ASMR by the Beach

A new month of crazy politics so who doesn't need a li'l dose of ASMR, before perhaps all Heck erupts.... 
Another long-standing ASMR producer is "ASMR Barber," early on often doing 'shaving' ASMR videos. Here's an example by the beach:



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side-note and RFI: ASMR is being heavily-studied by researchers to understand the wide variety of stimuli that generate the sensation, and why some folks are susceptible to it (to varying degrees) and others not at all. Anyway, it all makes me wonder a bit about an opposite sensation:  the screeching sound of fingernails down a blackboard or tennis shoes on a playing court is intensely irritating to many people, yet has no effect on others. Does anyone happen to know of research or explanations for these wide individual differences?

Whoooaaa

Here are a couple of wonderful recent optical motion illusions from @jagarikin on Twitter (there is NO motion; nothing is moving):

https://twitter.com/jagarikin/status/1228122662368448512

https://twitter.com/jagarikin/status/1233780266780389378

(....is it any wonder that eyewitness testimony is so unreliable!)

A Cook Book of Paradoxes

A review of “Sleight of Mind” by Matt Cook (due out in late March):

Paradoxes, I think, say a lot about the workings of the human mind and human logic… they’ve always fascinated me, and they come in a myriad of forms.

Oddly, author Matt Cook is listed as an economist and a magician… I say oddly only because most books on paradoxes that I’m familiar with are written by either mathematicians or philosophers. Yet Matt has put together one of the overall best and broadest compendiums I’ve seen of wonderful paradoxes (divided into 13 categories), ranging across mathematics/probability, philosophy, and logic, before ending with 3 chapters on physics-related paradoxes (by contributing authors) that aren’t usually included in such math-related compendiums. And then to conclude, Matt recruits Grant Sanderson (of 3blue1brown YouTube fame) to add a final essay on whether mathematics is invented or discovered. I didn’t honestly feel this essay (on a well-worn issue) fit that well in the overall volume, but still always interesting to hear Sanderson’s take on any topic.

The volume covers (according to its own promotion) 75+ paradoxes, including most all the best-known and studied ones that a reader would expect, but also with some that most readers may find new to them. I did manage to think of a couple that I’ve covered here on the blog previously which I didn't find in the book, but which I think would make fine additions (the second below is a probability paradox, and the first is what Cook would perhaps classify as an “operations” paradox):

https://math-frolic.blogspot.com/2015/07/gladly-paying-110-for-dollar-bill.html

https://math-frolic.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-shooting-room-doozy.html

The format throughout Cook's book is to state/describe the paradox, and then give two (or more) possible ways of, or approaches to, explaining it, followed by a discussion of why one explanation is true and the other(s) is/are not. Some of these discussions I think are a bit too short, not quite always convincing (needing a bit more fleshing out), but in most cases the discussion seems about right: not too brief, but not too deep into the weeds either. Cook’s writing is sometimes rather pedantic, and occasionally there is some serious math involved, so even though the paradoxes are usually inherently interesting, the volume is more appropriate to a college level student than a lower level (though, again, the majority of the paradoxes could be understood by young students -- and I've long been a believer that paradoxes offer a great example for young people of the imprecision/uncertainty of human logic and analytical thinking; in short, it would be fun and instructive to share many parts of the volume with primary/secondary students).

I am particularly interested in “self-reference,” and appropriately (to me) by far the longest chapter in Cook’s book is on self-reference paradoxes. Other favorite topics for this reader are supertasks, probability, induction, and geometry, but your own personal preferences will guide which of the 14 chapters you find most interesting.

There are by now several good compendiums and discussions of paradoxes available; the scope and readability of this volume makes it a great addition to the subject-area. I recommend it. …and, that sentence is not false.

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==> will just note that I'm reviewing a review copy of the volume that was sent to me back in January December and am assuming there will be no major revisions in the final March-released edition.

