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Mathematics helps develop definitions to compare different means to make something better or more fair. But there are inherent limitations, expressed as mathematical impossibility theorems... Impossible? Joe Malkevitch York College (CUNY) Introduction When you got up from sleeping last night, what were the possibilities that you could achieve in theRead More →

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I don't believe that responsible people should indulge in anything that can be even remotely considered ultimatums or threats. That is not the way to reach peaceful solutions.—President Eisenhower, July 8, 1959. Daniel Ellsberg and the science of extortion Bill Casselman University of British Columbia Daniel Ellsberg died just lastRead More →

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Different sampling approaches exist that target different sub-populations to make sure they appear in the sample. To see these sampling approaches at work we are going to sample lines from Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself”… Sampled Poems Contain Multitudes Sara Stoudt Bucknell University The basic principle of statistical inferenceRead More →

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Inevitably, I think back to my favorite result in mathematics: when Diaconis used the representation theory of the symmetric group to show us that psychologists just don’t get along… What I Think About When I Think About Voting Sarah Wolff Denison University It’s November. Here in Ohio, that means cozyRead More →

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Who might have realized that when the mathematics community studied the properties of cubes, they might be used in error correction technology? Correcting Errors Joe Malkevitch York College (CUNY) Introduction Humans sometimes make errors. Perhaps you have been sloppy with a calculation on a mathematics examination. You made an error.Read More →

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One of the fundamental forces in the universe is the weak force. The weak force is involved in holding atoms together or breaking them apart... Putting a period on mathematical physics Ursula Whitcher Mathematical Reviews (AMS) You've heard of periods at the ends of sentences and periods of sine waves.Read More →