Math Digest

Summaries of Media Coverage of Math

Edited by Allyn Jackson, AMS
Contributors: Mike Breen (AMS), Claudia Clark (freelance science writer), Lisa DeKeukelaere (2004 AMS Media Fellow), Annette Emerson (AMS), Brie Finegold (University of California, Santa Barbara), Baldur Hedinsson (Boston University), and Adriana Salerno (Bates College)

2010 Math Digest

December

• "He Perfects Animation Using Math and Science," The New York Times, 29 December 2010
• "The US embassy cables enigma," Guardian, 23 December 2010
• "'Principia Mathematica' Celebrates 100 Years," All Things Considered, National Public Radio, 22 December 2010
• "A scientist's finest hour," The Budapest Times, 20 December, 2010
• "10th Annual Year in Ideas," New York Times Magazine, 19 December 2010
• "Antimatter exemplifies mathematics' prescience," Science News, 18 December 2010
• "Google Book Tool Tracks Cultural Change With Words," National Public Radio, 16 December 2010
• "Fairfield U. professor devises math tool to help streamline cancer research," Connecticut Post, 15 December 2010
• "Math Puzzles' Oldest Ancestors Took Form on Egyptian Papyrus," New York Times, 6 December 2010
• "Non-Transitivity in Baseball, Medicine, Gambling and Politics," ABCNews.com, 5 December 2010
• "Small College Goes Big in Research for Recruiting," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 5 December 2010
• "Mathematical immortality? Give a theorem your name," New Scientist, 3 December 2010
• "U.S. 'Connects The Dots' To Catch Roadside Bombers," Morning Edition, National Public Radio, 3 December 2010
• "The Incredible, Edible Foam--and the Mysterious Mathematics Behind It," Scientific American, December 2010
• "The Science of 'Disestimation'," Scientific American, December 2010
• "A Geometric Theory of Everything," Scientific American, December 2010

November

• "Abstracts can't be avoided," Mail & Guardian, 30 November 2010
• "Mathematicians protest degree granted by University of Manitoba," National Post, 28 November 2010
• "Geometry of the Universe," Nature, 25 November 2010
• "Mysteries of the Mystic Rose," The Age, 22 November 2010
• "Math Appeal," Oregon Public Broadcasting, 22 November 2010
• "Professors of the Year: They Put Students in Charge of Learning," Chronicle of Higher Education, 18 November 2010
• "Trading With Gaussian Models Of Statistics," (Investopedia), San Francisco Chronicle, 15 November 2010
• Articles on New York University exhibition of Babylonian mathematical tablets
• Articles on modeling how cats drink milk
• "Stanford study: American math achievement trails most industrialized nations" San Jose Mercury News, 10 November 2010
  "US students not measuring up in math," NBC Nightly News, 10 November 2010
• "Who's Counting: Crooked Coins, Fair Probabilities and Strange Sequences," ABC News.com, 7 November 2010
• "Scientific Observations," Science News, 6 November 2010
  "Top statistician explains what all those numbers mean," Science News, 6 November 2010
• "Win a million dollars with maths," The Guardian, 2 November 2010
• "Recreational Computing," American Scientist, November-December 2010
• "PopSci's 9th Annual Brilliant 10," Popular Science, November 2010

October

• "In den USA war ich ein Ziel von Terroristen," Interview with Jonathan Farley, Wiener Zeitung, 30 October 2010
• "Vital Statistics," Nature, 21 October 2010
• Articles on the death of Benoît Mandelbrot
• "Mathematically Speaking: Equations," Wired.com, 17 October 2010 (and prior)
• "Numbers Are a Weak Spot In the B.C.S. Standings," The New York Times, 17 October 2010
• "Dartmouth project takes science to rural libraries," Boston.com, 17 October 2010
• "Maths is the language of the universe," New Statesman, 14 October 2010
• "Curious mathematical law is rife in nature," New Scientist, 14 October 2010
• "Mathematician set to help Duke scientists mine their data," R & D Magazine, 11 October 2010
• "The Battle of the Dimensions," The Age, 11 October 2010
• "Teaching Math as Narrative Drama," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8 October 2010
• Articles about the 2010 Ig Nobel Awards: "The Ig Nobel Prizes 2010," Philippine Star, 7 October 2010; "Sicilian Team Wins Ig Nobel Prize" [VIDEO], VR Teleradio [Italy], 5 October 2010; "Weird science, winners of the Ig Nobel," New York Post, 3 October 2010
• "NJIT math professor lists Yankees as slight favorites to beat Twins in ALDS," The Star-Ledger, 5 October 2010
• "STEM Education Has Little to Do With Flowers," The New York Times, 4 October 2010
• "A Brief History of Mathematics: Nicolas Bourbaki," BBC, 1 October 2010
• "Scrunched-up dimensions untangled," Cosmic Log on MSNBC.com, 1 October 2010

