Spooky Potpourri

...well, not really, just another big, diverse mix this week:

1)  "Skewes Number" is reviewed by James Grime of Numberphile:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lihh_lMmcDw&feature=youtu.be

2)  Evelyn Lamb on the Fano plane, "the smallest interesting space":
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/a-few-of-my-favorite-spaces-the-fano-plane/

3)  In a brief post, one sixth-grade teacher bemoans an experience I suspect many face as a result of the furor over Common Core:
http://nathankraft.blogspot.com/2015/10/why-common-core-why.html

4)  Speaking of Common Core, another piece (via Medium) here:
https://medium.com/i-math/common-core-math-is-not-the-enemy-c05b68f46b3e#.45noae4t6

5)  Meanwhile, an elementary teacher utilizes McDonald's in the classroom:
http://exit10a.blogspot.com/2015/10/this-ones-for-robert.html

6)  Specifically for chess fans, this interesting post from Jason Rosenhouse:
http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2015/10/26/sunday-chess-problem-51/

7)  Mathematics in neuroscience (neuro-geometry? ;-) ..."Clique topology" applied to neuronal activity:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151019183005.htm
and http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.06172

8)  A little history of Galois and group theory from plus Magazine:
https://plus.maths.org/content/stubborn-equations

9)  I'm sick, sick, sick of the topic... but, since others are not... a couple more pieces on "the hot hand" this week (psssst... it exists):

http://tinyurl.com/o6a8zmh  (J. Ellenberg)
http://tinyurl.com/ousspq8  (NY Times)

10)  The latest (91st) "Math Teachers At Play" blog carnival posted here:
http://mathmamawrites.blogspot.com/2015/10/math-teachers-at-play-91.html

11)  Another piece on Asian rote math learning vs. Australian non-rote approach:
https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-secret-to-being-good-at-maths-49222

12)  The latest book from Jo Boaler, "Mathematical Mindsets," is newly available:
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470894520.html

13)  Richard Elwes paid tribute to British mathematician Barry Cooper, who passed away this week:
http://richardelwes.co.uk/2015/10/28/barry-cooper-1943-2015/

14)  Another great tribute piece to Martin Gardner (who would've turned 101 this month) and some of his problems, from Colm Mulcahy:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/martin-gardner-at-101-it-s-as-not-so-easy-as-3-4-5/

15)  Gregory Chaitin on epistemology and metabiology:
http://inference-review.com/article/an-algorithmic-god

16)  Algorithmic flexibility, universal computing, natural/artificial sciences:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151027-the-physical-origin-of-universal-computing/

17)  Lastly, some math comic-relief, from Paul Rudnick of the New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/diagnostic-exam-do-you-have-math-anxiety


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

1)  Latest podcast from the always quirky, unpredictable, entertaining Futility Closet (who you can support through Patreon):
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/10/25/podcast-episode-79-one-square-inch-of-the-yukon/

2)  Michelle Feynman interviewed (podcast, ~20 mins.) about her new book, "The Quotable Feynman," on her famous father:
http://ia601506.us.archive.org/26/items/groks705/groks102115.mp3

That Was the Week That Was... in Math

The math mix:

1)  Latest "Carnival of Math" blog here:
http://blog.ifem.co.uk/carnival-of-mathematics-127/

2)  A Carl Zimmer piece giving a nice little statistical history lesson:
http://nautil.us/issue/16/nothingness/why-we-cant-rule-out-bigfoot

3)  George Johnson's NY Times piece on the "hot-hand fallacy":
http://tinyurl.com/ndstbp8
...and my own take at MathTango was here:
http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2015/10/hot-hand-you-betcha.html

4)  Samantha Oestreicher on the attraction of recreational mathematics (including mention of one my favorite books from the year, Jim Henle's "The Proof and the Pudding"):
http://socialmathematics.net/2015/10/19/recreational-math/

5)  The NY Times "Numberplay" puzzle this week highlights Ed Frenkel (and Gödel):
http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/19/frenkel-age-of-a-child/?_r=1

6)  William Briggs peddles his somewhat interesting, somewhat oddball, prospective statistics book/text to any publishers interested:
http://wmbriggs.com/post/17112/

7)  Another Futility Closet geometry puzzler:
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/10/22/whats-the-angle/

8)  This David Mumford post that I already connected to through Math-Frolic is worth a re-mention, it's such a fun read (on math tribes):
http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2015/MathBeautyBrain.html

