Category Archives: Mathematics

Surfing the Web, Friday Afternoon

Posted on Friday 16 September 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

No backlog of links from this morning or yesterday, so I’m sitting down right now (4:30pm PDT) and surfing all my favorite website to see what jumps out. …Posting at 5:20pm. Slate, Marissa Martinelli, 15 Sept 2022: Deep Space Whine, … Continue reading →

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George Gamow: One Two Three… Infinity

Posted on Wednesday 10 August 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s an oldie, not just for first being published in 1947 (see Wikipedia) but also for being one of the first science nonfiction books I ever read, back when I bought this copy in 1969. (Seen here is the Bantam … Continue reading →

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LQCs: Anti-Evolutionists’ Failures at Math

Posted on Thursday 2 June 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Skeptical Inquirer, Jason Rosenhouse, May/June 2022 issue: The Failures of Mathematical Anti-Evolutionism And commenting on it, Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution is True, 2 June 2022: The intellectual vacuity of mathematical arguments against evolution

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John Allen Paulos, ONCE UPON A NUMBER: The Hidden Mathematical Logic of Stories (1998)

Posted on Monday 31 January 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s another John Allen Paulos book, one from 1998, and one that I had not previously read. When I noticed it on the shelf a few weeks ago I realized this was now of particular interest, since in recent years … Continue reading →

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John Allen Paulos, INNUMERACY: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (1988)

Posted on Friday 21 January 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

This slender book was first published in 1988 (I have the 1990 paperback edition) and became a bestseller. It was one of the earliest books on the very general theme of how many people don’t understand the world around them, … Continue reading →

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L&Qs&Cs: Innumeracy and Covid

Posted on Sunday 14 November 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Humans are intuitively not good at proportions and other statistical concepts, but those concepts can be taught. They are not, and politicians and partisan news sources use public misunderstanding of these concepts to their advantage.

Posted in Mathematics, Politics, Social Progress | Comments Off on L&Qs&Cs: Innumeracy and Covid

Ls&Cs: Two Mathematical Ideas

Posted on Thursday 5 August 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

First: Slate: What Does It Really Mean When a Headline Says “75 Percent of Cases Occurred in Vaccinated People”?, subtitled, “A simple math lesson to calm some of the panic around breakthrough cases.”

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Links and Comments: Science Matters, 18 Mar 2021

Posted on Thursday 18 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Catching up on things that have caught me eye the past week or two. How humans have remade the Earth; about Daylight Saving Time; Dark Matter; How time might flow in two directions; the Nature of mathematics.

Posted in Mathematics, Philosophy | Comments Off on Links and Comments: Science Matters, 18 Mar 2021

Links and Comments: The Game of Life; Authoritarianism; Conservatives and the Feudal System

Posted on Saturday 2 January 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

NYT, from last week’s Tuesday Science section: The Lasting Lessons of John Conway’s Game of Life. (Print title: “Life, In All Its Glory” with subtitle “Fifty year on, a game still offers lessons about simplicity, complexity and uncertain.”) The article … Continue reading →

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John Allen Paulos, IRRELIGION (2008)

Posted on Wednesday 18 March 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

John Allen Paulos, Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Hill and Wang, 2008. John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics who’s become, over the past three decades, well-known as … Continue reading →

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