September

• "Letters to the Editor." Providence Journal, 30 September 2010 and 11 October 2010
• "Making Math Lessons as Easy as 1, Pause, 2, Pause ...," The New York Times, 30 September 2010
• "In Character with Tom Henderson," The Portland Tribune, 23 September 2010
• "Sizing Up Consciousness by Its Bits," The New York Times, 20 September 2010
• "Fibbing With Numbers": Review of Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception by Charles Seife, The New York Times, 19 September 2010;
  "Go figure" (also a review of Proofiness), The Boston Globe, 26 September 2010.
• "After Cracking a Theoretical Bottleneck, a Math Prodigy Arrives at the U. of Chicago," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 17 September 2010
• "Tutors Made to Measure," The New York Times, 16 September 2010
• "Math Goes Pop! Stand Up to Questionable Odds, 15 September 2010
• "Change your math attitude, and daughter's," Detroit Free Press, 8 September 2010
• "Bringing the Beauty of Math to Life," Voice of America, 3 September 2010
• "Rummaging for a Final Theory," Scientific American, September 2010

August 2010

• "Brains behind the maths," Deccan Herald, 31 August 2010
• "The Inconvenient Truth About Traffic Math: Progress Is Slow," The Wall Street Journal, 28 August 2010
• "Skilled at the Chessboard, Keyboard and Blackboard," The New York Times, 28 August 2010;
  "Mathematicians, Musicians and Chess Masters," The New York Times, 2 September 2010.
• "NSF Turns Math Earmark on Its Ear to Fund New Institute," Science, 27 August 2010
• Media coverage of the 2010 Fields Medals
• "Ingrid Daubechies Heads International Mathematics Union," The Hindu 19 August 2010;
  "'Mathematics is not just formulaic, technical material'," The Times of India, 25 August 2010.
• "How DNA evidence creates victims of chance," New Scientist, 18 August 2010
• "Step 1: Post Elusive Proof. Step 2: Watch Fireworks," The New York Times, 16 August 2010
• "Math Buskers Juggle Numbers On English Streets," NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, 15 August 2010
• "Silicon Valley girls capture medals in China math olympiad," The Mercury News, 13 August 2010
• "Google Helps Find Simplest Solution to Rubik's Cube," Wired, 10 August 2010;
  "Rubik's Cube quest for speedy solution comes to an end," BBC News, 11 August 2010.
• "Stanford and UC Berkeley create massively collaborative math," The Mercury News, 8 August 2010
• "Brown gets $15.5 million to create center for mathematics and computational research," Providence Journal, 7 August 2010
• "The pattern collector," Science News, 6 August 2010
• Articles on World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand's 40 simultaneous matches at the ICM

July 2010

• "Win or Lose": Review of Numbers Rule: The Vexing Mathematics of Democracy, from Plato to the Present, New Yorker, 26 July 2010
• "Swarming locusts impossible to predict,", Science News, 23 July 2010
• "Crunching cancer with numbers," New Scientist, 13 July 2010
• "Physics major has a name for a really big number," Los Angeles Times, 6 July 2010
  "What the Heck?" Science, 23 July 2010
• "A Musical Message Discovered In Plato's Works," All Things Considered, National Public Radio, 3 July 2010
• "Russian 'Mathsputin' Says Nyet to Million Dollar Prize," Fox News, 1 July 2010; "Russian mathematician rejects $1 million prize," Associated Press, 1 July 2010; "A Math Problem Solver Declines a $1 Million Prize," New York Times, 1 July 2010.
• "E Pluribus Confusion," American Scientist, July-August 2010
• "Mathematics of terror," Discover, July/August 2010
• "The Littlest Schoolhouse," The Atlantic, July/August 2010

