyone's favorite topic these days) is a fun, interesting intro to all the ways we can barely fathom that info is collected on us. Also, he gives a practical hint on how to get discount offers flowing your way, calling it the "abandoned shopping cart play." Again, I'll quote what to do when you're on a retail website:

"Put whatever you want to buy in a retail site's shopping cart. Click 'check out.' Begin filling out the form. Make sure you enter your e-mail address but don't enter any payment information. Leave the purchase in limbo and wait for the discounts to roll in."
(the point being that once you've expressed interest, but departed, the retailer is going to do whatever it takes to entice you back to complete an order)

The next couple chapters deal with pricing, followed by a chapter on predicting the future, where he notes that even professional experts are generally much better at forecasting far-off broad trends than predicting near-term happenings (which one might think would be easier to predict being so much closer in time) -- you might think in terms of predicting the percentage of heads in a thousand coin tosses versus predicting the percentage in say 10 tosses.

At close to 35 pages, Poundstone's final chapter, on the stock market, is by far the longest one of the book. If you're active in the market (especially if you trade for yourself) there will be MUCH of interest here, but if you have no connection to the stock market, and talk of things like PE ratios (which the chapter is VERY focused on) cause your eyes to glaze over, then this chapter will be a yawner.

Anyway, the volume is chockfull of examples and is a fairly fun romp (even if sometimes shallow and choppy) through many different, often timely, ideas. I do recommend it to folks, as I think most people will find various chapters of interest, and learn some practical or quirky tips along the way, though I can't predict ahead-of-time which chapters will be most rewarding to you, the individual reader... but then Poundstone probably could've predicted my limitation.

Weekend Potpourri

Some math links from the week:

1)  Evelyn Lamb interviews one of the first-ever African-American math PhDs in the country:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/2014/09/05/mathematics-live-evelyn-boyd-granville/

2)  Folding pizza… and Gauss:
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/curvature-and-strength-empzeal/

3)  Interesting thoughts from a one-time math-phobe:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/09/05/how-to-excel-in-stem-math-and-science

4)  Some Common Core Common Sense:
http://www.mathforgrownups.com/common-core-common-sense-the-series/

5)  Word choice in STEM fields (at least somewhat more interesting than I was expecting):
http://tinyurl.com/pq2pteh

6)  Fawn Nguyen is resurrecting her mathtalks site:
http://fawnnguyen.com/mathtalks-net/

7)  Is homotopy theory a new foundation for mathematics:
https://www.rdmag.com/news/2014/09/new-foundation-mathematics

8)  I love quirky stories about the genius of great mathematicians. Here's a quickie that John Golden passed along this week that I'd not heard before (about John von Neumann):
http://curiosamathematica.tumblr.com/post/96957528974/there-was-a-seminar-for-advanced-students-in

9)   A snarky problem from Futility Closet this week:
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2014/09/08/wheres-the-father/

10)  Here's a bit of a mind-stretcher from R.J. Lipton taking on a challenge from Freeman Dyson:
http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/a-challenge-from-dyson/

11)  Terry Tao offers some simple statistical/paradox discussion here (h/t to Nalini Joshi for this):
https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z12ewdbivreculcqh04cdvvwas3egfs4dhs

12)  If you want a little philosophy with your weekend coffee, try this from Nautilus ("Angst and the Empty Set"):
http://m.nautil.us/issue/16/nothingness/angst-and-the-empty-set

13)  Lastly, just two days ago I took a look at a couple of math history books here:
http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2014/09/so-you-want-some-math-history.html

So You Want Some Math History...

Recently finished a quickread of history professor Amir Alexander's "Infinitesimal," which has received plenty of rave reviews, a few of which I'll reference below, (as I won't fully review it here):

http://tinyurl.com/pe2dd7w
http://tinyurl.com/nopb85a
http://tinyurl.com/mxchx6h

For whatever reason, I've never been much fascinated with math history (at least not pre-19th century history). This book recounts the sometimes surprisingly controversial disputes over the early history of infinitesimals in mathematics. It ends right before the part that I would've found interesting… the Newton - Leibniz rivalry and history of infinitesimals and limits since then (David Berlinski previously wrote a popular book, "A Tour of the Calculus," covering that history which I find more intriguing). Thus, though Alexander's writing is good, and the narrative sometimes dramatic, it wasn't subject matter that particularly grabbed me. But if history is among your foci this volume comes very highly recommended and you should definitely give it a look. It certainly captures events and conflicts that most people will be unacquainted with.

