Overflow Links

Had so many links to use for the potpourri over at MathTango this Friday, decided to move a few over to here for this week:

Latest (126th) "Carnival of Mathematics" from last Friday:
https://cavmaths.wordpress.com/2015/09/05/carnival-of-mathematics/

New "Math Teachers At Play" blog carnival posted, as well:
https://lifethroughamathematicianseyes.wordpress.com/2015/09/21/math-teachers-at-play-90/

I'll remind folks that Presh Talwalkar also does a weekly wrap up of math picks later on Fridays at his "Mind Your Decisions" blog (usually quite different from my MathTango selections):
http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/

...and Crystal Kirch has been doing Sunday linkfests for teachers at her "Flipping With Kirch" blog:
http://flippingwithkirch.blogspot.com/  (check 'em out on Sun.)


If there are other regular weekly math linkfests you think worth knowing about, feel free to send them along (via comments or email). I'm happy to publicize other sites that are spreading the math wealth!

...and as always, Mike's Math Page covered a lot of things this week:
https://mikesmathpage.wordpress.com/

Good Listenin' and Readin'

Sol Lederman's latest inspiring interview is with Tim Chartier, newly out with his slim, but rich, book, "Math Bytes" (also famous for his basketball "bracketology" research):

http://wildaboutmath.com/2014/04/06/tim-chartier-inspired-by-math-34/

As usual, Sol covers a lot of interesting ground here, and we learn a lot about Dr. Chartier.

And another new book, "Infinitesimal," by Amir Alexander is reviewed in NY Times and sounds good. A lot of folks who take calculus somewhere along the way, don't ever learn about the checkered history of it, and the original controversy surrounding the concept of an "infinitesimal." So read up:

http://tinyurl.com/mnj9wzy

It's going to be another fertile year for popular math books!

If you're in a hurry for more good and varied readin' then the 109th Carnival of Mathematics is newly-posted and just a click away:

http://tonysmaths.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/109th-carnival-of-mathematics.html

Come Frolic at The 104th Carnival of Math!

The 104th (...or, 1101000st if binary is your thing) Carnival of Monthly Mathiness has arrived for your perusal and delectation... this month's Carnival 'ballooned' to a chock-full 40 diverse entries!... so grab some cotton candy (or a cup-o-exquisite-fresh-perked-hand-warming-eye-opening-dark-roast-Kenyan-or-Costa-Rican-aromatic-java... with a dash of soymilk should you desire) and come set a spell:

104 is the sum of eight consecutive even numbers, count 'em eight!... 6 + 8 + 10 + 12 + 14 + 16 + 18 + 20

...but enough technical chit-chat; it's Thanksgiving Holiday month for American readers so without further adieu we'll give gratitude to these posts for strutting their stuff:
(...and please let me know ASAP of any errors below or mis-working links.)
 

October was a month full of Martin Gardner remembrances (his birthday being Oct. 21, and his autobiography recently released). One example was "Celebrations of Mind Honor Math's Best Friend, Martin Gardner" from Colm Mulcahy for Scientific American blogs.
Gardner of course demonstrated that doing math could also mean having fun... some other examples:

'The boy born on Tuesday' problem is one of the most famous math puzzles since Monty Hall. Rob Eastaway gives his take on it in "The Irksome Tuesday Boy Problem."  [As can be found on Google, this problem has generated a LOT of discussion over the years.]

Speaking of puzzles, "On Time" is a 'clock' puzzle ("mind-reading trick") from the always wonderful Futility Closet.

In "Some Geometry Notes on a Babylonian Square Root" Pat Ballew of Pat's Blog speculates about the Babylonian use of geometry to solve an algebraic problem.
I'm also submitting Pat's post, "Great Problems For High School" which includes several classic problems.