The Intersection of Math and ASMR

For variety, I've been sprinkling in ASMR video posts on the blog for awhile and, out of curiosity, decided to google "ASMR +Math," where I found a little more than I expected, including this: 

https://breakermag.com/this-asmr-youtuber-wants-to-help-you-harness-the-power-of-math/

Ian Stewart Delivers... again

I’ve read 4 popular math books already this year and they’ve all been great… though all very different. What a quick start to the new year!

Ian Stewart volumes are consistently good, but with that said there’s also a certain “sameness” to his prolific work — popular topics treated with clarity and wisdom, but not necessarily terribly new, inspiring, or original; just clear basic elucidation. So I was hesitant to read his latest volume (out in 2019, but more readily available in the U.S. now) with a title, “Do Dice Play God?” (a play off an Einstein quote, and also off an earlier book he wrote), which I found a little too ‘cutesy.’ and not all that informative of the content. 

However, I not only thoroughly enjoyed this volume, but consider it one of his best, and most important yet… not because it’s any more original or otherwise outstanding than Stewart's other writing, but because he is covering some of the most currently important topics for the lay public: statistics, probability, uncertainty (and how they relate to critical thinking) — indeed this is likely the best volume I’ve seen for presenting these crucial subjects to a general audience, and Stewart isn’t even a statistician by profession (and professional statisticians may find technical flaws in his text). The range of topics and examples, even though well-worn, is great and lucidly presented. I think many will be surprised at just how good (and relevant) it is! Not sure, but I suspect this Stewart effort may have been partly overshadowed in 2019 by the release of David Spiegelhalter's also-excellent (and somewhat more technical) volume, "The Art of Statistics."

If you’re already ensconced in the nuances and debates involving statistics these days you won’t find much new or original in this volume, but for the mass public this is a fantastic introduction (and there are many good ones) to these important concerns — Stewart offers just enough detail without diving too deep into the weeds to leave readers behind (although admittedly, some numeracy is required). Moreover, at various points he also moves the discussion away from abstraction and theory, to stress how prediction, probability, and uncertainty are especially pertinent to our daily lives and current societal issues.

One interesting sidenote to me: toward the end of the book Stewart ambles off into a number of more complex theoretical physics topics, and this is a trend I’ve been seeing in a number of math books… focusing more-than-usual, at some point, on physics. Perhaps just my imagination, but it seems as if the linkages between math and physics (always strong of course) are becoming even more central to both fields as time goes on. Physics has always recognized the foundational basis of mathematics, but more and more the linkages between the two fields seem to be feeding back-and-forth off of one another in pursuit of new insights (just my impression).

Anyway, if you’ve been wanting a primer on what all the fuss is about in statistics these days (or you know someone who needs such), read this book (or buy it for a friend).
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...I'll soon be posting a review of Matt Cook's highly-entertaining "Sleight of Mind" (with an end-of-March publication date), but the next volume in my reading queue looks to be another fascinating 2019 read, a biography of James Simon, "The Man Who Solved the Market."

Valentine's Day edition

For awhile I had a tradition, on Valentine's Day, of linking to Jennifer Ouellette's "Love among the equations" fun tribute to her husband, physicist Sean Carroll. I haven't done that for awhile, so for anybody who's never seen it, seems like a timely jaunt down memory lane: 
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/love-among-the-equations/

Meanwhile, Rob Eastaway yesterday tweeted out this chart of "popular" birthdays, noting that you can also deduce other 'popular' days (of a sort) by subtracting 9 months from the chart results:
https://twitter.com/robeastaway/status/1227896654214418433

...and lastly, just for today, something we can all relate to, the mating dances of a couple of our avian friends:

Humble Math…

OK, don’t waste your time reading Matt Parker’s latest book, "Humble Pi," from page 1 to page 314… complete waste of friggin’ effort; reads like gibberish and a crazy travesty of publishing. Who knows what kind of psilocybin Matt was on when he wrote the dang thing….

INSTEAD… read the volume from page 314 to page 1 and you will be thoroughly entertained by the range of uniquely-strewn-together topics Matt combines in this rollicking volume peppered with his usual droll-to-wacky humor… one can easily imagine Parker at his writing tablet, smirking as he composes the many lines that will beget a chortle from unsuspecting readers (unsuspecting that there be humor in math).