A few days back I briefly mentioned "Mathematics and the Real World" by Zvi Artstein… a read, which once again, because of its older historical context started off slowly for me. However, the last half of the book, moving into more modern math history, improved considerably. The writing is still somewhat stilted, but I did enjoy more of the material being covered from chapter 5 (an introduction to randomness) on, and especially the last few chapters. If you're looking for a more lively narrative and interesting story-line than "Infinitesimal" will better suit your taste, but if you want a broader sweep of math history I do recommend the Artstein book, even though parts of it are a bit of a slog. I'm not sure it's all that helpful, but the most extensive review of the book I've seen is here:
http://www.euro-math-soc.eu/review/mathematics-and-real-world

Recently on social media, Steven Strogatz and currently Evelyn Lamb have talked about teaching math history courses… don't know if this is a new trend, or such courses have long been around. In any event, both these works could be useful to an instructor of such a course -- the Alexander book, while perhaps more engaging, only deals with a sliver of history, while Artstein chronologically covers a wider swath and range of history, and is, I think, more useful. An older, more concise, historical overview of mathematics I've previously enjoyed, again comes from Berlinski, "Infinite Ascent."

By the way, I was not previously familiar with the name "Zvi Artstein," but he certainly appears to be a well-established, well-credentialed professional Israeli mathematician -- I mention this only to indicate he is not some crackpot opinionated writer, because of what follows:

Artstein finishes his volume with a 30-page, almost polemical, chapter on math education that is quite an assault on Dr. Keith Devlin's well-distributed viewpoint regarding "mathematical thinking." (He never mentions Devlin by name, but seems to clearly be directing much of his commentary toward Devlin's writings.) I've seen others sometimes voice arguments similar to Artstein's, but not with the same tenacity and self-assuredness of Artstein. I think Artstein makes some valid points along the way… but then too, I don't believe in any 'one-size-fits-all' solution to teaching youngsters math. He seems to favor a form of teaching first proposed by Louis Bénézet in the earlier 1900's that never caught on widely.
Anyway, Artstein asserts, "The truth is, there is no such thing as mathematical thinking." He argues there are only two types of thinking ('comparative' and 'creative,') which apply to most all disciplines, not just math, and that they can't be taught, but can only be learned through experience and practice!
He goes so far as to say that, "Presenting 'mathematical thinking' as a necessity, or as beneficial to life beyond mathematics and its applications, is likely to cause harm." I won't try to fully explain Artstein's viewpoint (because I'm afraid I would misstate it in some manner), but he does offer many examples, and it makes for an interesting, if oddly contentious, final chapter (in fact, I suspect he could write a whole 'nuther controversial book based on the ideas expressed in this chapter -- the chapter sticks out oddly from the rest of the book, though I think in his mind it was more of a natural conclusion that the book was always building towards).
So, I do recommend the Artstein offering (despite sometimes pedantic writing style, and the harsh ending), based on the second half historical discussion he delivers, and issues he will force you to think about.

On short notice, I asked Keith Devlin (via email) if he'd care to respond with any comment about Artstein's views -- I haven't heard anything back, but will add it here later if I do.


[ ==> housekeeping note: the usual Friday potpourri links here will, this week, begin appearing either late Friday or early Saturday (instead of early Friday) -- this is simply a practical change to better accommodate capture of Friday math posts that were showing up hours after my linkfest was being posted.]

Friday Grab-bag

This week's mathy selections:

1)  Been wantin' to catch up on your Babylonian math history? …well, Evelyn Lamb is right there for ya:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/2014/08/31/look-ma-no-zero/

2)  One of my favorites, James Grime, opened a brand-spanking new website recently (good stuff):
http://www.jamesgrime.com/

3)  Math, logic, Buddhism, and more from interview with Chris Mortensen here:
http://tinyurl.com/pdmnlp9

4)  Interesting guest post on Mathbabe this week from someone who is, ahem, a generation older than Mathbabe:
http://mathbabe.org/2014/09/03/guest-post-bring-back-the-slide-rule/

5)  Mathematics and gerrymandering:
http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fc-2014-08
(h/t to Steven Sltrogatz for this one)

6)  Statistician Andrew Gelman takes both Alan Turing and Daniel Kahneman to task:
http://tinyurl.com/mcq2wa2

