Have to blog and run today. I get to spend three hours this afternoon trying to persuade skeptical calculus students that “related rate” problems aren't so bad. A forlorn quest, I know. Anyway, how about I just point you towards some interesting reading:
- Over at CSICOP's site, Penny Higgins offers this excellent article on the topic of transitional forms generally, and Tiktaalik in particular. Worth it for the diagrams alone!
- Joshua Roebke, writing for Seed, gives us a concise summary of Grigory Perelman's refusal of the Fields Medal for proving the Poincare conjecture.
- The New York Times has this brief account of new research into the demise of the Neanderthals. Worth a look.
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I'm afraid I have to blog and run today. I have to scamper off to Dulles Airport an hour from now to retrieve a friend. (Don't worry, I've already set the VCR to tape the premiere of Prison Break!) So why not have a look at Slate's take on the Poincare conjecture. It includes this memorable…
The August 28 issue of The New Yorker features this magisterial article about the Poincare conjecture. The focus of the article is on the priority dispute between Grigory Perelman on the one hand, and a team of Chinese mathematicians led by Harvard's Shing-Tung Yau on the other. According to the…
The cable news channels have been falling all over themselves for the last few days, desperate to find something new to say about the JonBenet Ramsey fracas. Meanwhile, what do you suppose the lead story was on yesterday's edition of The Colbert Report? Grigory Perelman's refusal of the Fields…
About 10 days ago, I wrote about [Grigory Perelman and his proof of the Poincare conjecture][poincare]. This is a quick followup. There's a more detailed story over on [Seed][seed].
The Fields medal was supposed to be presented this past week, and they planned on presenting it to Perelman.
He…
Related rates--good stuff. If I am ever teaching implicit differentiation and a student asks me why we do it, I would like to tell him what my professor told another student: "Because it works." (Actually, he did some more explaining after that but I have always wanted to say that.)