Donald J. Trumpster… if a meteor doesn’t propitiously hit us first, the 45th President of the U.S.

Math-Frolic Interview (of sorts) #39

Haven’t done an interview here for awhile so I thought, what could be more relevant and timely than an interview with our new incoming U.S. President, who we should all get to know better! So, as a public service, without further adieu:

1)  Mr. President-elect (…and forgive me if I almost choke every time I say that), this is a math blog, so let me begin by asking what your background in mathematics was like?

Well, I can’t say I really ever attended much to math; I mean the whole numbers thing just never made much sense to me. Now if you put dollar signs in front of those numbers then I did like to play with them and move them around a bit, but in general I always wondered, “When, pray tell, will I, Donald J. Trump, ever use this?”

2)  I see, well that’s actually something we still hear a lot from math students these days and there are ongoing efforts to improve math education throughout this country. Do you have any thoughts on current reforms?

Ahhh yes, I know it well, Common Crap as I call it; my own 10-yr.-old son brings home the goofiest problems you ever saw from this new flooozy math. Yes, I’ll be scrapping it immediately my first day in office. It’ll be a two-fer… ObamaCare & Common Crap into the trashbin together with a bigly bonfire. (And on Day 2, by the way, we'll crush ISIS.)

3) Uhh-huhh, well what do you propose to offer in its place, sir, because math education is increasingly important in today's world?

I’m a back-to-basics sorta guy… drills, LOTS of drills, speed drills, memory drills, test drills, drill drills, 6-7 hrs-a-day, exercise those little brains; maybe bring back Roman numerals too! And the slide rule, hey, whatever happened to the slide rule!?

4)  Maybe we should move on to another topic. You’re a lifelong businessman, which is not the usual path to the American Presidency; in fact you’re the first person ever to win the presidency with no political or military experience. Care to comment?

Is America a GREAT country or what! …wait, no, er, uhh, I take that back, right now America is a rotten, stinkin' country because of that Kenyan dude, but I will make it GREAT again! Presidents are deal makers — that’s all! I’m a dealmaker extraordinaire, the best the world has ever seen… perfect match for the job. Soon the Chinese will be eating out of my big hands.

5)  Some people say you don't have the temperament or thoughtfulness to be President. What do you say to them?

Eat my shorts, peasants!

6)  What books have you found inspiring in your life?

well, truthfully I don’t read a lot… words are, you know, kinda boring and time-consuming, but I did always have a certain fondness for Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

7)  Well then, maybe certain TV shows or movies have touched you?

oh yes, too many to mention, but including “Married With Children,” “Talladega Nights,” “West Wing,” and of course ANYthing with Jennifer Aniston in it.

8)  Would you call yourself a deeply-religious man, and do you read the Bible much?

Let’s just say I’m truly a strong believer in begatting, as often and as long as possible.

9)  You said you were going to “drain the swamp” in Washington, but you seem to be filling all key positions with standard, white, insider Washington old-timers?

Yes.

10)  People have been surprised though at some of the folks you’ve interviewed for positions; people who said verrrry harsh things about you (and you about them) on the campaign trail.

Well, frankly so many people are refusing to serve in my Administration that I have to reach to the bottom of the barrel to fill some slots.

11)  Will you ever release your tax returns to the American public?

I promise that if I’m lucky enough to serve out four terms as your beloved President I WILL make my tax returns public to all. Next question...

12)  When you’re not playing golf or counting gold coins what do you enjoy doing just for fun?

ohhh, gee so many things… but I can’t mention them on a family-oriented blog like this (the press would have a field day).

13)  Lastly, anything else you'd want to say to an audience of math readers?

Just a kindly reminder to Keith Devlin and Ed Frenkel that I haven't ruled out waterboarding.

Well, President-elect (cough, hack, choke, arghhh…) it’s been a joy to chat with you today and get to know you a little better.

My pleasure, but next time let’s do this in a locker room somewhere, so I can give you the real answers.

------------------------------------------------

And if you’re on Twitter and want to continue to follow the future of our new esteemed leader, I recommend you follow the #TheResistance hashtag.

Potpourri, Such As It Is...