9)  One of many recent articles on the NSA's ability to "break" digital encryption due to the re-use of "a handful" of large prime numbers:
http://bgr.com/2015/10/20/nsa-encryption-flaw-spy/

10)  Recent episode from "Scam School"... put on your thinking caps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY10Sm19rss

11)   If you read Evelyn Lamb's "Roots of Unity" blog (as I hope most readers here do), an online (15 min.) research survey is interested in getting your responses:
http://lsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0dIyegEdCzOFNxr

12)  New from Siobhan Roberts, in Nautilus, on Neil Sloane and his remarkable OEIS:
http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/how-to-build-a-search-engine-for-mathematics

13)  Just one of Mike Lawler's several posts this week, that covers a lot of ground:
https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/a-really-intersting-twitter-conversation-sparked-by-kate-nowak/

14)  Lastly, from the bizarro dept., a man who got seizures working on Sudoku puzzles:
http://time.com/4078049/seizure-sudoku-puzzles/


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

1)  As someone who never much cared for science fiction/fantasy (nor fiction in general) I enjoyed this piece reporting on a study showing children's preference for TRUE stories over fictional stories.  
The real world is so utterly fascinating unto itself (be it the evolution of flowers, the life cycle of praying mantises, the creation of stars/planets, the behavior of bonobos, and on and on and on) that I've never understood the preference for fiction and escapism! And maybe I'm not so alone in that predilection after all:
http://tinyurl.com/pucaxo4

2)  A guest post over at Mathbabe this week I particularly enjoyed (because I agree "we have no fucking clue..."), on 'cargo cult' brain science:
http://mathbabe.org/2015/10/20/guest-post-dirty-rant-about-the-human-brain-project/

Hot Hand... You Betcha!

via Reisio/WikimediaCommons

 
"Gödel's Lost Letter" tackled the "hot-hand fallacy" recently:

https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/is-the-hot-hand-fallacy-a-fallacy/

 I have to confess to tiring a bit of this whole debate: there IS such a thing as being 'in the groove' or 'in the zone' or 'on your game' or 'HAVING A HOT HAND' (IMHO) and everyone who has ever played basketball or tennis or golf or bowling or any number of other sports KNOWS it (there are times we ought not downplay people's personal experience in favor of slapping dry stats and randomness onto situations that are exceedingly difficult to analyze, and where uncontrolled variables abound -- reminds me of what is routinely done in epidemiology... don't get me started).

A lot depends on simply how you define "hot hand" and what units of time are considered... i.e., does someone have a hot-hand for a game, or for a 13-min. stretch of a game. And in the case of the basketball "hot-hand" the stats often look at 2-4 shots in a row to predict the next shot, when larger samples, probably 5-10 shots minimum, need to be considered, because the variables are so-o-o many -- also, if you make 4-5 layups in a row it probably means nothing; but if you repeatedly put in shots from the far corner, the 3-point-range, and while being double-teamed (i.e, lower-percentage shots) that begins to mean something, yet I've never seen "shot-type" or shot-circumstances taken into consideration.

Any athlete will have experienced that rare feeling when their health/nutrition/sleep/physiology/physical prowess/movement/mood/psychology/whatever all seem to coalesce to yield an excellent performance, where they can be depended upon, more than other teammates, for crucial plays. Not every instance that looks like a "hot-hand" of course, to the outside observer, may be one, but I'm a believer ;-) that it does exist on occasion (and am old enough to recall Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point effort in 1962, including a phenomenal 28 out of 32 free throws! And a 'hot' Michael Jordan's winning shot for the 1982 NCAA championship, or Christian Laettner's 1992 championship shot, and on and on).
I s'pose next the statisticians will try to tell me that Reggie Jackson was NOT really ever "Mr. October" for the NY Yankees! ;-)  DON'T even go there!!

Sports performance is clearly in part a function of skill and experience (and psychology), which can vary from day-to-day (even moment-to-moment) for a given individual. A 'hot-hand-like fallacy' is more likely to hold sway in something like gambling where outcomes are more strictly governed by "chance," not skill, and a perceived "streak" may not be real (even in gambling though, it is possible that tiny, almost imperceptible clues, trends, properties, signals, are picked up by the experienced gambler at times that raise his/her performance on certain games).

