...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, September 2, 2016

Weekly Potpourri...



From the week gone by....

1)  Odd/interesting little genealogical study tracing back the origin of mathematicans to primarily "24 scientific families":
http://www.nature.com/news/majority-of-mathematicians-hail-from-just-24-scientific-families-1.20491
(...can't help but think how the '6-degrees of separation' notion plays into this)

2)  Math, patterns, tilings, crystals, oh my:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/mathematics/the-maths-behind-impossible-never-repeating-patterns

3)  Presh Talwalkar uses a Three Stooges pie fight to talk about modeling, game theory, and this year's presidential election:
http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2016/08/30/how-this-election-is-like-a-three-stooges-pie-fight-game-theory-tuesdays/

4)  A short, but rich, new Carnival of Mathematics:
http://tinyurl.com/h4lxys4

5)  And another rich offering from Ben Orlin this week:
https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/08/31/math-exams-with-only-one-question/

6)  I've never been able to get my mind to wrap around "category theory," but maybe next time I try I'll use this post from John Cook:
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2013/06/06/seven-dogmas-of-category-theory/

7)  Addition to multiplication, via Evelyn Lamb:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/the-beauty-of-converting-between-addition-and-multiplication/

...also, Evelyn reviewed Cathy O'Neil's new book, "Weapons of Math Destruction" this week:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/review-weapons-of-math-destruction/

...AND, an excerpt from Cathy's book was available in the Guardian this week:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/01/how-algorithms-rule-our-working-lives

8)  A fun take on Bayesian stats:
https://slackprop.wordpress.com/2016/08/28/the-three-faces-of-bayes/

...and Deborah Mayo points to this Bayes paper that she deems "superb":
https://twitter.com/omaclaren/status/771501055339171841

9)  Haven't explored it very much myself, but math fans who enjoy board games may want to check out this new one:
http://mathposs.com

10) "A Mathematician Goes to Washington" (and works for Al Franken):
http://horizonsaftermath.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-mathematician-goes-to-washington.html

11)  John C. Baez is newly on Twitter. If you're on Twitter you should follow him: @baez72033757

12)  Math-Frolic posts this week touched on Ford Circles and Lior Pachter, and a techie browser question.

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


1)  I've long thought a lot of "social science" ought more accurately be called "social studies," and beginning to feel similarly a lot of "neuroscience" might better be deemed, "neuro studies":

2)  With a long-time interest in psycholinguistics I found this recent bit of Twitter banter interesting (...may have to think about it briefly to catch what's going on):




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