Well, I've been too distracted by the ongoing unraveling of democracy this week 8-((( to curate much, so this is all I got for ya (sorry, I'll try to do a little better next week, BELIEVE ME):

1)  Deborah Mayo reviews some of the factors affecting the recent Presidential pre-election polling:

https://errorstatistics.com/2016/11/12/taking-errors-seriously-in-forecasting-elections/

2) And another statistician Allen Downey did some post-analysis here:

http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2016/11/why-are-we-so-surprised.html

3)  Mike Lawler is starting a "Weapons of Math Destruction" (Cathy O'Neil's book) study group on Facebook:

https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2016/11/16/weapons-of-math-destruction-study-group/

4)  Michael Lewis on Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (from his newest book):

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/decision-science-daniel-kahneman-amos-tversky

5)  Interesting puzzle from Numberphile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49KvZrioFB0

[also, hope everyone has seen my favorite piece of the week, from James Propp, cited yesterday over at Math-Frolic.]

Potpourri, For A Week That May Live In Infamy....

What a week!... Some folks warned months ago that Donald Trump would be elected President WHEN the Chicago Cubs won a World Series (meaning, at the time, when Hell froze over!). Anyway, a quick request if anyone cares to take me up on it:

There's been a lot of discussion/criticism of prior polling since the election outcome... often proclaiming the polls surprisingly inaccurate. In fact though, as best I can tell (and others have noted), IF you take into account margin-of-error, the polls were pretty darn on-the-mark!... it was THEIR INTERPRETATION by press pundits and others that was off-base and poorly-understood.
In any event, I'm curious to hear, from anyone involved who can speak to it, just how, representative, randomized national/state polls are even conducted these days when such a reduced percentage of the population have landlines (which I presume were the staple for most polling in the past). Just what are the basic procedures now for attaining a random, but representative sample?
If you can answer that in a few lines in the comments great, OR, if someone would like to write something up as a 'guest post' here about the mechanics and difficulties of current polling methods, let me know what you have in mind [sheckyr at a gmail account]; I'd be interested.

----------------------------------------------------

Meanwhile, this week's math-mix:

1)  Looks like the folks over at "DataGenetics" may have had a little too much time on their hands one day ;-):
 http://datagenetics.com/blog/november12016/index.html

2)  A post on pseudoscience and the 'garden of forking paths' from Scott Alexander for the tinfoil-hat crowd:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/05/the-pyramid-and-the-garden/

3)  Mathologer videos are always worthwhile, and the latest is no exception:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixduANVe0gg

4)  The gender bias in math journals:

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/11/math-women/506417/

5)  Simon Singh reviews Alex Bellos' latest:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/06/can-you-solve-my-problems-alex-bellos-review-puzzles-anthology-history

...and if you like 'hat' problems Alex had this good Monday workout for you:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/nov/07/can-you-solve-it-would-you-get-into-oxbridge

...and still more examples from his book:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/nov/09/puzzles-maths-brainteasers-solve-classics

6)  Ben Orlin's latest:

https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/11/09/pick-a-truly-random-number/

7)  John McGowan considers Facebook, algorithms, echo chambers, fake news, and the election:
http://math-blog.com/did-facebooks-news-feed-algorithm-elect-donald-trump/

8)  And the latest from Evelyn Lamb, more on Ramsey Theory:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/moores-law-and-ramsey-numbers/

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

1)  Yanis Varoufakis on capitalism and democracy, from TED Radio Hour:

http://www.npr.org/2016/11/04/500126088/is-capitalism-compatible-with-democracy

2)  "Squirrel Cop" was one of those classic (and hysterical) "This American Life" episodes (from 2013). They re-ran it last weekend:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/510/fiasco?act=3

------------------------------------------

ADDENDUM: No one has yet offered to do a guest post, but a reader did send me a few pertinent links about election polling, the two most helpful being these:

http://www.aapor.org/Education-Resources/Election-Polling-Resources/Sampling-Methods-for-Political-Polling.aspx

http://www.pewresearch.org/methodology/u-s-survey-research/election-polling/

Seems clear that current methods/options for polling are especially vulnerable to a variety of problems. In fact I’m even more impressed now with someone like Nate Silver’s ability to ‘massage’ or tweak meta-poll data to attain the level of accuracy he does!

What Is The Title Of This Post?