Anyway, while I'm merely banking on common sense here (admittedly, a dangerous medium), there are statisticians who have also found technical flaws with the 'hot-hand fallacy' argument (see Gelman, for example, here), and therefore speak of the 'fallacy of the hot-hand fallacy' to which, of course, their detractors can respond with the fallacy of the fallacy of the hot-hand fallacy... but then, I find their arguments fallacious.

Now, excuse me while I go shoot some baskets, while I'm feeling kinda hot (...under the collar).

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

ADDENDUM ==> the above post was written a few days back and pre-scheduled for Sunday-posting. Lo-and-behold, just yesterday, science writer George Johnson had a piece in the NY Times on, of all things, the hot-hand fallacy!:

http://tinyurl.com/ndstbp8

As indicated above I consider the "hot-hand fallacy" and "gambler's fallacy" two very different subjects and levels of complexity; referencing them together is mixing apples and oranges a bit (though I understand why both show up in such discussion).
Like most articles, this one fails to take into account the intrinsic oversimplifications of hot-hand analyses, and again treats the hot-hand as something spectators observe, rather than something an athlete 'feels' or experiences.
I wish this whole area would just move along now as not worthy of further exploration (...but am sure it won't).

Some Stuff From the Week In Math

The weekly mix:

1)  Quanta Magazine's latest monthly puzzle column:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151008-symmetry-math-curves-puzzle/

2)  Mathemagic fun from Futility Closet:
www.futilitycloset.com/2015/10/11/remainders/

3) ...and mathematicians via 3 Quarks Daily (h/t John Allen Paulos):
http://tinyurl.com/p6upg6t

4)  A little tidbit on the art of translation from Brian Hayes:
http://bit-player.org/2015/lost-in-translation

5)  ICYMI, "The Importance of Recreational Math" from the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/opinion/the-importance-of-recreational-math.html

6)  The Social Security number and identification:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-way-we-use-social-security-numbers-is-absurd/

7)  Andrew Gelman, once more on p-values:
http://andrewgelman.com/2015/10/13/what-do-you-learn-from-p-05-this-example-from-carl-morris-will-blow-your-mind/

8)  Ben Orlin's little round-faced friends question the meaning of counting:
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/10/14/counting-to-five-is-harder-than-you-think/

9)  "Denominator blindness"... I'd not heard the term before, but I like it... h/t to Cathy O'Neil for this Bloomberg article:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-14/don-t-be-blinded-by-big-scary-numbers

10)  Chaos, ecology, dynamic modeling:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151013-chaos-theory-and-ecology/

11)  Some upcoming awards, math, and other links via Peter Woit:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=8040

12)  Reminders that there is always good stuff at Mike's Math Page:
https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/
....and later on Friday afternoon, Presh Talwalkar does his own linkfest of picks from the week:
http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/

[p.s., on Sunday here at MathTango, I'll rant about the "hot-hand fallacy."]


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

1)  I always enjoy reading John Brockman's anthologies of science essays centered around some single question. His latest, "What To Think About Machines That Think" is no exception, with close to 200 contributors (I think it's his longest volume in the series):
http://edge.org/annual-question/what-do-you-think-about-machines-that-think

2)  With Halloween around the corner, perhaps a fine time to check in with Henri Le Chat:

Of Myths and Madness (...and Math)

In a wonderful post last weekend  Peter Rowlett talks about popular math myths and inaccuracies:
http://aperiodical.com/2015/10/mathematical-myths-legends-and-inaccuracies-some-examples/

My favorite, of those cited, is the idea of Cantor being driven mad by the Continuum Hypothesis, which is followed up on by Richard Zach here:
https://www.ucalgary.ca/rzach/blog/2009/09/logic-and-madness.html

While I'd certainly agree that the Continuum Hypothesis, by itself, didn't drive Cantor mad, it's easy to imagine his obsessive-grappling with the entire mind-blowing subject of infinity as an ingredient in the process.
Zach actually touches on the broader issue of whether contemplating deep logical paradoxes perhaps leads to mental breakdowns, with other examples besides Cantor. The matter sometimes seems reminiscent of the Bible's tale of the Tower of Babel, where God thwarts the tower-builders from entering his domain by bestowing them with different languages, frustrating communication.
So too several mathematicians who thought they were approaching the 'mind of God' with their exploration of deep logical quandaries, instead were thwarted and unable to complete the task at-hand. The human brain, both its capabilities and limits, is endlessly fascinating.