The book is full of gems… math gems, humor gems, and just thought gems, scattered throughout an unpredictable mix of math nuances and perversities, which will leave you earnestly hoping that Parker has agreed to donate his fertile brain to science (preferably after he passes). In fact, I’m no longer sure who makes me laugh more, Ben Orlin, Matt Parker, Ricky Gervais, or the Evangelicals who vote for Donald Trump while labeling themselves moral or patriotic (LOL, OMG).

“Humble Pi” was already a big bestseller across the pond in Britain last year (perhaps explaining why the publisher actually sent it to America, lo-and-behold, absent-mindedly keeping the same title), so now it's time for Americans to show what they're made of, and buy it! — though admittedly, my Homeland, especially under the Trump Regime, is not characterized by a fondness for math/science matters (except, of course, as it may apply to money-laundering and tax evasion, two topics Matt can include when he does the sequel, “Humble Fourth Reich”). 

Indeed I’m always amazed when I venture into a Barnes and Noble and see some mathy volume on a front table display right alongside a John Grisham work or the latest 'how-to-live-to-be-200' effort (or some such) from Dr. Oz. In any event, here at the blog, I’m speaking to a choir of math enthusiasts who will hopefully prefer this volume over the latest schlock from Dan Brown. For all remaining Americans who aren't under the spell of Q-Anon, and who prefer fun to fascism, this is a fab read.

Computers, engineering, numbers, money, statistics, randomness, time, probability, algorithms, and more…. it’s all here for your delectation… and it ain’t always pretty… but then, that's sort of Matt’s point.

Truth In Advertising...?

As Matt Parker notes in his latest book, "If this Thomson Reuters ad is a Venn diagram, it's surprisingly honest":

ASMR Thursday...

Another month, another ASMR video (...and who doesn't need a little ASMR during a week like this one):
“Dmitri” is one of the most popular and long-standing ASMR ‘artists’ out there, who began by largely posting massage videos (but has moved on to other modalities). This is a compilation video of tapotement or percussion massage segments drawn from some of his early videos:

Counting and Cognition...

A bit ago, someone on Twitter linked to this year-old post that I found interesting, having to do with counting and mental images of number lines (revealing how individuals’ cognitions differ):

https://www.cambridgemaths.org/blogs/say-what-you-see/

…also interesting, this note left in the comments section:

“In note of Richard Feynman’s memoirs he mentions an experience with a room-mate. One of them found he could keep counting while he was reading, and the other could keep count while he was talking, but neither could do both. They discovered that for one of them perceiving his numbers meant hearing them (so talking blocked his counting), while the other was seeing them (and so couldn’t simultaneously read).”

Flourishing With Francis Su

When I was part-way through Francis Su’s new book I tweeted out, “Am about halfway through Francis Su's "Mathematics For Human Flourishing"... and astounded at what a beautiful read it is (& suitable for such a wide swathe of readers)!” 

Since finishing it I’ll just say that 100x; certainly in the running for my ‘popular math book of the year,’ and, it’s only January (…of course that assumes that that rascal Ben Orlin doesn’t enter the fray this year with an entry). Some call Su’s book “inspiring,” though I think “meditative” and “reflective” may be more apt terms. It is certainly not at all the ‘typical’ popular math book (though there are a few fun math problems included). Indeed, words used in the blurbs for the book on the back cover include, "compelling," "galvanizing," "sublime," "lyrical," "all-embracing"... words not often associated with math volumes.

The book has already received so many accolades from so many quarters that I feel no compulsion to offer a review here. As most likely know, Su’s book is an outgrowth of a farewell address he gave to the MAA upon departing his term as President of the organization. That address pretty much went viral through the math cybersphere, if not beyond. If you are familiar with it than you know the flavor and themes of this book and Su's vision. 