Jim Propp will probably do a post on self-referential sentences in the middle of this month. His take should be intriguing (and he's posted self-referential "aptitude" tests before)… Doug Hofstadter and Noam Chomsky are among those who think recursion/self-reference are defining attributes of human thinking and brain operation. Interesting that even discussing 'self-reference' is itself, self-referential. ;)

Anyway, I don't think I'll steal Jim's thunder (but maybe can prick readers’ interest in the topic), if I re-run some of the things I've posted before on the topic.
Starting with this post from a year ago:

*****************************************

"This sentence contains ten words, eighteen syllables, and sixty-four letters." (from J. vos Post)

While researching the above sentence I came across this entertaining list of 150+ recursive or self-referential sentences:

http://www2.vo.lu/homepages/phahn/humor/self_ref.htm

In a related note, earlier this week Futility Closet posted about a new pangram or autogram in Lee Sallows' tradition:

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/11/16/a-new-pangram/

And lastly, this is the final sentence of this particular post, which would appear to end with the word, hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.**

*****************************************
  ** yes, that's a real word

Meanwhile, there are plenty more self-referential sentences at these pages:

http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/selfref.html

http://www.cut-the-knot.org/selfreference/

And over five yrs ago I ran this just-for-fun post (entitled: "There is no title for this post."):

*****************************************

This is the first sentence of the post titled, 'There is no title for this post.' This appears to be the sentence that follows sentence #1 of that post. This is the sentence following the previous sentence, but preceding the next sentence. This is the next sentence... or is it? Apparently this is sentence #5. This is the sentence you just finished reading. The last sentence of this post will come at the end. Thus, this is NOT the last sentence of this post. It is untrue that the prior sentence was false. This sentence begins with the word "this," followed by the word "sentence," followed by the word "begins," followed by the word "with," followed by the word "the," followed by the word "word," ...AND also ends with the word "word." And this is the sentence that informs you that the very next sentence is the final sentence of this post. This is the last sentence of the post, but why oh why does it end with a question-mark?

*****************************************

We'll end with more humor, starting with a well-known, geeky aphorism:

    "In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion."

...which reminds me in turn of one of mathematicians' favorite jokes:

Q:  What does the "B" in "Benoit B. Mandelbrot" stand for?

A:  Benoit B. Mandelbrot

Then, there is this thoughtful quote that I've used before:

"If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motion of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to believe that my beliefs are true... and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."

--- J.B.S. Haldane, "Possible Worlds" (1927)

In a slightly similar vein, this famous refrain out of AI:

"If the brain were so simple that we could understand it, then we would be so simple that we couldn't."

There is always xkcd's classic treatment of self-reference:

And finally, this bit of parody-absurdity:

I'm guessing Jim will be taking a more technical, deeper, perhaps, set-theory approach to self-reference (so apologize if I'm stepping on any humorous bits he's employing)... you can bet his take will be good!

Some Remnants From the Week

1)  A little history of 'Question Number 6' from a 1988 Math Olympiad (h/t Egan Chernoff):

http://www.sciencealert.com/the-legend-of-question-six-one-of-the-hardest-maths-problems-ever

2)  Colm Mulcahy reviews Ken Ono's 'Ramanujan' volume:

http://cardcolm.org/Pics/2016_11%20Horizons%20Mulcahy.pdf

...also from Colm this nice tribute to George Boole (on the occasion of his 200th birthday this week):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colm-mulcahy/george-boole_b_8447686.html

3)  RJ Lipton and KW Regan's fun post for Halloween:

https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2016/10/31/halloween-math-style/

4)  Samantha Schumacher with a wonderful post about a recent White House panel on 'math and the movies':

https://socialmathematics.net/2016/11/01/math-and-movies-white-house-panel/

5)  Rotten-to-the-core? Andrew Gelman again on social science research:

http://andrewgelman.com/2016/11/01/rotten-all-the-way-through/

6)  New puzzle book on the way from Alex Bellos (available in UK now, not 'til next year in U.S.):
http://amzn.to/2egWTPl

7)  Lot of fun geometry over several posts from Mike Lawler this week:

https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com

...speaking of geometry, an area problem from "Solve My Maths" this week:

https://solvemymaths.com/2016/11/02/area-problem-25/

...and from "Maths By a Girl" still more interesting geometry:
https://mathsbyagirl.wordpress.com/2016/11/03/unsolved-problems-part-i/

8)  Some interesting musing (about scientific progress) here from Lance Fortnow (and commenters) toward end of week:
http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2016/11/do-we-still-need-great-minds.html

9)  And I departed entirely from math earlier in the week to talk of STEM and politics (or should I say demagoguery):

https://math-frolic.blogspot.com/2016/10/vote-like-future-and-that-of-science.html