In "Heroic Triangles" Colin Beveridge of Flying Colours Maths offers a nice little bit of triangle geometry. And then in "The Geometry of Sec" Colin elucidates some trigonometry for us, as well.
And finally, another Colin entry this month was "Why I Loved the MathsJam Conference," reporting on the awesome annual gathering of ~100 mathematicians-at-play at MathsJam in Britain.

In the post "From the Mailbag: Dual Inversal Numbers" Katie Steckles of The Aperiodical, reports on a budding 9-year-old mathematician taking note of "an interesting property of numbers." 

I found this Brian Hayes piece (from Bit-player), "The Keys to the Keydom," on a flaw in RSA encryption, quite interesting.
Also interesting to watch has been the rise/fall/rise/.... of Bitcoin currency, especially with some of its recent problems, and Ed Felten of Freedom To Tinker blog tells us that "Bitcoin Isn’t So Broken After All." 

In "Breakfast at Les Deux Magots" Matifutbol graphically explains the "friendship paradox" for those of you dwelling over why your friends have more friends than you do.

I've never understood the trendy interest in Zombies and Evelyn Lamb seems to find it curious as well, as she looks at one researcher's attempt to analyze that trend/obsession in:  "Zombie Fever: a Mathematician Studies a Pop Culture Epidemic."
 
And finally, and only for the most serious amongst you, Tim Gowers did a looong (and deep) October post regarding a poly-mathematical approach he was interested in trying on the P vs. NP problem: "What I Did In My Summer Holidays" (warning: you can probably read ALL the other posts in the Carnival in the time it may take you to read and digest Tim's post! -- p.s., I selected this (a great example of Tim's writing), Tim didn't submit it.
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Meanwhile, three Peter Rowlett posts were contributed this month:
"Council Orders Maths and Sudoku To Be Removed From Mathematician’s Gravestone" was a quirky news item that is almost self-explanatory. 
In "Emergency Maths Arcade…" Peter suggests math games you can enjoy when all you have available is pen and paper (...like, uhhh, back in the days when I grew up!).
And finally, "Recent History," touches upon some "recent"(?) results in mathematics.

Speaking of history, Thony C. sends in the Aldres Caicedo post, "Credit," from A Kind Of Library blog, concerning Johann Bernoulli's contributions to the early days of calculus.
And some more history sent along by Thony: a few days ago was the anniversary of philosopher Gottlob Frege's birth... a post from Yovisto blog briefly synopsizes the great logician's achievements: "Gottlob Frege and the Begriffschrift."

 In "Lost In the Fourth Dimension," Lee Randall manages to link together The Simpsons, Twilight Zone, and her own childhood, in a post from her blog, "A History of My Life In 100 Objects."

Evelyn Lamb submitted a couple of Kate S. Owens posts: In "Combinatorics and Pampers," Kate is troubled by the inefficiency of 15-digit product codes used on Pampers diapers. Perhaps Proctor-and-Gamble (maker of Pampers) knows something about the coming baby boom the rest of us don't know!?
And in "Mathematics in Fiction Class Visit" Kate touches upon both gender and semantic issues amidst a discussion of the difference between "mathematicians," "math teachers," and "math professors." 

Speaking of gender-related matters, Yen Duong (Baking and Math blog) relates her recent experience being the only female in a meeting of math academics in "Surprisingly Emotional Reaction to Being a Woman in Math." 

...and, on to sports: for NBA fans (and coaches!) Tallys Yunes' O.R. By the Beach blog offers a post attempting to maximize NBA winning percentages based upon the analysis of playing and resting time for players: "Optimally Resting NBA Players." 

And in another sports note, Laura McLay of Punk Rock Operations Research explains "Why the Bears Should Have Gone For It on Fourth and Inches." 

"In Love... With Math" was my own thumbs-up overview at MathTango of Edward Frenkel's well-publicized book, "Love and Math" which focuses on the "Langlands Program," while extolling the author's love for mathematics.

Education and learning math were, as always, frequent subjects of posts this month: 

Keith Devlin's latest Devlin's Angle post is a great piece, entitled "The Educational Power of Elementary Arithmetic" on the controversy surrounding American math education.