Often when speeches, essays, short pieces and the like are turned into book-length projects they come off as artificially stretched or composed of a lot of redundant ‘filler.’ Not so with Su’s volume; it maintains a rich, creative feel throughout most of the text. And as my original tweet indicates I believe it can be easily enjoyed by math professors and middle school students alike (and everyone in-between), as Su combines two words, “mathematics” and “flourishing” that rarely mingle in the public mind.

Oddly, in a way, this very current book reminds me of some words from the Introduction to a Laurie Buxton book, "Mathematics For Everyone" over 35 years ago, that I'll end with (from the Introduction):

"Mathematics is a living and growing organism; within it are intricate and delicate structures of strong aesthetic appeal.  It offers opportunities for surprise as unexpected vistas open the mind to new lines of thought. There is a moment when, after struggling with an intractable problem, the mechanism is suddenly clear, and the problem resolves with a deep sense of rightness. In this it offers the most intense sense  of intellectual pleasures. 

"Mathematics was created by all manner of people. There were religious bigots and atheists, political reactionaries and wild revolutionaries, snobs and egalitarians; some were people of great charm, some odious. If there is any common denominator, it is a driving curiosity, a desire to understand, a need to build, even if the structures be abstract. Admirably suited though mathematics is to modelling the real world, it can be developed totally without dependence on anything outside itself. Parts of it are simply mind creations, owing nothing to the physical world. It is a playground for the mind... 

"Regrettably, many of us have never been allowed to see what mathematics is. It has been obscured by pointless emphasis on routines rather than ideas. This failure to distinguish what is important has led many people to see mathematics as a collection of totally arbitrary rules which have to be learnt by rote, and performed with the exactness and precision of a religious rite. Ask a person if there is much to be remembered in mathematics; if they speak of an overwhelming mass of material, their education in this area has been counter-productive; not merely neutral. Mathematics, properly seen, is a connected web; grasp at one piece and all the surrounding region comes to mind."

ADDENDUM:  Since I'm not giving a detailed review of the volume here I'll offer this link to a fuller review:
https://harvardmagazine.com/2020/01/francis-su-math

Our Fragile Nation

American democracy is fragile, yet resilient. We'll soon see if Republicans turn the impeachment trial of demagogue Donald Trump into a farcical sham (as they'll no doubt attempt to do). How many Republican Senators will refuse to cave to money, power, and autocracy, and actually seriously consider the Constitution, rule-of-law, and founding principles?....

Today (because it seems timely) I am just re-posting, with minor changes, an entry from close to a year ago:

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Most readers here likely know the famous story of Kurt Gödel’s 1947 visit to an examiner’s office to apply for U.S. citizenship — it’s been briefly told many places, as I did back HERE.

Gödel, logician that he was, thought he’d found a 'logical flaw' or 'contradiction' in the U.S. Constitution that would allow a dictator to take power in the U.S., not unlike what Europe had witnessed. Friends, Oskar Morgenstern and Albert Einstein, talked Gödel out of bringing this up at his examination, believing, according to some accounts, that his worry was 'far-fetched and outlandish.'  No one knows for sure what his qualms centered upon, but the most widespread guess is that he was concerned about Article V of the Constitution allowing for amendments to the Constitution… even amendments that might weaken/eliminate various checks-and-balances and hand more authority to a despotic leader. We could theoretically amend ourselves right into a dictatorship.

The appeal of this explanation is that it reflects Gödel's well-established interest in self-reference: i.e., the Constitution could be amended, the amendments could be amended, the amendments to the amendments could be amended, etc.

While certainly possible, I’ve never been fully comfortable with that ‘guess’ of Gödel’s thought process, because Kurt probably realized what a slow, arduous, unwieldy path amending the Constitution actually is… with ample opportunity along the way to redress or put the brakes on ill-founded changes.

I’ve begun to wonder if just perhaps what Gödel had in mind was, alternatively, something far simpler, more direct, and more mathematical:

He would’ve clearly understood the math of the Electoral College (as spelled out in Amendment XII of the Constitution), and recognized that a demagogic individual could become President with a minority of the citizens' vote (not even a plurality, let alone a majority) by simply concentrating on a handful of key states. Then, with backing of a subservient Party he might run roughshod over most checks-and-balances simply with the judicious use of Executive Orders, Executive Privilege, emergency measures, martial law, judicial appointments, and the President’s function as Commander-In-Chief of the military... may or may not be a better explanation than the Article V focus, and might or might not be viewed as a 'logical flaw.'

