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This is what I wrote in December 2017:
- We published two episodes of My Favorite Theorem. Justin Curry talked to my cohost Kevin Knudson about Platonic solids, and Ami Radunskaya talked to me about the Birkhoff ergodic theorem. I thought her episode was an especially appropriate way to end the year: “If your life is ergodic, and a lot of the time it is, [the Birkhoff ergodic theorem] says that you’ll keep bumping into certain things more often than others. What are those things you’ll bump into more often? Well, the things that have higher measure for you, have higher meaning.” May your life be ergodic in 2018, friends!
- A lot of conjectures in number theory are easy to state but hard to prove. The abc conjecture is not like that. It’s hard to prove, but it’s also hard to state. A proof of the abc conjecture may be published in a peer-reviewed journal this year. I can’t tell you much about that proof, but I can at least tell you what the conjecture is.
- A few years ago, I started a project of reading at least one book by every Nobel laureate in literature. I haven’t read many books for it recently, but I did read and respond to Sula by Toni Morrison and A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway.
- I wrote about some options for sharing unsolved math problems with K-12 and undergraduate students.
- News by number and nurturing numeracy.
- My favorite space this month is the bicylinder, also known as mouhefanggai or the Steinmetz solid. It has a square cross-section, but it’s nicely curved. It’s also involved in one of my favorite examples using Cavalieri’s principle.
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