...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 22, 2016

The Friday Mix


Ten from this week:

1) John Horgan has a long interview with Scott Aaronson (...who, I'll AGAIN subliminally remind the MacArthur Foundation, ought receive a Mac Fellowship) over at Scientific American:
http://tinyurl.com/h565aa8

2)   Last week's TED Radio Hour was all about math (though I believe it's a re-run):
http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/?sc=embed&f=225426662&showDate=2016-04-15

3)  Peter Woit gives a positive review of the new Ramanujan film:
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=8427

4)  Jim Propp celebrates math... at a birthday party:
https://mathenchant.wordpress.com/2016/04/17/the-paintball-party-problem-and-the-habit-of-symmetry/

5)  The Wallis Sieve via Evelyn Lamb:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/a-few-of-my-favorite-spaces-the-wallis-sieve/

6)  Enter this contest. You might win:
http://blogs.ams.org/mathgradblog/2016/04/20/sale-baby-shoes-worn/#sthash.2Z2JMwpN.dpbs

7)  Math, the brain, and language:
https://anthonybonato.wordpress.com/2016/04/20/this-is-your-brain-on-mathematics/

8)  12-min. YouTube interview with Australia's Nalini Joshi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7-MAdUPGhQ

9)  A blogger writing posts introducing Bayesian analysis:
https://alexanderetz.com/understanding-bayes/

10) Jo Boaler offers a simple-sounding problem for Numberplay this week:
http://wordplay.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/18/boaler-math-mindset/


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

1)  90-min. podcast of Sam Harris in discussion with physicist Max Tegmark:
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-multiverse-you-you-you-you

2)  Tom Siegfried ponders the possibility of extraterrestrials:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/humans-have-pondered-aliens-medieval-times



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