In the oft-quoted words of Sinclair Lewis (who was contemporaneous with Gödel):

 "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."

In short, if enough of the electorate is naive and ignorant enough to elect one, isn’t every democracy at risk of putting a despot-to-be into power, and made even easier with our Electoral College system? The German experience may be more 'normal' than we care to contemplate...

Is THAT what Gödel realized 72+ years ago?

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More Book Lists…

Book lists always make good space-fillers! So here we go ;)

Awhile back I stumbled upon an 8-year-old post from prolific author Ian Stewart listing his  “Top 10” popular math books:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jan/18/ian-stewart-top-10-popular-mathematics

In 2012 that list was as follows (no particular order):

The Man Who Knew Infinity  — Robert Kanigel

Gödel, Escher, Bach  — Douglas Hofstadter

The Colossal Book of Mathematics  — Martin Gardner

Euclid and The Rainforest  — Joseph Mazur

Four Colors Suffice   — Robin Wilson

What Is Mathematics, Really?  — Reuben Hersh

Magical Mathematics    — Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham

Games of Life   — Karl Sigmund

Mathematical Tales of Mathematical Wonder   — ed. by Rudy Rucker

The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy   — Isaac Newton

(don't know what Stewart might add to that list in the dozen years since it appeared)

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This made me start looking around the Web for other favorite popular math book lists. There were fewer than I expected.

This 13-member list comes from math teacher Ali Kayaspor:

• Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea — Charles Seife.
• Prelude to Mathematics — W.W. Sawyer.
• Measurement   — Paul Lockhart
• The Joy of X — Steven Strogatz.
• An Imaginary Tale — Paul Nahin.
• Proofs From the Book  — Aigner and Ziegler
• Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension    — Matt Parker
• What is Mathematics?   — Courant and Robbins
• A History of Pi    — Petr Beckmann
• e: The Story of a Number    -- Eli Maor
• Imagining Numbers   -- Barry Mazur
• Journey Through Genius   -- William Dunham
• Prime Obsession   -- John Derbyshire

Kayaspor also has a separate book-list "for math people and designers":

https://medium.com/however-mathematics/25-interesting-books-for-math-people-and-designers-1c7ffcebb66a

From the GoodReads website comes this list of a dozen math-related books:

Gödel, Escher, Bach — D. Hofstadter

Fermat’s Enigma  — Simon Singh

Flatland  — Edwin Abbott

The Code Book  — Simon Singh

Zero    — Charles Seife

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers  — Paul Hoffman

Journey Through Genius  — W. Dunham

A Beautiful Mind   — Sylvia Nasar

The Drunkard’s Walk   — Leonard Mlodinow

How to Lie with Statistics  — Darrell Huff

Euclid’s Elements — Euclid

What Is Mathematics   — Courant and Robbins

The FiveBooks site offers this (2018) list of 10 best math 'history' books:

Prime Obsession  — J. Derbyshire

Mathematics for the Nonmathematician   — Morris Kline

Zero  the biography of a dangerous idea   — Charles Seife

A Concise History of Mathematics   — Dirk Struik

Unknown Quantity  — J. Derbyshire

The Math Book   — Clifford Pickover

A History of Mathematics   — Merzbach and Boyer

God Created the Integers   — Stephen Hawking

Fermat’s Enigma   — Simon Singh

Journey Through Genius   — W. Dunham

The Fivebooks site has several other science/math related listings possibly worth perusing:

https://fivebooks.com/category/mathematics-and-science/maths-statistics/

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This list comes from Peter Flom on Quora:

https://www.quora.com/What-are-your-favorite-math-books-1

A Mathematician's Lament — Paul Lockhart

Out of the Labyrinth — Robert and Ellen Kaplan

Conversations with a Mathematician — Gregory Chaitin

Proofs and Refutations  — Imre Lakatos. 

