AMS Blogs

I don't know about the ratios (or how a user looking through could really tell what the true ratio is) but as far as none of them having a decent matching algorithm... I'm a big fan of OkCupid here... (I know they were aquired by match but they still operate independently AFAIK) I interviewed for them 12-13 years ago but never worked there, but they were Harvard math guys who founded SparkNotes and "opensouced" an early version of their basic matching algorithm in 2004 or 2005 on their blog, I'll see if I can find and post here or perhaps someone else will share bit the gist was only using the intersection of questions you both answered, and both of you don't just answer the question but also give how much you care about the answer to this question and "acceptable" answers from your match (if you care at all, if not answers don't matter) and they use those to customize weight of each question in matching... I don't know if it has any special romantic matching qualities but it's WAY better than anything else I've tried for a metric of people worth meeting and who you'll sometimes have INCREDIBLE amount in common with, when match percentage is over 90 or 95%... I've dated two 96+% matches for over a year FWIW.

EDIT: couldn't find original blog post but this article seems to have some of the same math/details in less entertaining form
https://blogs.ams.org/mathgradblog/2016/06/08/okcupid-math-online-dating/

Links that would've been nice in the article:

Craig Kaplan's page on near-miss Johnson solids https://isohedral.ca/a-new-near-miss/

Jim McNeill's polyhedra pages http://www.orchidpalms.com/polyhedra/ Near Misses page http://www.orchidpalms.com/polyhedra/acrohedra/nearmiss/nearmiss.htm

The article says "by Evelyn Lamb February 21, 2019"

..but at the bottom says "This article was originally published in our “The Absurd” issue in June, 2017."

..but John Baez's article "Rectified Truncated Icosahedron" (i.e. the name of Kaplan's solid) is dated April 1, 2016. https://blogs.ams.org/visualinsight/2016/04/01/rectified_truncated_icosahedron/ .. Lamb somehow omits the solid's name. Baez refers to Johnson, Kaplan, McNeill and a lot of other people/sites as well. And links to them! Both have blogged for the AMS.

Unless Lamb is Baez, this seems oddly like plagiarism. But I guess there must be some decent explanation.

edit: Although maybe that's ridiculous - the articles are different: she's got some quotes from each of the main players - even Baez - including tidbits about other near misses (Only the Simpsons-Fermat one was new to me, so they didn't seem the meat of the article).

Absolutely. No matter how gifted a person is, there is going to be some point in their lives or some domain where pure talent will be insufficient.

Even super geniuses like Terence Tao struggled (he nearly did not pass his generals).

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2019/06/27/living-proof-stories-of-resilience-along-the-mathematical-journey/

https://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/tao_terence

The American Mathematical Society has a PDF of essays of brilliant mathematicians (including Terence Tao) who despite their abilities, faced obstacles and difficulties that their sheer talents were inadequate to overcome, and they had to persevere.

https://blogs.ams.org/inclusionexclusion/2019/06/26/living-proof-a-must-read/

It helps to think of the things _around_ math rather than the elements of any particular mathematical field. For example, the authority conveyed when an economics argument relies heavily on partial differential equations. Those things _around_ math are studied in the anti-racist math classes.

The American Mathematical Society has been grappling with this:

https://blogs.ams.org/inclusionexclusion/2020/01/31/can-mathematics-be-antiracist/

Pure math is very different than social studies. But, in applied math, your research will be used for something promoting one group over another. Personally, I find it manipulative to attribute my own problem-solving contributions to the politics of someone using them.

Two articles I wrote at the time which hold up surprisingly well:

https://blogs.ams.org/mathgradblog/2010/12/28/spaced-math-repetition/

https://blogs.ams.org/mathgradblog/2011/03/10/space-math-repetition-repetition/

And an example of some of my cards:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z714xpq36nvn3o1/rudin.pdf?dl=0

If I'm being honest, I went overboard. Like I said, I literally memorized entire books. Entering cards into the system was the most difficult part. But it absolutely works! Had I stayed in academia, I would have loved to developed a set of flash cards to go along with course material.

"Statistically speaking, you are probably taking up room that should go to someone else. If you are a white cis man (meaning you identify as male and you were assigned male at birth) you almost certainly should resign from your position of power. That’s right, please quit. Too difficult? Well, as a first step, at least get off your hiring committee, your curriculum committee, and make sure you’re replaced by a woman of color or trans person."

https://blogs.ams.org/inclusionexclusion/2017/05/11/get-out-the-way/