June 2010

• "Silicon Valley math students meet with president in the Oval Office," San Jose Mercury News, 30 June 2010.
• ""Williams College Professor Ed Burger," WCSH6.com, 29 June 2010
• "Attack of The Math Brats," Time Magazine, 28 June 2010
• "Are streaks fact or fiction?", The Kansas City Star, 28 June 2010;
  "Tigers pitcher Max Scherzer uses math background as formula for success," mlive.com, 2 July 2010.
• "Math error found in Aetna health care's new California premiums," Sacramento Bee, 25 June 2010
• "Melting at the microscale,", Science News, 19 June 2010
• Columns on sports by Polster and Ross in The Age
• "The crop circle evolves," Nature, 10 June 2010
• "13 Stripes and 51 Stars," Slate, 9 June 2010
• "Program makes math easy as 1, 2, 3," Boston Globe, 7 June 2010
• "Study finds that young hotshots make better mentors," The Christian Science Monitor, 2 June 2010
• "Discover Interview: The Math Behind the Physics Behind the Universe," Discover, June 2010
• "A Simple Twist of Fate," Scientific American, June 2010

May 2010

• "How to navigate a 'career obstacle course'," International Herald Tribune, 24 May 2010
• "How Much Oil’s Spilling? It's Not Rocket Science," abcNews, 23 May 2010
• Obituaries of Martin Gardner
• "Noted UW-Madison mathematician Rudin dies at 89," Wisconsin State Journal, 21 May 2010
• "Proof at last for Boltzmann's 140-year-old gas equation," New Scientist, 18 May 2010
• "Metric Mania," The New York Times Magazine, 16 May 2010
• "Do the Math: Best Cram School," Time: Best of Asia 2010, 13 May 2010
• "When origami meets rocket science," The Washington Post, 11 May 2010
• "How to Beat a Chess Grandmaster (Blindfolded)," The Age Education Resource Center, 10 May 2010
• "The Gospel of Well-Educated Guessing," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 7 May 2010
• "Five or Six Reasons Why Parity Puzzles Are Fun," ABC News, 2 May 2010
• "The Bootstrap," American Scientist, May-June 2010

April 2010

• "Biological Systems Theory," Science, 30 April 2010
• "Electoral Dysfunction: Why Democracy is Always Unfair," New Scientist, 28 April 2010
• "Hooked for Life on Math," CNN.com, 25 April 2010
• "Playful Shapes," Science, 23 April 2010
• "Mets statistical analyst has seen growth and evolution of sabermetrics in MLB," The Star-Ledger, 23 April 2010
• "Wise Up With The Apples in Stereo's Space and Time Math-Pop," Wired, 20 April 2010
• "Make Math a Gateway, Not a Gatekeeper," Chronicle of Higher Education, 18 April 2010
• Opinionator Columns by Steven Strogatz, New York Times, 18 and 11 April 2010
• "Adding Humanitarian Value to Mathematics," Science, 16 April 2010
• "Generating randomness," Nature, 15 April 2010
• "Q&A: John Sims on mathematical art," Nature, 15 April 2010
• "The fragility of interdependency," Nature, 15 April 2010
• "Reunited Set of Math Problems Gives Clues to How Lincoln Learned," The State Journal-Register, 14 April 2010
• Reviews of Duel at Dawn: Heroes, Martyrs, and the Rise of Modern Mathematics, Forbes, 13 April 2010 and Nature, 15 April 2010
• "Counting on Each Other," New York Times Book Review, 9 April 2010
• "Conquering by Copying," Science, 9 April 2010
• "1 Solved. 6 Millennium Prize Math Problems Remain," Morning Edition, National Public Radio, 7 April 2010
• "Gathering for Gardner," Wall Street Journal, 2 April 2010

March 2010

• Some Mathematics Blogs
• "Book Mixing Math And Crochet Wins British Prize," NPR Morning Edition, 29 March 2010
• "Odds Are, It's Wrong," Science News, 27 March 2010
• "Maths behind Internet encryption wins top award," Nature, 24 March 2010
• "Bias Called Persistent Hurdle for Women in Sciences," The New York Times, 21 March 2010
• Articles about the US$1,000,000 Clay Prize for Pereleman's Resolution of the Poincaré Conjecture
• "Intel Science Talent Search spotlights America's whiz kids," Science News, 17 March 2010
• "On Pi Day, one number 'reeks of mystery'," CNN, 10 March 2010;
  "A Small Number With a Big Following," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 March 2010
• Articles on the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics
• "Algebra in Wonderland," The New York Times, 7 March 2010
• "Tostitos Ad," Sports Illustrated, 8 March 2010
• "The Mutual Inspiration of Art and Mathematics," Science News, 6 March 2010
• "Fashion and Advanced Mathematics Meet at Miyake," ABC News, 5 March 2010;
  "Designers Outline a New Geometry," The New York Times, 5 March 2010
• Articles about Jaime Escalante, the Teacher in the Film Stand and Deliver
• “Building a Better Teacher,” The New York Times Sunday Magazine, 2 March 2010
• "Striving to map the shape-shifting net," The New York Times, 2 March 2010
• "Numbers War," Scientific American, March 2010

