Mathblogging.org Weekly Picks

We try to read every blog post that goes through Mathblogging.org. For the Weekly Picks, we collect posts in one category from last week to give you an impression of what the mathematical blogosphere has to offer. (Read this for more information on this change.)

Last week, we focused on “Pure Researchers“.

Exposition

• At Computational Complexity, Bill Gasarch discussed natural vs unnatural mathematical objects.
• At Travels in a Mathematical World, Peter Rowlett wonders about the culture of historical inaccuracies.
• At Good Math, Bad Math, Mark Chu Caroll takes apart the NYT’s op ed “Is Algebra Necessary?”.
• Dan Ma explains how useful Jones’ Lemma can be.
• At Mathlog (translation), Thilo Kuessner explains the most counter-intuitive topology result — Nash’s C1-embedding theorem.

Research

• Summertime is conference time. Here are a few posts reporting from meetings: SymOmega‘s Gordon Royle visit the Third Workshop on Graphs and Matroids in Maastricht, PhD+Epsilon‘s Adriana Salerno went to three workshops and Peter Cameron was at the Workshop on Homogeneous Structures in Prague.
• Also including some workshop material, Emanuel Kowalski shares multiple research related news.
• At the Edinburgh Mathematical Physics Groups, José Figueroa-O’Farrill does some research-blogging about his joint paper on homogeneity conjecture for supergravity backgrounds.

Community

• Scott Aaronson alerted the community that the Complexity Zoo was down — it’s back up but volunteers are still needed.
• Not Even Wrong, Peter Woit shares his thoughts on The Fundamental Physics prize.
• At Piece of Mind, Nassif Ghoussoub believes the Canadian government is starting to get it.
• Gyre&Gimble ponders mathematical and linguistical ability.

Enjoy!