I ran across this journey to understand Poincaré and thought I would pass it on. I am a big fan of the idea of popularizations, and am especially enamored with the “you too could have invented X” leitmotif that is statrting to emerge in that space (I read your version on CS Monads, sigfpe. it only made me like the form more). This link isn’t in that vein, but any effort is a worthwhile one in my book. It is a work in progress, so I am worried about commenting on it, but I am interested in people’s opinion of it. Is it off target for any particular audience other than the author? By that I mean the people who know the math will think too little is being said, while the ones who do not will be under the impression the trees are occluding the forest. More to the point, is any popularization doomed to such a critique?
Exercises for Labor Day
I missed these a couple of months ago when they came out. But, if you are looking for something to do this Labor day (in the US anyway, I’m currently in the UK and finding it difficult not to write “Labour”), here are the problems for the 47th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO): day 1 and day 2. Have fun!
Topological semantics of computer programs
The latest issue of the e-journal, Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, has a nice summary article by Michael Huth on his work using topology for computer program semantics (vol. 161, pp. 3–23, 2006).
Vacation for Labor Day Weekend
I will be away from my computer for the Labor Day weekend here in the United States, so there will be no posts from me for the next couple of days.
Letters from Grothendieck
John Baez links to several letters from Grothendieck that have been posted on the Web. The most famous, of course, is Pursuing Stacks, which circulated for many years in photocopy form.
Machine-Checkable Proofs
Scott Aaronson asks why mathematicians haven’t switched to machine-checkable proofs, and answers his own question by exhibiting the basically-human-unreadable proof of the irrationality of the square root of two using the HOL Light theorem prover. Scott provides a few interesting links:
- Adventures in the Verification of Mathematics, an essay discussing some of the issues by Harvey Friedman.
- Formalizing 100 Theorems, a list of a 100 candidate theorems for verification, and the systems that have verified them, by Freek Wiedijk.
- The Seventeen Provers of the World, a book-length comparison of different formalizations of the proof of the irrationality of the square root of 2, also by Freek Wiedijk
There is also the Flyspeck Project, a project to formalize Thomas Hales’ computer proof of the Kepler conjecture, which we mentioned once before.
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Confessions of a Pluto-hating fiend
The enterprising citizen-journalists affiliated with the Huffington Post have discovered the truth about me: I am a Pluto-hating fiend. First we remove it from the list of planets, next we remove it from the sky altogether…
More Manifold Destiny
There has been intensive discussion of Nasar and Gruber’s Manifold Destiny at Not Even Wrong, in these threads: Latest on Poincare, 2006 Fields Medal Winners, and Some Links. The controversy centers around whether Nasar and Gruber are unfair to Yau, but has taken an interesting turn: some of the commenters accuse the article of perpetuating stereotypes of Chinese mathematicians. The existence of a stereotype of Chinese mathematicians is news to me (ironically given the situation, there is a well-developed stereotype of Russian mathematicians that I have heard people invoke), so I’m curious if anyone else has ever heard any such stereotyping.
American Institute of Mathematics clones Alhambra
I see via Peter Woit that the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM), an independent mathematics research institute in Silicon Valley, is going to get a permanent in the form of a new $50 million dollar building modeled after Alhambra, a medieval Moorish castle in Grenada, Spain. AIM was cofounded by John Fry, the chief executive of Fry’s Electronics. (If you’ve never shopped at Fry’s, it’s like Home Depot for computers. They display computer parts the way a hardware store displays nails.)
The Demotion of Pluto
I know it doesn’t really matter, but I felt very strongly that Pluto should be demoted from being a planet. Now that it’s actually happened I feel sad that it’s happened. That means I’ve had two more emotions about Pluto than I ever expected to have.