Esoterica

Inspired by Christian Lawson-Perfect's Interesting Esoterica page, this is a page of references that I have found interesting over the years. Some of them talk about practical matters; others don't. I just find them stimulating enough to keep them on hand. May some of these references spark joy (or ideas!) in your own life!

Math

• G. Galperin, 2003. "Playing Pool With π (The Number π From a Billard Point of View)." A method for estimating digits of pi with billard balls. My description here.
• Conway’s fruitful fractions (or how to generate all the prime numbers by multiplying one of 14 fractions). Really interesting how he encodes a computer program that generates all the prime numbers with multiplication of fractions.
• D. Kozen, and A. Silva, 2013. "On Moessner's Theorem." How a simple set of rules unexpectedly leads to generating the sequence of nth powers.

Counter-examples

• A J-convex (midpoint-convex) function which is not convex

Essays

• Rich Sutton, The Bitter Lesson: A short essay on the fact that in AI research, general methods that leverage computation are ultimately the most effective by a large margin.
• Richard Hamming, You and your research
• Andrej Karpathy, A survival guide to a PhD
• Matt Schonlau, How to finish a Ph.D.