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

1)  A slight cautionary tale about one sort of genetic testing:
https://www.statnews.com/2016/11/03/genetic-testing-fitness-nutrition/

2)  NPR's TED Radio Hour replayed one of the most remarkable stories I've ever heard on the radio (have cited it here before); that of Daniel Kish, who taught himself a sort of human sonar (that he teaches to others) to "adapt" to his blindness:

http://www.npr.org/2015/11/20/455906507/how-can-you-see-without-seeing

Weekly Potpourri

1)  Some discussion over at Quora re: specialization in mathematics:

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-still-possible-for-a-mathematician-to-be-competent-in-most-of-the-areas-or-fields-of-mathematics

2)  Nice list of 6 easy-to-state, very-difficult-to-solve math problems:

http://www.sciencealert.com/6-of-the-simplest-maths-problem-that-no-one-can-solve

3)  Evelyn Lamb introduces "metallic means" beyond the golden mean, in this fun, tidbit-full post:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/meet-the-metallic-means/

...also from Dr. Lamb, this moving review of the book, "Hidden Figures":

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/review-hidden-figures/

4)  Gender, math, collaboration etc. (longread; h/t Jim Propp):

https://ilaba.wordpress.com/2016/10/23/a-seminar-room-of-our-own/

5)  Jo Boaler's overview of American math education:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-math-education-in-the-u-s-doesn-t-add-up/

6)  Peter Woit has placed a free pdf copy of the final draft of his latest book (on quantum theory and mathematics) on the Web here (due out next year):

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/QM/qmbook.pdf

7)  Especially for teachers, new from Fawn Nguyen, wise and thoughtful as always:
http://fawnnguyen.com/good-enough-for-now-curriculum/

8)  And if you need still more math potpourri:

a) the new (139th) "Carnival of Mathematics" now posted:

http://gonitsora.com/carnival-of-mathematics-139/

b) and the new 101st "Math Teachers At Play" carnival as well:

http://www.arithmophobianomore.com/math-teachers-play-blog-carnival-101/

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

1)  Of bongos and physics...  Futility Closet tweeted out one of its older posts this week, putting some classic Richard Feynman on display:

https://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/08/28/higher-things-2/

2)  In the last couple years I've replaced a tennis habit with a pickleball addiction. If you happen to be similarly addicted I've added a few items (t-shirts & bumperstickers) to my Zazzle store:

http://tinyurl.com/zd6p7mx

http://tinyurl.com/zsttl5p

http://tinyurl.com/z49atnu

http://tinyurl.com/glpvdf2

Some Miscellany From the Week

1)  This week The Aperiodical tweeted out that, "A little birdy tells us that Mochizuki's abc conjecture proof will be accepted into a journal "in the next few months". Hope it's not in The Journal of Irreproducible Results ;-)

Seriously, how does a journal even have room for such a proof, or do I assume they print summary and commentary, and give a digital link to the actual paper proof?

2)  Short Thomas Lumley piece on brute force in 'linguistics' computation (with interesting quote from Geoffrey Pullum):

http://www.statschat.org.nz/2016/10/20/brute-force-and-ignorance-2/

3)   "Why Science Needs the Humanities" from John McGowan here:

http://experimentalmath.org/2016/10/why-science-needs-the-humanities/

4)  Fantastic followup on negative numbers from James Propp:

https://mathenchant.wordpress.com/2016/10/16/going-negative-part-2/

(and next month he'll be writing about self-referential sentences, one of my favorite topics)

5)  Andrew Gelman complains (I think rightfully) about Dan Gilbert's prior "inane" or "ridiculous" defense of social psychology's replication rate:

http://andrewgelman.com/2016/10/20/we-have-a-ways-to-go-in-communicating-the-replication-crisis/

6)  I'm not one of them... BUT, if you're a fan of philosopher Alain Badiou, worth noting he has a new volume out, "In Praise of Mathematics":

http://amzn.to/2eyDkUg

7)  Wendy Menard encourages teachers to blog, and links to a lot of her own favorite math education resources/blogs here:
http://www.mathforamerica.org/news/enrich-and-enhance-your-professionalism-through-blogging