7)  Mark Chu-Carroll finishes up his series on Gödel Incompleteness here:
http://www.goodmath.org/blog/2014/09/03/godel-part-4-the-payoff/

8) Back to "Mathbabe" who recounts the noisiness of student evaluations here:
http://mathbabe.org/2014/09/04/student-evaluations-very-noisy-data/

9)  I'm not sure that "sampling error" gets discussed enough, but here's a start:
http://learnandteachstatistics.wordpress.com/2014/09/04/sampling-and-non-sampling-error/

10)  Finally, probably worth noting (for any science-buff who's been living under a rock the past week) that xkcd's proprietor Randall Munroe's new book, "What If?" is now out and getting fab reviews:
http://tinyurl.com/ohkuakh

(and be sure to check out the blog "meme" I've casually pitched out to all math bloggers over at Math-Frolic...)

Robin Williams Redux... (background of a tweet)

Now for something completely different (for MathTango)…

I've written before how much I admire Cathy O'Neil's keen ability to touch on varying topics over at her blog. Despite coming from a mathematics academic background and titling her blog "Mathbabe," Cathy writes on a wide range of topics that rattle around in her head. So I'll sorta take that cue today to veer off and relate an odd, completely NON-mathy episode from my weekend…

I tweet under some different accounts, but lay low on Twitter, and neither expect nor have many of my tweets re-tweeted.  Saturday I posted a simple tweet linking to someone else's tweet about Robin Williams, which I thought was interesting, then went on about my way....

(the original tweet I was re-tweeting here): https://twitter.com/JessieJessup/status/505463065089830912/photo/1 which included this commentary:

When I returned five hours later, the tweet, to my astonishment, had taken on an incredible life of its own. By the following day the response blew me away! (eventually almost 6000 retweets). Clearly, Robin Williams is beloved, and concern over mental health issues touch a nerve for lots of folks in this country!  Most people seemed positive about the passage above, and quite sure of what it said (often, the response was along the lines of, 'YES! this needs to be said more often').

SO, here's the weird thing! -- I wasn't at all sure in my own mind, what exactly the above anonymous poster was trying to say!? I just thought it was an interesting take, but with two completely opposite interpretations possible, so am asking now for any clarification anyone may choose to offer.
Here were my two interpretations:

1) on the first quick read I thought the individual was noting how weak and inadequate our mental health system is, because here was Robin Williams, who did everything right (accessing the system) and yet stiiiiill killed himself at age 63.

BUT, upon further readings (and some of the Twitter comments) I concluded, that actually the writer was saying, just the opposite:

2) that this is an instance where the system DID WORK, because Robin DID access the system, got help, and we had him around, as a highly successful, productive individual, for decades longer than we might have IF the system had failed.

In short, I think the writer is saying that despite how things look and feel, Robin's case is more a success story than a tragedy, and needs to be viewed that way… BUT, I'm still not completely certain!??? (or maybe there's a more-nuanced in-between interpretation?).
(I should quickly add that another clearer, less ambiguous message the writer conveys is that mental illness still unfortunately carries a stigma associated with it that other long-term illnesses do not have.) 

Thoughts from others?....

Friday Wrap-up

Another week from the world of math:

1)  Article touting the role of rote memorization in early math education:
http://tinyurl.com/lj759wd

2)  Fawn Nguyen describes the beginning of her classroom school year, as perhaps only she can:
http://fawnnguyen.com/first-two-days-school/

3)  LA Times op-ed on the gender-gap in mathematics:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-su-women-in-mathematics-20140826-story.html

4)  Of sheepdogs, herding, and mathematics:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28936251

5)  For some reason I've never much cared for Sudoku but do enjoy Ken-Ken, and apparently someone finds the latter useful as a classroom tool as well:
http://www.mrlsmath.com/free-teaching-tool-kenken-classroom/ 

6)  Evelyn Lamb promotes proofs by contradiction this week at "Roots of Unity":
http://tinyurl.com/p7dogqr 

7)  Week wouldn't feel complete without linking to at least one Common Core-related post:
http://www.mathforgrownups.com/common-core-common-sense-myths-about-the-standards-part-4/

8)  And in the more-physics-than-math category I'll toss in another fascinating read from Natalie Wolchover and Quanta Magazine on recently discovered "tetra quarks" (particle physics just goes on and on and on!):
http://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140827-quark-quartet-fuels-quantum-feud/