Mathematics: Coffee Time in Memphis — Bela Belobas

The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Science 1250-15400 — Alfred Crosby

Godel Escher Bach — Douglas Hofstadter

The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel — Rebecca Goldstein

Group Theory in the Bedroom and Other Mathematical Diversions — Brian Hayes
 Pretty much anything by Martin Gardner or Ian Stewart

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Here's one of several Reddit threads related to favorite math books:

https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/2efz50/best_math_book_youve_ever_read/

Simon Singh offers up a long list of recommendations here:

https://simonsingh.net/books/recommended-books/mathematics-books/

And finally, I’ll add my own tentative baker's-dozen list (in no special order, and subject to change on a different day-of-the-week) to the mix:

The Prime Number Conspiracy  — ed. by Thomas Lin

Single Digits   — Marc Chamberland

Math With Bad Drawings  — Ben Orlin

Things To Make and Do In the Fourth Dimension  — Matt Parker

How Not To Be Wrong   -- Jordan Ellenberg

The Language of Mathematics — Keith Devlin

The Colossal Book of Mathematics   — Martin Gardner

How Mathematicians Think  — William Byers

The Music of the Primes  — Marcus du Sautoy

Mathematics For Everyone   — Laurie Buxton

Grapes of Math   — Alex Bellos

Unknown Quantity   — John Derbyshire
The Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Mathematics  -- David Wells

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3 additional books are among my all-time favorites, but their subject matter crosses so many boundaries that I don’t really think of them as ‘popular math books’:

The Outer Limits of Reason  — Noson Yanofsky

Gödel, Escher, Bach    — Douglas Hofstadter

When Einstein Walked With Gödel — Jim Holt
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By the way, for those whose taste runs to fiction Alex Kasman maintains a large site of recommended math-related fiction/novels:
http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/
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Honestly though, all of these barely scratch the surface of the wonderful math reading that is out there. Indeed, I think we're currently experiencing a kind of golden age for popular math!

ASMR Monday

OK, to start your week, the first ASMR post of 2020. One genre of ASMR I only stumbled upon a few months back (and quickly became a favorite type) is often called "fast and aggressive ASMR," generally involving rapidly produced and changing auditory stimuli. Because the focus is on the audile and not visual aspect it can simply be played in the background while doing other things online, or simply closing one's eyes and listening. Here is one example:

Lies, Damned Lies, and....

(via Wikipedia)

                                                    
One of the late chapters in David Spiegelhalter’s fine volume, “The Art of Statistics,” focuses on the problems and reproducibility crisis in psychology research.

This sentence gave me a bit of a startle: “In a 2012 survey of 2,155 US academic psychologists, just 2% admitted to falsifying data.” The part that gave me a gasp was the phrase, “just 2%” as if that was a small figure. I’m not surprised that 2% have falsified data; I’m surprised that that many would admit to it! Indeed, I feel sure (though am only guessing) that the majority who have done it would NOT admit to it, and that the true figure is therefore probably at least double the 2% given — that would be at least 4% who haven’t just made mistakes, or fudged a little, or spun their conclusions, but outright falsified data! 

I don’t know how many total academic psychologists there are, but depending where they are and how much they publish, 2 - 4+% represents a pretty serious problem in my mind.  And while psychology is probably especially vulnerable to such falsification this doesn’t even address how much may additionally go on in biological, medical, and physical science fields. Spiegelhalter goes on to note that 94% of those in the study admitted committing at least one of 10 "questionable research practices" looked at.  Of course there are many reasons for such a state of affairs, but ultimately none very defensible. The award-winning site "Retraction Watch" has been tracking, for years now, published scientific papers that are retracted due to various issues, including fraud -- and they never seem to run out of material! :(( (definitely a site worth following and supporting if you're not already).

I was a psychology major myself 45 years ago and complained, to deaf ears, about the sloppiness of the field, but sloppiness and fraud are almost separate issues. Still, glad to see it all attracting more attention these days.