In "Math Munching Today," Beth Ferguson of Algebra's Friend tells of using MathMunch in her classroom (along with Edmodo) to get students working/thinking a bit beyond the usual secondary curriculum. 

From Ben Orlin's Math With Bad Drawings blog a lovely introduction for young people to statistics, called "The Bear In the Moonlight."

Sue VanHattum of Math Mama Writes tackles explaining calculus to students in a series of posts, including "What Is Calculus, Part One."

Aatish Bhatia's "The Math Trick Behind MP3's, JPEGs, and Homer Simpson's Face" at Nautilus, has been cited as one of the clearest, audience-friendly explanations of Fourier transforms to come along in awhile.

In "My Favorite Christmas Present" Kevin Knudson uses an old math book to bring logarithms into focus as an algebraic tool (despite the 'blank stares' they draw from his students!).

Over at MrHonner, in the post "Order These Things From Least to Greatest" Patrick Honner contemplates how the potential answers to a given problem (or rather, HOW to grade those answers) can be more interesting than the problem itself. 

In a tweet, Steven Strogatz called Gary Rubinstein's post, "The Death of Math,"  "The smartest piece I've ever read about math reform," which I figure earns it inclusion in the Carnival!

On a related topic, Philip Stark at The Berkeley Blog offered an analysis of teacher effectiveness in "What Exactly Do Student Evaluations Measure?" 

In "Snowballing Good Questions" Alex Overwijk of SlamDunkMath gives his class a lesson in how to develop good questions.
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A few visuals (not blog posts) were also submitted this month, adding still further variety:

First, a video entitled "A Math Major Talks About Fear" from Saramoira Shields -- it was retweeted by so many folks I felt it deserved a spot in the Carnival.
Similarly, Kit Kilgour suggested another very popular video this month that appeared on Vimeo, "Beauty and Mathematics" -- the beauty and ubiquity of math captured in less than 2 minutes.
Meanwhile, Katie Steckles suggested 2 other videos for your attention:
"Prism Marching Band" a short imgur piece you need to see to appreciate.
...and from YouTube, "Sorting Algorithms" which lo-and-behold, involves, sorting algorithms.


 And, on a different note, I'll close out linking to the latest interview in my own series at MathTango, with computer scientist Dr. Noson Yanofsky, author of "The Outer Limits of Reason," a fantastic, multi-subject book Shecky highly recommends to ALL!!


Wow!... Hope EVERYone finds at least a few things addressing their interests in this month's wide-ranging Carnival! And THANKS! to all who contributed....

(note: ...I've included all posts that I received as submissions, so if by any chance you sent in an entry and it doesn't appear here, then it got lost in the shuffle along the way... please let me know so I can insert it.)
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==> If you need to catch up on your Carnival reading, the prior (103rd) edition is at Evelyn Lamb's Roots of Unity HERE, and the next Carnival will be hosted by Oluwasanya at MatheMazier.  
If you'd like to sign up to host a future Carnival visit the home site at: http://aperiodical.com/carnival-of-mathematics/

L-l-l-lastly, I'll exploit this opportunity to ask if any math bloggers/writers out there are willing to be interviewed (via email) for my own blog, please let me know: sheckyr[AT]gmail[DOT]com

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credits:

(balloon image from AJ at openclipart.org)
(turkey image via Lupin/Wikimedia Commons)
(classroom image via daniel julia lundgren/WikimediaCommons)

Take Me To the Carnival

The latest (103rd) Carnival of Mathematics is now up-and-running at Evelyn Lamb's "Roots of Unity" blog… enjoy:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/2013/10/18/carnival-of-mathematics-103/

And next month, the 104th Carnival will be hosted right here at Math-Frolic (around mid-November), so be thinking about your submissions for that. Official submission page here:

http://tinyurl.com/krobqjp

Cantor's Paradise…

Keith Devlin's latest "Devlin's Angle" blogpost was inspired (in part) by his moderation of the World Science Festival panel (shown in my May 31 post):

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2013/06/will-cantors-paradise-ever-be-of.html

He muses about whether the "study of infinity – in particular the hierarchy of larger infinities that Cantor bequeathed to us – would ever have any practical applications." (...and he thinks likely, not).