9)  Lastly, I'll re-cite a couple of Math-Frolic posts from the end of last week for any who missed them, because I thought the short video "Prime Verite" was cool (and it involves the Freeman Dyson/Hugh Montgomery interaction I've referenced before):
http://math-frolic.blogspot.com/2014/08/short-film-about-prime-numbers.html

…and the James Tanton video from the day before the above relates to the same notion:
http://math-frolic.blogspot.com/2014/08/epiphanies.html

Another Friday Collection

From this week's wonderful world of math:

1)  Shortly, after last week's potpourri came out the 113th Carnival of Mathematics went up; if by any chance you missed it, a lot more mathy links there:
http://www.walkingrandomly.com/?p=5537

2)  I've referenced this research before, but just last week NPR covered findings that indicate winners of the Fields Medal (and other prizes) actually lowers one's future professional productivity:
http://www.npr.org/2014/08/18/341283394/how-does-winning-fields-medal-effect-mathematicians-productivity

3)  More Deborah Mayo on p-values:
http://errorstatistics.com/2014/08/17/are-p-values-error-probabilities-installment-1/

4)   A post from the always-thoughtful mathematician Robert Talbert (on goals):
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2014/08/18/the-four-things-i-am-really-working-on-this-semester/

5)  In a 'good news' story, the first five winners of the "Breakthrough Prize" for mathematics have agreed to donate a portion of their awards to support math graduate students in the developing world:
https://breakthroughprize.org/?controller=Page&action=news&news_id=19

6)  Peter Woit reports from a conference with a focus on number theory relating to unification in physics:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=7114

7)  Much of the recent ICM conference in Seoul has now been uploaded to YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/user/ICM2014VOD/feed
Also, for the pros out there, Terry Tao has put up a blog post covering a finding announced at the conference ("Large Gaps Between Consecutive Prime Numbers"):
http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/large-gaps-between-consecutive-prime-numbers/


8)  The 3 Lawler boys work out the symmetries of a cube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN86FeO_Lmg&feature=youtu.be

9)  Nassim Taleb takes this stab at what probability is (pdf):
http://ow.ly/AAxAO 

10)  What better way to round out 10 offerings than with another excellent podcast from the "7th Avenue Project," this time with Jordan Ellenberg (make time for this if you can; it's 67 mins.):
https://soundcloud.com/7th-avenue-project/jordan-ellenberg-radio-interview-how-not-to-be-wrong 
(h/t again to Dr. Noson Yanofsky for pointing me to this)

Friday Bonanza

ICYMthem:

1)  Fun li'l anecdote about topologist Egbert Rudolf van Kampen from MathOverflow.net last week:
http://mathoverflow.net/questions/178104/a-topologist-is-not-a-mathematician-a-small-question

2)  New popular statistics (…I know, that sounds like an oxymoron! ;-)) book out from Gary Smith, "Standard Deviations":
http://tinyurl.com/poefeew
(haven't read it, but it's from a professor at my alma mater, so oughta be good)

3)  Another nice geometry puzzle from Presh Talwalkar this week:
http://tinyurl.com/m6pefvp

4)  Thoughts on problem-solving from Mike Lawler:
http://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/problem-solving/

5)  Not as much 'meat' here as I'd like, but still happy to see "recursion" (one of my favorite topics) wiggle its way into the popular press:
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/08/12/to-infinity-and-beyond/

6)  A little something from Vanderbilt on learning math and cognitive development:
http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2014/08/math-teaching/

7)  Again, Common Core; this time, division of fractions:
http://tinyurl.com/mnwqyu4

8)  In the math-editorial genre, Doron Zeilberger is characteristically annoyed with something… and this time it's Max Tegmark:
http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion138.html

9)  Meanwhile, Cathy O'Neil points us to a new information/assistance site, stemforums.com, that many may find useful:
http://tinyurl.com/m3qu2da

10)  Just notified that Alfred Posamentier and Ingmar Lehmann have a new book out, "Mathematical Curiosities" -- I feel fairly safe in predicting, it's GOOOD!:
http://tinyurl.com/o4glt93

11)  Will close out with a simple, fun Martin Gardner riddle tweeted by @WWMGT this week ;-):

"A bus leaves M for T at noon. An hour later a cyclist leaves T for M, moving slower. When bus and bike meet, which will be further from M?"


