Puzzles of various sorts have been popular on the math blogosphere lately, so I thought I’d make my own modest contribution. As puzzles go, there is not very much to this one — no calculations are necessary, you can just look at it and visualize the answer. But the backstory that goes with [...]
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about SocialRank, which seems to be a new blog search engine that identifies which blogs entries are currently generating a lot of interest. These entries are categorized by subject matter and daily ‘top 15′ lists are created for the top blogs and top blog entries. [...]
Welcome to the 16th Carnival of Mathematics, the comments and opinions edition. The host of the previous edition of the carnival set up some pretty high expectations, what with providing both interesting background information on the fortnight’s posts, and pretty pictures to accompany them. We’ll be having none of that here. No, [...]
I’m feeling a little bit under the weather, so rather than trying to force myself to finish gestating the next Carnival of Mathematics, I’m going to get some rest. But don’t worry, the delivery shouldn’t be more than a few hours overdue.
Let me take this moment to remind everyone that the Blog Carnival submission [...]
The 15th Carnival of Mathematics is now up at John Kemeny’s A Mispelt Bog, and it looks like a good one. I especially like how he has taken the time to provide some background on the posted subjects above and beyond what was in the post entries themselves. It definitely sets a high [...]
I was just thinking to myself that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a new Carnival of Mathematics, and sure enough when I checked the calendar I found that the 11th edition is now up at Grey Matters. Hmmm, none of the math/cs blogs I read regularly posted any announcements about this; [...]
The title of this post is not a reference to quantum uncertainty, but rather to the notion of Platonic idealism suggested by today’s xkcd comic titled Certainty:
It is, unfortunately, untrue.
Now, in practical terms, math as a school subject has a lot less uncertainty associated with it than, say, literary criticism. If you’re asked on [...]