Part of what makes Cantor's work so eternally interesting is the huge divergence of opinion about it from his very own time. As Devlin writes, "Reactions to Cantor’s revolutionary new ideas ranged from outraged condemnation to fulsome praise." And these completely opposed viewpoints came from individuals equally-well-established and respected in the field. One of the paradoxical aspects of infinity is the equal ease with which it may be discussed in either direction: i.e., the infinitely large or the infinitesimally small. In any event, it was David Hilbert who eventually coined the term "Cantor's Paradise" for the new Cantorian thought that did slowly take hold.

Even so, still today, "infinity" can be such a difficult concept to grasp, that Cantor's ideas remain a frequent target of attacks by "crackpots" of the sort Mark Chu-Carroll often hears from:

http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/category/bad-math/cantor-crankery/


In other news... the 99th Carnival of Mathematics is now up at Wild About Math blog for your delectation:

http://wildaboutmath.com/2013/06/02/carnival-of-mathematics-99/

97th Carnival of Mathematics

Usually the 'Carnival of Mathematics' is more inspiration than perspiration… but this go-around I'm not so sure (check it out to see what I mean):

http://www.flyingcoloursmaths.co.uk/carnival-of-mathematics/

(...a panoply of perceptive pieces to pick from)

Monday Math Buffet...

Another potpourri of offerings, if you've missed any of these…:

1) I love this relatively brief recent post from a secondary educator:

http://practicaltheory.org/blog/2013/02/28/we-dont-know-how-to-teach-math/

Also have to smile a bit at this particular line from the piece: "Seymour Papert said that math represents the failure of progressive education because the way we teach math always reintroduces coercion back into education."

But every line is good, and it largely reminds me of a fantastic, (looong) older post by Fields Medalist Timothy Gowers (which drew over 160 comments) that deserves frequent re-visiting:

http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/how-should-mathematics-be-taught-to-non-mathematicians/

2) Latest (#96) Carnival of Mathematics is now up at "Math Mama Writes" blog:

http://mathmamawrites.blogspot.com/2013/03/carnival-of-mathematics-96.html

...Plenty of variety!

3) "Futility Closet" recently highlighted the delightful (to me) Yablo's Paradox:

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2013/02/22/yablos-paradox/

4) On the same day that I interviewed Evelyn Lamb over at MathTango, she put up a new post at her blog on the four-color theorem:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/2013/03/01/4-color-map-theorem/

5) Once again Keith Devlin covers some aspects/difficulties of running a MOOC at his "Devlin's Angle" blog (Keith is running at least 3 separate blogs, plus a Huff. Post column!):

http://devlinsangle.blogspot.com/2013/03/can-we-make-constructive-use-of-machine.html

...and over at Huffington Post Keith writes about the dropout rates for MOOCs, and why an 80+% dropout rate isn't necessarily a problem:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-keith-devlin/moocs-and-the-myths-of-dr_b_2785808.html

6) Math educator Maria Droujkova, with a focus on toddlers and youngsters, is Sol Lederman's 24th podcast interviewee here:

http://wildaboutmath.com/2013/03/01/maria-droujkova-inspired-by-math-24/

7) And finally, if you have any mental energy/time left, a long, thought-provoking read from the Simons Foundation on the future of computers in mathematical proofs (can we trust computers, as we turn to them more and more in the future for proofs of highly-complex theorems?):

https://simonsfoundation.org/features/science-news/in-computers-we-trust/

Carnival Time

The 91st blog Carnival of Mathematics is now up at:

http://matheminutes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/91st-carnival-of-mathematics.html

