Essays and musings
In general, I'm not a fan of blogs. What you're thinking today,
or your reactions to current events, or debating with commentators,
should be as transient as a conversation; what you write for a permanent
public record should be
better thought out.
As it happens there seem to be no individual blogs on the kind of ``probability in the mathematical
sciences" or ``probability in the real world" topics that interest me.
Perhaps closest (and excellent food for thought) are
the more statistical
Here is an interesting list of
50 Statistics Blogs, in case you really have time on your hands!
These brief writings of mine are instead intended as permanent "food for thought",
on topics such as the mathematics research profession in general, and uses of
probability in particular.
The overall style is similar to
J. Michael Steele's Semi-Random Rants.
The ones on this page are not published anywhere but here.
Because it's not a blog, you can't leave comments, but if you know of (or write
yourself)
online essays
where the same idea is expressed better,
or where an opposing idea is argued, please do email me the links.
Argumentative essays
Some of the topics are related to topics in the
Probability in the Real World project, but
should not be regarded as representative of that whole project.
The order is chronological, most recent on top.
Mathematical Musings
These are a collection of thoughts that have occured to me over a career in mathematics.
They are intended to be somewhere on the spectrum from serious to the opposite of serious
(= humorous or frivolous or wry or quixotic?)
and the reader can decide where to place them on such a spectrum.
I attempt to phrase each thought in a crisp sentence or two, and then add a commentary.
Thoughts like these undoubtedly occur to every mathematician, so no particular
originality is claimed. Where I consciously borrow from another source I quote it,
and what I perceive as ``commonplace" is labeled as such.
Misc
Has the teaching of introductory probability changed over the last 40 years?
Looking at the tables of contents of
book 1
and
book 2, can you guess
which was published in 1970 and which in 2007?