Having taken Monday off for the briefest of honeymoons, I returned on Tuesday with an apparently too-cryptic post that required an addendum to make its meaning clear. Thanks to everyone who sent good wishes and congratulations. I am feeling extremely fortunate.
When I announced last week that I’d be taking a couple of days off, readers took the occasion to raise some issues in the foundations of mathematics. This inspired me to write a long-intended post correcting some elementary errors that frequently come up in these discussions. At least one very confused and feisty commenter jumped to the conclusion that I was saying something controversial and that is was his duty to disagree, loudly and repeatedly.
Thursday’s post was about the magic of the past and the technology of the present, which seem roughly equivalent. And on Friday we took on Arizona’s new immigration law and one of its more fatuous defenders.
With no life-changing events scheduled for the coming weekend, I expect to be back, as usual, on Monday.
Addendum: I realize that some people may object, “hey, violating immigration law is a crime”. Some of these people probably believe they have an actual point, and that their objection actually means something about the substance of my analogy.
To those people, I will amend my proposal: Instead of applying to *all* native-born Arizonians, these efforts to force them out of state should be limited only to those Arizonians who have violated copyright law by sharing things such as music files, movies, or computer software without paying for them.
Oops, that was meant for another post. I’ll re-post this comment there. Feel free to remove it from here. Sorry :(
I have a request:
I found the math post to be interesting at first. I came back today to all of the comments and my head is spinning. I now know what the Peano axioms are and I love them. It reminds me of Aristotle.
I have not enjoyed a moment of math since I was done with precalc and went on to calculus. I find these discussions very interesting but also a bit over my head. Can anyone recommend a textbook or book that can get me and others up to speed?
I was going to include statistics in my sentence with calculus but decided not to because I don’t really think of it as math.
I think statistics should be contrasted to mathematics to show what an invention looks like.
I know I am very short on knowledge and I’m using my gut whereas others are a bit more informed, but statistics feels like contrived bs when compared to algebra, calculus, and logic. I don’t mean to say it can’t be useful, just that it seems unnatural.
I hope someone with bigger brains than I have cares to comment on this.
how on earth do you have time to get married??? even your weekend breaks are short. you should take more time off. at least a week.
if i created everything, i would take six days off, and do it all in one day. ;]
I am waiting to hear your opinion on Justice Alito’s hypocrisy concerning the first amendment and free speech.
From where i stand i think he actually got it right this time but i also see it’s not about principle.
Pete: the Central Limit Theorem is beautiful and powerful mathematics. Yates’ Correction for Continuity is a messy necessity. However, there are bits of stuff you might well be taught in a calculus course that are quite far from being pure mathematics (numerical integration methods being the most obvious). It’s unfair to tar all of statistics with the same brush, any discipline with real world applications is going to be messy round the edges, but CLT and The Strong Law of Large numbers are examples of beautiful and elegant statistics.