Such ideas even bleed over into the whole Platonist/non-Platonist debate in math. Is our brain simply creating as we go along, the mathematics that seems to work in our particular universe... or are we discovering the immutable essence of all there is (as Max Tegmark argues, is the universe composed entirely of nothing-but mathematics).  And if our brains are indeed approaching that latter Platonic realm, then is there ultimately a price paid for doing so? If we stare at the sun... we go blind. What happens when we contemplate the deepest, most profound reaches of mathematics (or are we merely manipulating tautologies in our brain)? Like the statement, "This sentence is false," does the recursion of mathematically-thinking about mathematics, at the highest levels, eventually result in an endless loop of no escape? Are language and logic, impediments (instead of facilitators), to endless breakthroughs?

[Worth noting that the vast majority of working mathematicians do NOT end up in asylums, nor under psychiatric care, even if some of the most interesting and famous genius-level mathematicians of the past do fall into that category.]

Anyway, go read the other diverse myths/legends Rowlett serves up for debunking.

Friday Potpourri Served Up

Again, plenty to choose from....

1)  David Brooks (no, not THAT David Brooks) continues his search for interesting sequence-generating integers:
http://aperiodical.com/2015/10/guest-post-sequence-numbers/

http://sequencenumbers.blogspot.co.uk/

2)  Chess fans, fabulous post from Jason Rosenhouse reviewing the new Bobby Fischer docu-drama ("Pawn Sacrifice"), and including other Fischer anecdotes, as well:
http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2015/10/03/the-big-bobby-fischer-movie/

3)  Interesting post on password algorithms from DataGenetics:
http://datagenetics.com/blog/november22012/

4)  Max Tegmark expounds on his 'mathematical universe' for Aeon:
http://nautil.us/issue/29/scaling/life-is-a-braid-in-spacetime-rp

5)  Making pi, the Futility Closet way:
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/10/04/easy-pi/

6)  Deborah Mayo re-blogs about 'evidence' and 'junk science':
http://errorstatistics.com/2015/10/04/will-the-real-junk-science-please-stand-up/

7)  Alex Bellos writes about James Stewart of calculus fame (and riches):
http://tinyurl.com/obsp4ol

8)  Interesting "rich tasks" from Cavmaths:
https://cavmaths.wordpress.com/2015/10/05/playing-with-jigsaws-is-the-way-forward/


9)  I was never one of those to say "I can't do math," but am not ashamed to say I've never heard of, nor comprehend, most of the proposals made here for future Polymath projects! :-(:
http://mathoverflow.net/questions/219638/proposals-for-polymath-projects

10)  h/t to Evelyn Lamb for calling attention to this relatively new blog from a CUNY math grad student:
http://www.math3ma.com/

 ...and a second doff-of-the-cap to Dr. Lamb for this explication of calculus's fundamental (if not terribly popular) treatment of limits:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/the-subterfuge-of-epsilon-and-delta/

11)  Shinichi Mochizuki's "impenetrable proof" ('abc conjecture')... will it be resolved?:
http://www.nature.com/news/the-biggest-mystery-in-mathematics-shinichi-mochizuki-and-the-impenetrable-proof-1.18509

12) Latest issue of Chalkdust Magazine with good stuff:
http://chalkdustmagazine.com/

13)  Lastly, for visual delight (or confusion), a few days back Cliff Pickover tweeted out this older story about a janitor's awesome maze-drawing:
http://tinyurl.com/ou3mmdf


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

1)  As always, another wonderful edition of NPR's "RadioLab" last week, this time on conversing with animals, in 3 segments of which the second (18-min.) was probably my favorite (related to John Lilly's dolphin research):
https://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/ondemand/535162

2)  And sticking with NPR, this week's episode of "This American Life" included an old segment (17-min.), for those who are old enough to enjoy some nostalgia from The Ed Sullivan Show:
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/568/human-spectacle-2015?act=3#play

Math From the Week

Math here and there:

1)  RJ Lipton reviews "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" (the play, about an autistic math savant):
https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/a-curious-inversion/

2)  Terry Tao's latest math-splash (Erdös proof) via Scientific American:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/maths-whizz-solves-a-master-s-riddle/

...and Erica Klarreich explains Tao's work for Quanta Magazine readers:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151001-tao-erdos-discrepancy-problem/

3)  Nice little review of the four-color theorem (h/t Egan Chernoff) :
https://cosmosmagazine.com/mathematics/maths-problem-colouring-set

