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!