Friday, May 24, 2002

Too much has been happening in non-public threads to leave time for blogging. As a distraction from what I must do, started to look a bit more at geometric algebra. I don't know if it will be "useful", but it's certainly a good mental exercise. These tutorial papers are the best entry point I've found. Speaking of Grassmann and Clifford, Gian-Carlo Rota's Indiscrete Thoughts is a must read for math gossip, provocation, and a dissenting voice from the Platonic party line in philosophy of mathematics. Great essays on Ulam, Grassmann, Church and Princeton, obviousness, bad probability and statistics education, and the discrete charm of Schaum's Outlines (which I too confess to have snobbishly snubbed once). 8:42:08 PM