4)  Robert Talbert writes about his evolution as a teacher, and how thinks about himself and his students.
(I suspect this is the sort of introspective analysis that all teachers can benefit from doing on occasion, and all will both share and differ from certain aspects of Robert's experience):
http://rtalbert.org/blog/2015/four-behaviors/

5)  Geometry from Futility Closet this week:
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/09/29/a-new-angle/

6)  Deborah Mayo posting about a prior NY Times piece on use of statistics in research (Bayesian vs. frequentist):
http://tinyurl.com/qbpv5gn

...far worse, as Jason Rosenhouse points out, are statistics from the "pathological" party:
http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2015/10/01/how-to-lie-with-statistics/

7)  A classroom brainteaser from Sarah Hagan:
http://mathequalslove.blogspot.com/2015/09/make-it-even-brain-teaser.html

8)  This, from the 'Blow Your Mind Dept.!': Solving Rubik's Cube... in 26 seconds... blindfolded (h/t Egan Chernoff):
http://tinyurl.com/q9sk8pl

9)  Terry Tao teaches probability theory (h/t Lior Pachter):
https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/275a-notes-0-foundations-of-probability-theory/#more-8428

10)  Brit Christian Lawson-Perfect visits the National Museum of Math in NY while on vacation, and gives a review:
http://aperiodical.com/2015/10/what-i-did-on-my-summer-holidays/

11)  Marilyn Burns promotes Ken-Ken for the classroom:
http://marilynburnsmathblog.com/wordpress/can-you-kenken/ 

12)  Odd connection between pi and Mandelbrot Set in latest Numberphile video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0vY0CKYhPY&feature=youtu.be

13)  Patrick Honner tweets that he often thinks that "nothing in mathematics is more beautiful than Varignon's Theorem." If you don't recognize that name, check it out (especially for geometry fans):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varignon's_theorem

14)  Okay, not strictly math, but have to note that "The Quotable Feynman" (edited by daughter Michelle Feynman) is now out in bookstores:
http://amzn.to/1QMYTMH
...as Sean Carroll blurbs, "All evidence indicates that Richard Feynman was the most quotable physicist of all time. This collection is a vivid demonstration of his wit, wisdom, and unquenchable passion for finding things out."


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

1)  I especially enjoyed Futility Closet's 'lateral thinking puzzle' this week... beginning at about the 22-minute point of their podcast:
http://tinyurl.com/o77j4xc

2)  And perhaps my favorite cartoon from the week ;-):
http://bizarro.com/comics/october-1-2015/
 

Math, Math... and More Math

Bursting at the seams this week:

1)  John Pavlus tries to explain, very briefly, why P vs. NP is such a big deal:
https://johnpavlus.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/p-versus-np-in-a-nutshell-and-why-its-fascinating/

2)  Another recreational math book to look forward to (but unfortunately not due out 'til January 2016, not in time for the holiday season):
http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2015/09/19/coming-soon-2/

3)  Keith Devlin has recommended the following site for some online math:
https://www.citizenmaths.com/#how-does-it-work
(I don't have any experience with it except that Dr. Devlin recommends it)

4)  Speaking of Keith, another Devlin podcast interview (38-min.), this time with Hemant Mehta:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/09/20/friendly-atheist-podcast-episode-73-dr-keith-devlin-mathematics-communicator-and-author/ 

5)  An interesting little problem, you may have missed, from DataGenetics this week:
http://datagenetics.com/blog/september42015/index.html

6)  "Mathematics Rising" blog considers the thoughts of Vladimir Voevodsky, homotypy theory, and the future of mathematics:
http://mathrising.com/?p=1328

7)  Tim Gowers wrote about Terry Tao's recent solution to the Erdős discrepancy problem:
https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/20/edp28-problem-solved-by-terence-tao/

....and "Gödel's Last Letter..." covers it well here:
https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/frogs-and-lily-pads-and-discrepancy/

8)  Venturing over to physics briefly, Peter Woit posts about Nima Arkani-Hamed and the future of physics:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=8002

9)  Guardian review of latest Alex Bellos effort, a coloring book not just for kids:
http://tinyurl.com/puupuk9

....and Aperiodical reviews it here:
http://aperiodical.com/2015/09/review-snowflake-seashell-star-by-alex-bellos-edmund-harriss/

10)  Using "Which one doesn't belong" in the classroom:
https://fivetwelvethirteen.wordpress.com/2015/09/23/which-one-doesnt-belong-three-weeks-in/
 
