...a companion blog to "Math-Frolic," specifically for interviews, book reviews, weekly-linkfests, and longer posts or commentary than usually found at the Math-Frolic site.

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"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show." ---Bertrand Russell (1907) Rob Gluck

"I have come to believe, though very reluctantly, that it [mathematics] consists of tautologies. I fear that, to a mind of sufficient intellectual power, the whole of mathematics would appear trivial, as trivial as the statement that a four-legged animal is an animal." ---Bertrand Russell (1957)

******************************************************************** Rob Gluck

Friday, December 19, 2014

Friday Potpourri


This week's grab-bag (and I will either have NO weekly potpourri next week, or else it will appear on Sunday, rather than on Friday, the day after Christmas):

1)  Recent New Zealand interview with Marcus du Sautoy here:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/20160965/marcus-du-sautoy-maths-and-art
...related Sautoy article here:
http://www.odt.co.nz/lifestyle/magazine/326897/painting-numbers

2)  The best puzzle and game theory posts from Presh Talwalkar ("Mind Your Decisions") for 2014 -- catch up if you missed any of these:
http://ow.ly/FYgYZ

3)  Fascinating report on the "Umbral Moonshine Conjecture" (...no, I'd never heard of it either!, but related to the Monster Group):
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/12/141215114816.htm

4)  Technical post from Terry Tao on latest work regarding "long gaps between primes":
http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2014/12/16/long-gaps-between-primes/

5)  "Boolean" vs. "additive" thinking from Andrew Gelman:
http://andrewgelman.com/2014/12/18/key-part-statistical-thinking-use-additive-rather-boolean-models/

6) "Why Should You Learn Math?"... one student's answer:
http://3010tangents.wordpress.com/2014/12/18/why-should-you-learn-math/

7)  I'm always eager to shine light on Dr. Keith Devlin and his endeavors in math communication. This week someone else did it for me:
http://mathematicalmysterytour.blogspot.com/2014/12/professor-keith-devlin-on-youtube.html

8)  And for your smile-of-the-week:
http://tinyurl.com/jvg5ts6


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