Mathblogging.org Weekly Picks

We try to read every blog post that goes through Mathblogging.org. For the Weekly Picks, we collect posts from last week that give you an impression of what the mathematical blogosphere has to offer.

{A few more posts than usual since we didn’t post last week.}

Community

• The Accidental Mathematician offers insight into the amount of administrative work of a full professor.
• A CS Professor enjoys 5 minute presentations by job-seekers at ICTS.
• Nuit Blanche writes on open access and open data.
• Doron Zeilberger remembers Herbert Wilf.
• Frank Morgan’s Blog collects resources for undergraduate research opportunities.
• Piece of Mind explores more evidence that the criticism of NSERC’s policy changes is shared by communities other than the mathematical one.
• Last but not least, Timothy Gowers announces not contribute to Elsevier journals in any way.

Art, Essays etc.

• Rhapsody in Numbers creates a fractal for the Collatz 3n+1 problem (which was picked up by Gaussianos, translation).
• Mr. Palomar explains cellular automata’s chess of life (translation).
• Out of the Norm gets from boarding planes to pigeon holes.
• Intersections shares Maurice Kendall’s poem Hiawatha Designs an Experiment.
• travels in a mathematical world improves Ian Stewarts’ The Guardian list of popular mathematics books by crowdsourcing.
• matheminutes brings chaos to your calculator — with bifurcation and all.
• Second Rate Minds is annoyed by hot light bulbs and other puzzles.

Education

• Angles of Reflection takes on the big one: grades.
• Piece of Mind introduces Small Number and the efforts to communicate mathematics better to First Nation students.
• Diary of a maths teacher discusses why society needs to change how it views math and why we should dare to bring (true) math into the classroom
• Republic of Math shares nice example for (true) mathematics that can be done in the classroom.
• dy/dan shares a transcript of a panel discussion with Keith Devlin, Karim Ani and Dan Meyer himself.
• Musing Mathematically coins the term “atomic skills”, important for understanding, but are uninteresting on their own
• Il piccolo Friedrich shares a personal story of becoming a teacher and a great example of how to present difficult material in the classroom (translation).

Research

• The preprint on the minimal number of hints necessary for a sudoku has been picked up Maurizio Codogno (translation) and the mathematical approach is sketched out at Rhapsody in Numbers.
• Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference and Social Science asks for input regarding issues in the ethics and statistics.
• M-Phi explains the elementary philosophical resolutions of paradoxes.
• Xi’an’s Og is still Bayesian even if Stephen Senn thinks otherwise.

Shorts

• neverendingbooks combines a 48 posts into an ebook Monsters and Moonshine.

Enjoy!

Mathblogging.org at Science Online 2012

Since the weekly picks are behind schedule (wikipedia blacked out somehow and we had to work on our homework problems without cheating ), here’s some unrelated news.

This afternoon, I will be representing mathblogging.org at ScienceOnline2012, dubbed the South By Southwest of science blogging. It’s been a fantastic un-conference so far, exceeding my wildest expectations.

I will be presenting a small tech demo and, if technology won’t abandon me, I will be showing off a rough draft of our complete redesign of mathblogging.org. Be sure to check the twitter feed for #scio12. Hopefully, this will help scientists and science communicators to find all the amazing work the mathematical blogging community is doing already.

Joining the protest against SOPA

We are supporting the strike against SOPA and PIPA both on the blog and on mathblogging.org.

Mathblogging.org relies exclusively on the great community of mathematical bloggers, a community that is driven by user-generated content. But much more is at stake, so please follow the links on the ribbon to learn more

Mathblogging.org Weekly Picks

We try to read every blog post that goes through Mathblogging.org. For the Weekly Picks, we collect posts from last week that give you an impression of what the mathematical blogosphere has to offer.

{A few more posts than usual since we couldn’t post last week.}

Community

• The highlight of last week was, of course, the Joint Mathematics Meeting 2012 in Boston. There was lots of blogging and tweeting afoot; here’s our custom google search for “joint math meetings 2012″ as well as the twitter search for the official #jmm2012 hashtag — this will keep you busy for about a year, right in time for next year’s meeting in San Diego.
• The Accidental Mathematician discusses the state of the profession.
• Ars Physica reviews the very rich year in  high energy physics (translation).
• Low Dimensional Topology announces an experiment of combining a class, a seminar and video lectures on a paper in progress.
• My Biased Coin describes the fun of collaborating with great people.

Art, Essays etc.

• matthen takes an astroidal curve to the next level.
• Mr Honner suffers gladly for a piece of icy mathematical beauty.
• Gli Studenti Oggi starts a new series on Eratosthenes (translation).
• Nanoexplanations ponders lack of industry implementations at the example of the recent Stratfor hack.

Education

• Angrymath offers a neat example for how to bring statistics into the classroom.
• Musing Mathematically makes a case for teachers to not just teach, but DO math too.
• Math Hombre observes how modern technology can (and does) change us and the younger generations.
• Popinga shares a beautiful exposition on self-reference, tautologies and contradictions (translation).

Research

• Gyre&Gimble expands an article on abuse of notation.
• Felix Breuer recaps the experience of giving a different kind of course  ”Using intuitive geometry”
• The Math Less Traveled arrives at a self-square decadic number.

Shorts

• Two youtube heavyweights, one mission: Vi Hart joins forces with Khan Academy.
• Gaussianos reports that the Spanish Institute of Mathematics has been founded (translation).

Enjoy!

No Weekly Picks this week

This week was just too busy with most of us hanging out at the Joint Meetings. We’ll return next week. Our apologies for the inconvenience.