11)  Do you enjoy Ben Orlin's writing, drawing, perspectives?... then you'll enjoy hearing him in this 15-min. podcast:
http://challengingopinions.com/2015/09/challenging-opinions-episode-four-ben-orlin/

12)  More math education discussion/debate in NY Times:
http://tinyurl.com/pvz4d2c

13)  The world of Web algorithms:
http://tinyurl.com/ohesvl2 

...and Marcus du Sautoy on the same subject:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3sg9qt?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=BBC_iWonder 
 
14)  A link from Math-Frolic earlier in week that I think worth reiterating -- Lior Pachter's post on possible problems for Common Core:
https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2015/09/20/unsolved-problems-with-the-common-core/


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

1)  Don't know how many of you have already seen this video that went semi-viral a couple weeks back, of an (extinct) pterosaur flying over Idaho! -- I just saw it this week and thought it was fun (despite its flaws)... most are presuming it's CGI (or some think it's a kite), but I'd find it more interesting if it's a drone dressed up in pterosaur garb:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YreRe_vkTp4
(if anyone has learned an official, definite explanation let us know; I've seen plenty of speculation)

2)  More monkeying with the copyright law:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/22/monkey-selfies-copyright-lawsuit-peta

==> per usual, please let me know of any broken/incorrect links ASAP

Two More Books

Just mentioning a couple of volumes today for your consideration (both currently available in paperback, BTW)....

Won't have time to write a full review, but will recommend Alfred Posamentier's (with Bernd Thaller) latest book, Numbers: Their Tales, Types, and Treasures."  It's a typical Posamentier offering... clearly written and organized, without oversimplifying or dumbing-down the wide-ranging material; some interesting and fun things mixed in with historical and classic material.
I enjoyed the second half of the book, and especially the last few chapters, more than the first half with its focus on history (for whatever reason, math history, pre-1800 has never much held my interest). Again it is a great refresher for some adult math enthusiasts and an especially good read for the young person already inclined toward mathematics.
The final chapter of the book focuses on foundations and philosophy of mathematics, although near the end the authors seem to favorably quote Steven Weinberg's portrayal of philosophy as something that does not "provide... any useful guidance" to scientists. They even cite another philosopher as saying that philosophy is a "waste of time... from the point of view of the working mathematician." (Most of the book is definitely more mathematical than philosophical.)

Anyway, if you want to get a greater sense of the volume's overall content, here's a longer review from the Web:
http://tinyurl.com/o97tzvr

    A book I'm currently perusing (haven't finished, but willing to recommend) is "Professor Povey's

Perplexing Problems" by Thomas Povey, who will be familiar to many from his "Perplexing Problems" website:
http://perplexingproblems.com/

The book is a nice compendium of amusing problems with varying difficulty;  a little more challenging mix than often found in standard puzzlebooks. However, only about a quarter of the problems are strictly mathematical. The remainder are more physics-related (though often, of course, still requiring math), so for someone with little interest in physics this may not be a good book choice. Luckily, most math fans probably enjoy physics as well, and young, budding physicists should definitely enjoy.

In the last chapter Povey tells the story of Larry Walters who took flight from his backyard in 1995, in a lawnchair powered by helium balloons, just one of the typically entertaining segments of the book. You can read more about Larry here if you like:
http://www.markbarry.com/lawnchairman.html

You can even view news of Larry's oddball flight on YouTube here:
https://youtu.be/CFFVVo9usFY?t=33s 

And here's a couple of lines that cracked me up for some reason, from chapter 2 of the volume:

"Over dinner once I was told what I believe is a true story about the principal of a Cambridge college taking out a calculator to multiply a number by 100.  In a rare moment of lucidity I quipped, 'was it a difficult number that was being multiplied?' Only the scientists got the joke."

Anyway, you get the idea, in-between the puzzles are some entertaining bits.
To finish out, I'll adapt one of the simpler math problems from the volume for inclusion here (I'm telling it less entertainingly than Povey's rendition):

Captain Fishmonger goes on a treasure-hunting voyage.  He arrives at the deserted island for which he has a treasure map showing just two trees and the instructions, "Walk 50 paces from one tree AND also 50 from the other. There lies the treasure."
But as Fishmonger peruses the island he finds that in the time since the treasure was buried and the map drawn, now 14 more trees have grown up. There are now 16 trees all less than 100 paces from one another.
In the WORST CASE scenario, what is the MAXIMUM number of spots the Captain will need to dig to find his treasure?
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.answer below
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....................................................
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. answer:  240  ...drawing 50-pace circles around any two tree-pairs gives you TWO possible digging (intersecting) points, and combinatorics can be used to calculate the total number of possible tree pairings (120).  2 x 120 = 240 as maximum number of digs required.