==> On a sidenote, CONGRATULATIONS to Numberphile for reaching 1 million subscribers on YouTube this past week… pretty impressive for a math site (and well-deserved)!!!
https://www.youtube.com/user/numberphile

Friday Potpourri

Another week's-worth of schtuff:

1)  Sue VanHattum has started a new "Math Mama's Gazette" for students and teachers. First issue here:
http://mathmamawrites.blogspot.com/2014/08/math-mamas-gazette-issue-number-one.html

2)  Stephen Stigler's 7 pillars of statistics:
http://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2014/08/05/stiglers-seven-pillars-of-statistical-wisdom/

3)  The fifth run of Keith Devlin's "Introduction to Mathematical Thinking" (10-week) MOOC course begins around end of September:
https://www.coursera.org/course/maththink

4)  A follow-up to last year's claimed proof for the Millennium Prize Navier-Stokes equations (now being re-worked):
http://tinyurl.com/ohm44q9

5)  No doubt, inevitable, a "Common Core Math For Parents For Dummies" is now on the way:
http://christopherdanielson.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/news-a-new-project/

6)  Frequentist and Bayesian interpretations of statistics (side-by-side):
http://www.workinginuncertainty.co.uk/probtheory_axioms.shtml

7)  Mike Lawler offers this follow-up take to a Keith Devlin blog piece:
http://tinyurl.com/leffaq5

8)  Popular science writer Carl Zimmer ventures into the land of statistics with a piece for Nautilus on the 'null hypothesis' (interestingly placed under the heading of, "Epistemology," and using Bigfoot as a working example):
http://nautil.us/issue/16/nothingness/why-we-cant-rule-out-bigfoot 

9)  And for those who just like to play with crunched numbers, here's an oddball look at taxi-driver tipping in NY City:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-07/tipping-taxi-drivers-data-analysis-cant-explain-these-puzzles

10)  Lastly, not math, but I'll plug a small volume I just finished and enjoyed: "The Universe" edited by John Brockman. I assume a number of readers here, fancy, as I do, reading popular cosmology/physics books, though I find few I can wholeheartedly endorse for lay readers. This volume though is a wonderful compendium of many different thinkers ranging over a variety of topics/debates within cosmology, and very readable -- if you're familiar with the sorts of compendiums Brockman puts out, then you already know that you do or don't enjoy this sort of thing. Some of the essays are already dated a bit, but still a splendid collection, if this is an area you have some familiarity with.

Friday Potpourri

In case you missed 'em:

1)  Who doesn't love the Mandelbrot Set. As if enough hasn't already been written/presented about it on the Web, Numberphile comes along with another GREAT instructive piece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGMRB4O922I&feature=youtu.be

2)  An extensive guide (pdf) for teaching secondary-level mathematics from a Brit educator:
http://education.lms.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/DMG_6_no_1_2014.pdf

3)  It's reported that reclusive math genius Gregori Perelman and his mother have left their digs in Russia for a small town in Sweden (where he can continue to turn down awards for his math work):
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/eccentric-math-genius-ditches-russia-for-sweden/504076.html

4)  Tackling math, the James Tanton way:
http://headinside.blogspot.com/2014/07/tackle-that-math-problem.html

5)   Film based on the life of Ramanujan going into production first week of August in UK:
http://tinyurl.com/klzfnzn

6)   Some student math favorites from Dan Anderson (h/t to Mike Lawler for calling attention to this):
http://blog.recursiveprocess.com/2014/07/29/my-favorite-for-the-students/

7)  Likely useful for teachers: a new "open curriculum" site for lessons supportive of Common Core (h/t to Fawn Nguyen):
http://opencurriculum.org/browse/common-core/mathematics/

8)  A brand new, and once again, great, great column this morning from Keith Devlin, concerning people's misconception of mathematics, while continuing his crusade for "mathematical thinking," and against some of the "off-the-wall" parental conclusions regarding Common Core (he gives a big hat tip to Jordan Ellenberg as well). This is required weekend reading ;-) :
http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2014/08/most-math-problems-do-not-have-unique.html

9) Lastly, if you want a mental workout, here is Richard Wiseman's puzzle for this Friday:
"Can you create a 10-digit number, where the first digit is how many zeros in the number, the second digit is how many 1s in the number etc. until the tenth digit which is how many 9s in the number?"