8)  Two of my loves in life are math and birds, so, hey, how could I resist citing a blog-post that combines the two:

http://www.statschat.org.nz/2016/10/17/vote-takahe-for-bird-of-the-year/

9)  And there's always more weekly math-and-learning fare at Mike's Math Page:

https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com

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

1)  From last week's TED Radio Hour this (re-run) segment of Margaret Heffernan talking about the nature of work:

http://www.npr.org/2015/10/02/443412777/is-the-professional-pecking-order-doing-more-harm-than-good

2)  And this is just one of my all-time favorite This American Life episodes ("The Family That Flees Together, Trees Together"), about the Jarvis family. It goes all the way back to 2001, and I find most people either missed it, or have forgotten it:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/177/american-limbo?act=1#play

Potpourri

From the past week:

1)  Presh Talwalkar offers up a semi-classic logic problem:

http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2016/10/09/the-mind-twisting-logical-list-riddle-sunday-puzzle/

2)  Tadashi returns to Numberphile with some shoelace knotology:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY69D3PSmIk

3)  There's a new 'Gathering For Gardner' ("Celebration of Mind") rapidly approaching  ~Oct. 21, Martin Gardner's birthday:

http://www.celebrationofmind.org/wordpress_site/?page_id=113

4)  Ben Orlin touched a nerve when he argues in favor of public over private education this week:

https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/10/12/why-competitive-marketplaces-are-an-awkward-fit-for-education/

5)  Great Quanta longread (from 4 great writers) on four math and science teachers:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161011-math-science-teachers/

6)  More p-value discussion:

https://aeon.co/essays/it-s-time-for-science-to-abandon-the-term-statistically-significant

...and a more technical piece:

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/fullarticle/2566171

7)  Another mathematician reporting that the math that turns so many off in school, is NOT real math:

http://ow.ly/dM5o3056pYT

8)  More on algorithms and big data:

https://theconversation.com/how-mathematics-can-fight-the-abuse-of-big-data-algorithms-66065

9)  The importance of mathematics, past and future, via Keith Devlin:

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2016/10/it-was-twenty-years-ago-today.html

10)  New (pricey) book for serious logicians/philosophers-of-math, "Gödel's Disjunction":

http://amzn.to/2dKnY0D

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

1)  For anyone deeply-entrenched in linguistics, this long David Berlinski piece on Chomskyean fare:

http://inference-review.com/article/the-recovery-of-case

2)  It's gone viral so am sure you've already seen it, but that won't stop me from including such a great song put to great use:

[...blogging may continue to be light next several weeks, while I watch the U.S. Presidential campaign in utter disbelief!]

A Few Reads From the Week

ICYM any of these:

1)  Last week there were several tributes to Richard Guy's first 100 years with us... including this piece from Colm Mulcahy:

http://cardcolm-maa.blogspot.com/2016/09/richard-k-guy-turns-100.html

...and this one from Siobhan Roberts:

http://nautil.us/blog/an-infinitely-rich-mathematician-turns-100

2)  "Mathematics Rising" ponders infinity:

http://mathrising.com/?p=1413

3)  Another of Evelyn Lamb's favorite spaces, Borromean Rings:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/a-few-of-my-favorite-spaces-borromean-rings/

4)  A new issue of the wonderful Chalkdust Magazine:

http://chalkdustmagazine.com/read/issue-04/

5)  Interesting piece on how blind people perceive dimensions and number:

http://nautil.us/blog/why-blind-people-are-better-at-math

6)  Randy Weiner and Keith Devlin (BrainQuake co-founders) held a Quora Q & A this week about math-learning video games:

https://www.quora.com/session/BrainQuake/1

...and, in the first of a series, Quanta Magazine reports on the new trend in math and science education:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161005-commoncore-math-ngss-science-education/

7)  I see Gary Smith, whose book "Standard Deviations" I really enjoyed from a couple years back, has a new volume out, "What the Luck." I'm guessing, sight unseen, that it's another great popular read:
http://amzn.to/2dPOAiU

8)  The latest from Erica Klarreich in Quanta Magazine:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161006-new-algorithm-solves-cake-cutting-problem/

9)  And the latest mind-blower from Numberphile:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k1jegU4Wb4

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

1)  From a recent RadioLab show (though possibly a re-run?), another segment playing to my interest in language and psycholinguistics:

http://www.radiolab.org/story/96063-searching-clues/

2)  Krista Tippett's "On Being" show on NPR this week is a replay of an interview with physicist/author Leonard Mlodinow:
http://www.onbeing.org/program/leonard-mlodinow-randomness-and-choice/6295