Math Incoming...

Another week, another math potpourri:

1)  Keith Devlin overviews "A Brilliant Young Mind" for NPR:
http://www.npr.org/2015/09/12/439727420/love-multiplies-at-a-math-olympiad-in-brilliant

2)  Last weekend Mike Lawler favorably pointed out something called "Idea Math" that I had not heard of:
http://www.ideamath.org/

Mike references it in this post: 
https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2015/09/16/revisiting-lines/

...I also enjoyed hearing about a meeting Mike reported on where Cathy O'Neil spoke (among his many posts this week):
https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/harvards-gender-inclusivity-in-mathematics-talk/

3)  Tim Gowers interviewed in MAA's "Math Horizons":
http://t.co/eCY5JsHRX3

4)  From last weekend, Crystal Kirch's list of helpful links for teachers from the prior week (and she should have a new list up this weekend):
http://flippingwithkirch.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-best-articles-resources-ive-found_13.html

5)  Robert Krulwich covers Tyler Vigen's wonderful "Spurious Correlations":
http://tinyurl.com/p5fp632

6)  An oddball cryptographic find at Futility Closet this week (is there a logical, deductive answer?):
http://www.futilitycloset.com/2015/09/14/heart-and-head/

7)  Meanwhile, Ben Orlin continues honing his skill at making me laugh (and not easy getting me to chuckle over trig):
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/09/16/13-trig-functions-you-need-to-memorize-right-now/

8)  Speaking of chuckling, I only discovered this "Wayward Algebra" blog this week, and it's worth some chortles:
http://waywardalgebra.tumblr.com/

9)  Another (as usual) fascinating post from Fawn Nguyen on her teaching, well, grading techniques (including a great little 'problem of the week'):
http://fawnnguyen.com/giving-feedback-with-a-highlighter/

10) The "Breakthrough Junior Challenge" prize got quite a bit of coverage this week, but in case you missed it, The Aperiodical gets you up-to-date:
http://tinyurl.com/pd7wshf
...and site for the prize here:  https://www.breakthroughjuniorchallenge.org/ 

11)  Here is the paper that just won the 2015 Ig Nobel prize for mathematics:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0085292

12)  Numberphile does it's aways fine job of introducing folks to math philosophy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA2cdHLKYB8&feature=youtu.be

13)  I linked to a couple more reads in my prior MathTango post dealing with science and research:
http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2015/09/research-good-sometimes-often-bad-andor.html
...and Sunday here I'll be recommending a couple more recent books, so do come back then.

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

1)  Great article from "The Verge" on the war for dominance (to the death?) between Google, Facebook, and Apple:
http://tinyurl.com/nzt3xs4

2)  An interesting piece on bucket-drumming! (...yup, I said bucket-drumming):
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/14/9323365/bucket-drumming

Research: Good (sometimes), Often Bad and/or Ugly

A few days back Andrew Gelman favorably mentioned a Bloomberg column ("Why We Fall For Bogus Research") that touched on recent problems of unreplicability in psychology research:
http://andrewgelman.com/2015/09/12/yes/

The specific column referenced is here:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-31/why-we-fall-for-bogus-research

Then, elsewhere, Tom Siegfried put up a great dove-tailing piece on the problems of so-called "evidence-based" science, centered around medicine here:
http://tinyurl.com/oj6otbx

 These pieces focus primarily, not-so-much on the quality, integrity, or analysis issues (which are significant themselves) of research studies, but on the issue of generalizability: how far out (or how big a population) can the results of a given study really be applied to? This is especially an issue for "social" or "soft" sciences. And the generalizability problem in turn touches on the even broader issue of "induction" in science. Previous work has focused on the "WEIRD" study samples employed in much western research (subjects drawn solely from a "Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich and Democratic" population pool; hardly a random sample). This deserves a longer post, but I don't have time.