February 2010

• "Math is Hard: Questions for Harry Markopolos," The New York Times Sunday Magazine, 28 February 2010
• "Data, data everywhere," The Economist, 27 February 2010
• "Hero Teacher Tackled Colorado Gunman," CBS Evening News, 24 February 2010;
  "Math teacher hailed as hero after Colorado school shooting," Los Angeles Times, 25 February 2010
• "Want to win a medal? Just do the math," Vancouver Sun, 23 February 2010
• "Math Wiz Adds Web Tools to Take Education to New Limits," PBS NewsHour, 22 February 2010
• "2009 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge," Science, 19 February 2010
• "On a Mission to Help Students Pass Math," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 19 February 2010
• "And the winner is ...," The Age, 15 February 2010
• "Can Math Help Predict Future Terrorist Attacks?" WFOR-TV (Miami), 6 February 2010
• "S'porean wins US maths award," Asiaone.com, 5 February 2010
• "Bletchley's code-cracking Colossus," BBC News, 2 February 2010
• "'The Quants: It Pays to Know Your Wall Street Math," NPR---Fresh Air, 1 February 2010
• "A puzzling Australia Day," The Age, 1 February 2010;
  "The year of the magical dragon," The Age, 8 February 2010

January 2010

• "Turning Away from High Symmetry," Science, 29 January 2010
• Arthur Benjamin in the media:
  "Colbert Report with Arthur Benjamin," Comedy Central, 27 January 2010;
  "Ta Da!," The New York Times, 30 December 2009
• "Doing the Math on Mexican Drug Wars," New York Times, 25 January 2010
• Articles on girls and math anxiety:
  "Study: Female teachers' math anxiety affects girl students," Chicago Tribune, 25 January 2010;
  "Girls may learn math anxiety from female teachers." Boston Herald, 25 January 2010;
  "Female teachers may pass on math anxiety to girls, study finds," Los Angeles Times, 26 January 2010
• Four math articles in the 22 January edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education
• "Maths teachers gain new status," The Guardian, 18 January 2010
• "Ties That Bind," Science News, 16 January 2010
• Mathematician finds magic in numbers,? New Zealand Herald, 16 January 2010
• Articles on math and artistic style:
  "Bruegel?s Statistical Signature," Science, 15 January 2010;
  "Math Professor Helps Uncover Art Fakes," NPR Morning Edition, 9 February 2010;
  "The Statistics of Style," Nature, 25 February 2010
• "No crystal ball for natural disasters,": Review of Megadisasters: The Science of Predicting the Next Catastrophe by Florin Diacu, Nature, 14 January 2010
• "In a Series: Nickelodeon Will Focus on Math," The New York Times, 11 January 2010
• "Branded as Scholars," The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8 January 2010
• "Scientific Tide on New Wave Stages?," Science, 8 January 2010
• "Maths genius is youngest to go to Cambridge University, Telegraph (UK), 7 January 2010
• "$250 million initiative for science, math teachers planned," The Washington Post, 6 January 2010
• Media coverage of the national Who Wants to Be a Mathematician game:
  "Fairview math standout competes in national competition," Boulder Daily Camera, 6 January 2010;
  "Knows His Sums." Fairfax Connection, 7 January 2010;
  "2007 Spelling Bee winner wins math competition," KGO-TV, 14 January 2010;
  "Danville teen, national spelling bee champion, wins national math contest," San Jose Mercury News, 15 January 2010
• Articles on Pi:
  "Pi calculated to 'record number' of digits," BBC News, 6 January 2010;
  "The Big Question: How close have we come to knowing the precise value of pi?" The Independent, 8 January 2010
• "The Best and Worst Jobs," The Wall Street Journal, 5 January 2010
• Science News of the Year. Science News, 2 January 2010
• "A Tisket, A Tasket, an Apollonian Gasket," American Scientist, January-February 2010
  
• "The Year in Science 2009," Discover Magazine, January/February 2010

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