...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, April 1, 2016

Some of What Math-Frolic Didn't Cover This Week


  In case you missed any of these from the week:

1)
  "Gödel's Last Letter..." blog weighs in on the recently-reported prime last-digit anomaly:
https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2016/03/26/bias-in-the-primes/?platform=hootsuite

2)  Craig Knecht's work with 'magic squares' via Futility Closet:
www.futilitycloset.com/2016/03/27/magic-space/

3)  An explanation of quantum computing:
http://www.thestatesman.com/news/supplements/simplifying-a-complex-challenge/133160.html

4)  New AMS tribute to Grothendieck (pdf):
http://www.ams.org/publications/journals/notices/201604/rnoti-p401.pdf

5)  Evelyn Lamb reviews Andrew Hacker's latest and concludes, "It Doesn't Add Up":
http://tinyurl.com/zb83c9g
...and has a further followup here:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/andrew-hacker-and-the-case-of-the-missing-trigonometry-question/

6)  Ben Orlin employs a mathematical magnifying glass to solve a problem:
http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2016/03/30/a-new-favorite-puzzle/

7)   More beautiful math explication from Erica Klarreich in Quanta (this time on high-dimensional sphere-packing):
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160330-sphere-packing-solved-in-higher-dimensions/

8)  Nalini Joshi talks about life as a female academic (mathematician) in Australia (...but probably applies most places):
http://tinyurl.com/zufchp8

9)  Andrew Gelman offers a modicum of advice to young researchers amidst the current quandary of journal publication and statistical methods:
http://andrewgelman.com/2016/03/31/greshams-law-of-experimental-methods/

10)  Pradeep Mutalik attempts to clarify the controversial 'Sleeping Beauty Paradox':
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160331-why-sleeping-beauty-is-lost-in-time/

11)  And lastly, for something completely different, mathematics meets slam poetry:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-01/poetic-mathematician-brings-unique-style-to-australia/7291246


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

1) 
Animals keeping the beat:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160322-the-beasts-that-keep-the-beat/

2)  Recently, TEDRadioHour re-ran this fascinating account of amazing information-gathering:
http://www.npr.org/2016/03/18/470514319/how-can-hidden-sounds-be-captured-by-everyday-objects


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