This episode description intentionally left blank!   As in completely on purpose.   Fun Fact!  The creators of the Breaking Math Podcast, Sofia and Gabriel always thought it was funny that many books that we've read - even going back to our childhood - had a page in it with the sentence printed, "This Page Intentionally Left Blank."   Like-  okay; what does this 'intentionally left blank page' add to the reading experience?  Does anyone know?  Oh look here!  There is a wikipedia page on it. Huh.  Now I know.  Now we know.   And knowing is half the battle!  

 Sofia would frequently leave post-it notes on Gabe's laptop saying, "This Post-it note intentionally left blank."  Because . . . . why?   Sofia would often leave a twitter or facebook post that declared "This post intentionally left blank."   

And now - we release an entire podcast episode that is intentionally left blank.  Are we trolls?  NO!  We prefer to think of ourselves as artists in the style of Banksy making a statement! 

Michael Brooks is a science writer who specializes in making difficult concepts easier to grasp. In his latest book, Brooks goes through several mathematical concepts and discusses their motivation, history, and discovery. So how do stories make it easier to learn? What are some of the challenges associated with conveying difficult concepts to the general public? And who, historically, has been a mathematician? All of this and more on this episode of Breaking Math.  Songs were Breaking Math Intro and Outro by Elliot Smith of Albuquerque.  This episode is published under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribute-ShareAlike-NonCommercial license. For more information, visit CreativeCommons.org  [Featuring: Sofía Baca, Gabriel Hesch, Meryl Flaherty; Michael Brooks]

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There are times in mathematics when we are generalizing the behavior of many different, but similar, entities. One such time that this happens is the use cases of Big O notation, which include describing the long-term behavior of functions, and talking about how accurate numerical calculations are. On this problem episode, we are going to discuss Big O notation and how to use it.

This episode is licensed by Sofia Baca under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For more information, visit CreativeCommons.org.

[Featuring: Sofía Baca]

The world is often uncertain, but it has only been in the last half millennium that we've found ways to interact mathematically with that concept. From its roots in death statistics, insurance, and gambling to modern Bayesian networks and machine learning, we've seen immense productivity in this field. Every way of looking at probability has something in common: the use of random variables. Random variables let us talk about events with uncertain outcomes in a concrete way. So what are random variables? How are they defined? And how do they interact? All of this, and more, on this episode of Breaking Math.

Interact with the hosts:

@SciPodSofia

@TechPodGabe

Or the guest:

@KampPodMillie

Patreon here: patreon.com/breakingmathpodcast

Featuring music by Elliot Smith. For info about music used in ads, which are inserted dynamically, contact us at [email protected]

[Featuring: Sofía Baca, Gabriel Hesch; Millicent Oriana]

Join Sofía Baca with her guest Millicent Oriana from the newly launched Nerd Forensics podcast as they discuss some apparent paradoxes in probability and Russian roulette.

Intro is "Breaking Math Theme" by Elliot Smith. Ads feature "Ding Dong" by Simon Panrucker

[Featuring: Sofía Baca; Millicent Oriana]

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This episode is sponsored by 

· Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast.  https://anchor.fm/app

Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/breakingmathpodcast/support

Katharine Hayhoe was the lead author on the 2018 US Climate Assessment report, and has spent her time since then spreading the word about climate change. She was always faced with the difficult task of convincing people who had stakes in things that would be affected by acknowledging the information in her report. In her newest book, “Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World”, she discusses the challenges associated with these conversations, at both the micro and macro level. So who is Katherine Heyhoe? How has she learned to get people to acknowledge the reality of climate science? And is she the best, or worst, person to strike up a discussion about how the weather’s been? All of this, and more, on this episode of Breaking Math. Papers Cited: -“99.94 percent of papers agree with the scientific consensus.”

More info: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0270467617707079

This episode is distributed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International License. For more information, visit creativecommons.org.

Intro is "Breaking Math Theme" by Elliot Smith. Ads feature "Ding Dong" by Simon Panrucker

[Featuring: Sofía Baca, Gabriel Hesch, Meryl Flaherty; Katherine Heyhoe, Elliot Smith]

One tells a lie, the other the truth! Have fun with Sofía and Meryl as they investigate knight, knave, and spy problems!

Intro is "Breaking Math Theme" by Elliot Smith. Music in the ads were Plug Me In by Steve Combs and "Ding Dong" by Simon Panrucker. You can access their work at freemusicarchive.org.

[Featuring: Sofia Baca; Meryl Flaherty]