I’ve learned to take all media articles about internet phenomena with a grain of salt, but this article from news.com, Growing Pains for Wikipedia, claims that Wikipedia is changing its policy so that anonymous users cannot create new pages (they can still edit existing pages). While practically speaking it’s a small change, it’s a big change in Wikipedia philosophy. The online encyclopedia has always prided itself in the ability of anyone to edit, with the notion that making participation as easy as possible will attract more and higher quality editing.
Author Archives: Walt
Bishop quote
Eric Schechter’s Handbook of Analysis and Its Foundations has a cool quote from constructivist mathematician Errett Bishop:
Mathematics belongs to man, not to God. We are not interested in properties of the positive integers that have no descriptive meaning for finite man. When a man proves a positive integer to exist, he should show how to find it. If God has mathematics of his own that needs to be done, let him do it himself.
Celestial Mechanics
The AMS has been posting articles for the next issue of the Bulletin of the AMS as they arrive. One recent arrival is New methods in celestial mechanics and mission design by Marsden and Ross, which provides a pretty good introduction to the latest developments in celestial mechanics — still a difficult subject after so many centuries.
Spin Glasses
If you’ve ever wondered what a spin glass was, well here’s your answer: Spin Glasses for Pedestrians.
Game Theory .net
The site Game Theory .net has links to a truly gigantic collection of lecture notes on game theory and its economic applications.
Newcomb’s paradox
I’ve just run across an interesting thought experiment known as Newcomb’s paradox. Suppose there is a being, called the Predictor, that presents you with a choice. There are two boxes. The first box may or may not contain $1,000,000. The second box always contains $1,000. You can choose to open either one box or both boxes. While you are making your choice, the Predictor does not touch the boxes in any way — whether or not the first box contains money is already determined.
Many people have encountered the Predictor before, and have discovered that he seems to always predict what you are going to do. Anyone who has ever chosen to open just the first box receives the $1,000,000. Any who has ever chosen to open both boxes finds the first box empty, and only receives $1,000.
Which would you choose?
Baez Week 223
Week 223 of This Week’s Finds in Mathematical Physics is up.
Quantum Computation
John Preskill teaches a course on Quantum Computation at Caltech, and has made his lecture notes available online.
December Notices
The December issue of the Notices of the AMS is now available.
Earliest Uses of Math Terminology
Here’s an interesting site: Jeff Miller’s Earliest Known Uses of Some of the Words of Mathematics, which offers an account of the introduction of various mathematical and statistical terms.