I'll just say that people like to discuss "science" as if it were some monolithic practice, when in fact inherent differences reside between various fields of science: psychology, biology, medicine, anthropology, physics, engineering.... (there are even huge differences between practitioners WITHIN any given field!). Science is a continuum (ranging from excellent to good to average to mediocre to poor to piss-poor!), there is NOT some clean binary science/pseudoscience division; plenty of published science barely ranks above pseudoscience, if critically adjudged.
Even though I was a psychology major, I rarely saw psychology research that I'd hold up as good science. As recently as this year I took part in a psychology study under a well-funded, fairly well-known researcher (and author)... that I believe was essentially junk science (as commonly funded by the likes of NIH -- and to those who shudder every time NIH's funding is threatened, I have to wonder how you regard your own research... because chaff (of which there is plenty) is what is intended to be cut from the NIH budget; if you're doing excellent research you have little to fear from such cuts, but if you're just publishing-or-perishing for the sake of publishing-or-perishing pressures, well.... Anyway, enough soapbox, take a gander at the Bloomberg and Siegfried pieces (especially the latter).

One reason, by the way, that I think these issues are SO important is because the growing (even scary) anti-science sentiment in this country is, I believe, the result of a citizenry growing up with a false, idealized version of science in their heads.  If they understood the 'messiness' of science from the get-go they could better accept it, but learning of it only later in life (as if they'd been fed an elitist lie, before) they turn against it. :-(

...ADDENDUM:  Gelman has now done a further followup on this general subject:
http://andrewgelman.com/2015/09/16/harsh/

Math From the Week...

A little of this, a little of that:

1)  A review of Ed Frenkel's "Love and Math" that touches upon a surprising number of thoughts/ideas:
http://www.science20.com/physics_foundations/love_math_a_review_of_edward_frenkels_bestseller_a_math_planetarium-157069

2)  At the 4-year anniversary point, Deborah Mayo posts a summary of her "Error Statistics" blog:
http://errorstatistics.com/2015/09/05/all-she-wrote-so-far-error-statistics-philosophy-4-years-on/

3)  Scott, Scott, Scott!!

Scott Aaronson did an "Ask Me Anything" posting at his blog "Shtetl-Optimized" and at least some of the 150+ questions/answers are math-related:
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2458

 Nautilus ran a little intro to P vs. NP also featuring Scott:
http://nautil.us/blog/what-if-solving-math-problems-were-as-easy-as-checking-solutions

And finally, speaking of Scott, I recently re-visited a post of his I loved and linked to several weeks ago, and discovered there were now well over 100 comments to it (many interesting ones, though may be too-meta for many readers):
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=2410

4)  Don't know if this will catch on or not, but one blogger suggests that MTBoS folks generate their own collection of math stock photos:
http://mathybeagle.com/2015/09/05/hey-mtbos-its-stockphoto-time/

5)  Natalie Wolchover updates us on quantum computing and encryption:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150908-quantum-safe-encryption/

6)  "The Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics" is now out:
http://experimentalmath.info/blog/2015/09/the-princeton-companion-to-applied-mathematics-is-out-at-last/

7)  Ben Orlin explains exponentiation (in his own inimitable way)... and also explains why he does what he does:
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/09/09/the-exponential-bait-and-switch/

8)  Numberphile tackles infinitesimals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYijIV5JrKg&feature=youtu.be

9)  Another review (in Harvard Magazine) of one of my favorite books from the year, Michael Harris's "Mathematics Without Apologies" (h/t Jordan Ellenberg):
http://harvardmagazine.com/2015/08/mathematics-from-the-inside-out

10)  Yesterday, Cathy O'Neil linked to a couple of interesting reads on gender stereotypes and inclusivity in STEM:
http://mathbabe.org/2015/09/10/bloggy-young-nerd-women/

11)  Tim Gowers, who spearheaded an earlier boycott of publisher Elsevier, announces a new "arXiv overlay journal," "Discrete Analysis":
https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-overlay-journal/

12)  Ken Ono, his students, and the Ramanujan story:
http://www.emory.edu/EMORY_MAGAZINE/issues/2015/summer/features/Ono.html#Ono


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

1)  If you missed it, an interesting FB entry from a Duke University neuroscience post-doc this week, announcing his resignation and academic exasperation (...among other things, he'll be pursuing a proof of the Goldbach conjecture!):
https://www.facebook.com/jfgariepyneuro/posts/466442776860755

2)  In a sort of twist on some other 'bias' studies, a fellow named Michael was unable to get his poetry published 'til he changed his name to "Yi-Fen Chou":
http://tinyurl.com/q4kn9p6

(...as always, let me know ASAP of any broken/incorrect links.)