One of the mentions in the Carnival is of a relatively new math podcast series, "Relatively Prime" which I've added to the podcast links in right-hand column:

http://relprime.com/

Carnival of Mathematics

Get some popcorn and balloons and settle down for the 89th blog 'Carnival of Mathematics,' with its usual variety of mathy content:

http://aperiodical.com/2012/08/carnival-of-mathematics-89/

Math Fun & Games

From "Futility Closet," interesting visual proof to a simple geometry question here:

http://tinyurl.com/7mbebmn

Meanwhile, the latest (51st!) Math Teachers At Play blog carnival for your delectation here:

http://mathmamawrites.blogspot.com/2012/06/math-teachers-at-play-51.html

Carnival of Math

A new Carnival of Math is out now, chockful of good and varied stuff:

http://travels.aperiodical.com/2012/04/carnival-of-mathematics-85.html

Enjoy...

Carny Time!

Someone apparently submitted one of my year-old posts to the current Math Teachers At Play blog carnival (thank you to whoever you are!). The whole diverse Carnival is worth a look here:

http://letsplaymath.net/2011/02/18/math-teachers-at-play-35/

83rd Carnival of Mathematics

The latest Carnival of Mathematics is up-and-running here:

http://teachbesideme.blogspot.com/2011/11/cafrnival-of-mathematics-83.html

It's A Carnival!

The 80th Carnival of Math is now up for your viewing and delectation -- good stuff!:

http://www.walkingrandomly.com/?p=3800

Come One, Come All...

The 79th edition of the Carnival of Mathematics is up for your perusal and entertainment:

http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/07/05/golden-carnival-of-mathematics/

Math Teachers At Play Carnival #39

A veritable cornucopia (that means a bunch) of math at the latest 'Math Teachers At Play' Blog Carnival:

http://letsplaymath.net/2011/06/17/math-teachers-at-play-39/

Go Play...

For math students... of all ages, the latest 'Math Teachers At Play' blog carnival is up here:

http://tinyurl.com/3cewnnr

Play Time

The 37th "Math Teachers At Play" blog carnival, with lots of articles geared to teachers and students... of all ages, is up here:

http://www.mathsinsider.com/math-teachers-at-play/

If I Were Stranded on a Desert Island...

...and could only have one book to read I think I know what it would be. . . .

Yes, I'll squeeze in one more bit about Martin Gardner before his day of honor tomorrow (to any who are tired of hearing about Martin Gardner by now, I apologize, but HEY! it's MY blog so deal with it ;-))
When Gardner's "The Colossal Book of Mathematics" came out in 2001, I looked at its size, price, and the many chapters covering topics I wasn't particularly interested in, and ignored it (I already had plenty of Gardner books on my shelf).  It was only years later that I checked it out from a public library and discovered not only how many chapters were of great interest to me, but also how many of the topics I wouldn't normally have found interesting were made so by Gardner's deft and insightful writing.
So again I highly recommend this volume to anyone lacking it on their shelves. If you're ever stranded on a desert island it would offer you weeks/months of mental entertainment (...and, as an alternative, just in case I got tired of math, I might take along Gardner's essay-anthology, "The Night Is Large," as well!).

Meanwhile, 'Mathematics Rising' blog has just covered the 3rd of my 'Fab Four,' Bernhard Riemann, here:

http://mathrising.com/?p=270

Finally, a couple of recent math blog carnivals here for your enjoyment and delectation:

http://tinyurl.com/2bhva6c

http://tinyurl.com/2bcdscb

And I'll end today with a factoid lifted off an old Twitter posting:

A 10,000 number gap in prime numbers: 9973! + 2 through 9973! + 10006 are all composite (non-prime).

...someone please double-check those for me over the lunch hour and get back to me to confirm.

Carnival...

The latest "Carnival of Mathematics" has arrived here:

http://tinyurl.com/28ejerd