The study Spiegelhalter cites is here (with a lot more details):

https://www.cmu.edu/dietrich/sds/docs/loewenstein/MeasPrevalQuestTruthTelling.pdf

Reuben and Martin...

     “The working mathematician is a Platonist on weekdays, a formalist on weekends.”  

                                                                                      — Reuben Hersh

Mathematician and popular prolific writer Reuben Hersh died on Jan. 3, apparently in Santa Fe, NM., but I haven’t seen any details about his demise or major tributes as yet on the Web (no doubt forthcoming).  Hersh started off with a B.A. in English literature in 1947, and only later returned to school to attain his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1962.

Hersh’s writing was almost always interesting and thought-provoking (advocating what he termed a “humanist” view of mathematics) whether one agreed with him or not. He famously feuded with recreational mathematician/writer Martin Gardner as exemplified in a well-known and critical 1997 review Gardner wrote about Hersh’s popular volume, “What Is Mathematics, Really?” Gardner was a vocal and sharp-tongued "Platonist;" Hersh was not. Definitely worth a read if you’ve never seen it (the review):

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-oct-12-bk-44915-story.html

Gardner leads off saying he has “such high respect for [Hersh] as a mathematician and such low respect for his philosophy of mathematics.” And it gets harsher from there.

Hersh did eventually reply to Gardner though I couldn’t find a direct, free link to it on the Web (if someone knows of one let us know). This page offers up the first page of Hersh’s response and means for seeing the rest if you so wish:

https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/reply-to-martin-gardner-1IRiQyGw5c

==> ADDENDUM: Thanks to .mau (in comments below) for finding this unformatted link to Hersh’s response:

http://139.6.160.6/litecat/litie/?param[]=litie_200&value[]=Hersh,%20R

Many of Hersh's other articles are here:

https://sites.google.com/site/reubenhersharticlesetc/home/articles

Martin Gardner, who like Hersh died in his 90's, wanted to believe there was an 'afterlife' following death. Perhaps if there is, he and Reuben are carrying on their fascinating debate somewhere in the great beyond... or, better yet, maybe they've found a final answer.
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ADDENDUM:  Here's one tribute to Reuben that came in a few weeks after his death:
https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/tribute-reuben-hersh

It's A Contest!

MoMath

                                                

I’m sure word of this is getting disseminated adequately without my little added promo for it, but if you haven’t heard yet the National Museum of Mathematics has announced the "Steven H. Strogatz Prize for Math Communication" for applicants between 15 and 18 years of age. How cool is that! Read all about it here:

https://momath.org/the-steven-h-strogatz-prize-for-math-communication/

The contest is worldwide, and I’ll bet there are going to be some sensational, maybe mind-blowing entries -- so much untapped creativity across the globe. But deadline for submissions is April 22, 2020, not all that far off. All sorts of forms of communication are encouraged, falling into various categories, and will be judged on the basis of “content, creativity, communication.” There will be cash prizes and of course posting of winning entries on the Web.

What a great idea to encourage young math minds early on along their path. Hope/assume this will be an annual event.

Twitter Resolve….

                                   

It's that ridiculous time of year again for well-intended (if improbably-kept) resolutions:

1)  Re-read more math and statistics books… and, peruse less politics on Twitter. 

2)  Lift more weights, do more back exercises… and, tweet less. 

3)  Play more pickleball/tennis… and, post fewer re-tweets. 

4)  (Pretend to) play my guitar more… while responding on Twitter less.  

5)  Eat fewer carbs, breakfast pastries, and treats… resist growling, grumbling over tweets.   

6)  Dwell more on the awesome and transcendent… and less on the terse and snarky.

…catch my drift; there's a theme here (now if someone would hold me to it).

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...With an impeachment trial soon underway (I presume) and state primaries little over a month away I may be too distracted by politics for awhile to blog much (though I do have plenty of ASMR videos saved to post sporadically!). So IF posts become sparse it just means that I'm busy with other things (...like, you know, saving democracy!), and not gone into hiding.