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Status Reports
Status: Mathematics (2026 - September)
(Text as at 15/10/2026 21:53:17)
Rationale for this Project
- This is rather an eccentric activity, partly an attempt to exorcise some ancient demon – the rather bruising experience of reading mathematics at King’s College Cambridge back in the mid 1970’s.
- However, any modern educated person should be reasonably up to date with the mathematical sciences, and statistical and probability theory are essential tools for evaluating evidence and are useful in Bridge!
- If only advanced mathematics wasn’t such a difficult subject!
- This project is diverging from Mathematics per se to the Philosophy of Mathematics and other related subjects. For instance, Philosophy of Mathematics features in Philosophy of Religion by providing an analogy or model of the sort of necessary existence that God is supposed to have. I also book time on anything involving calculation to this project for want of a better home.
Summary of Progress during July - September 2026
- I spent 5.75 hours in 26Q3 on this Project, or related work (48.75 hours YTD, where for "YTD" - Year to Date - I mean the (academic) year that commenced in October 2025). That's 22.1% of the planned effort (62.3% YTD). Overall, 0.8% of my Project effort in the Quarter was directed towards this project (making 1.6% YTD) - as against 3.3% planned (2.4% YTD).
- As can be seen, I spent less than a quarter of the time allocation of two hours a week. I also dropped to just over 60% of plan YTD.
- I’m making slow progress reading "Shapiro (Stewart) - Thinking about Mathematics - The Philosophy of Mathematics" while out walking Bertie.
- Further details follow (for the latest Quarter: 26Q3):-
Mathematics (Total Hours = 5.75)
- Mathematics - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 5)
- Mathematics - Admin
- Progress (if any) in the current quarter can be obtained from the Mathematics section of my Summary Task List1, and YTD in the YTD Summary Task List2 report.
Summary of Progress during 25Q4-26Q3 (YTD Activity3)
- Mathematics (Total Hours = 48.75)
- Mathematics - Reading / Writing (Total Hours = 45)
- Mathematics - Admin (Total Hours = 3.75)
- 25Q3 Status Reports: Mathematics (1.75 hours)
- 25Q4 Status Reports: Mathematics (0.5 hours)
- 26Q1 Status Reports: Mathematics (0.75 hours)
- 26Q2 Status Reports: Mathematics (0.75 hours)
Plans for the Near Future:
- Because of the need to focus on higher-priority projects, it is not realistically possible to schedule much time on this project throughout academic year. As is my usual practice, I schedule 1 hour / week for the first Quarter of the academic year and little thereafter. We’ll see how this goes.
- I’m booking time spent reading "Chivers (Tom) - Everything Is Predictable: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World" to my Thesis.
- Anything undertake YTD can be found from the Mathematics section of the relevant YTD Summary Task List4 report.
- If I do find the time, I’ll be looking into:-
- General
- Aeon5: Read papers as they arise.
- "Gowers (Timothy), Barrow-Green (June) & Leader (Imre), Eds. - The Princeton Companion to Mathematics": Browse.
- Competence improvement
- "Admin - Math Trainer": Try out6
- "Cummings (Jay) - Proofs: A Long-Form Mathematics Textbook": Read.
- "Polya (George), Stewart (Ian) - How to Solve IT: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method": Read.
- "UKMT, du Sautoy (Marcus) - The Ultimate Mathematical Challenge": Try the puzzles.
- Philosophy
- "Shapiro (Stewart) - Thinking about Mathematics - The Philosophy of Mathematics": Complete reading.
- "Smith (Martin) - Why Throwing 92 Heads in a Row Is Not Surprising": Analyze.
- "Yau (Shing-Tung) & Nadis (Steve) - The Gravity of Math: How Geometry Rules the Universe": Read.
- Probability7
- "Chivers (Tom) - Everything Is Predictable: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World",
- "Wikipedia - Normal Distribution",
- "Wikipedia - Cauchy Distribution",
- "Wikipedia - Prosecutor's fallacy"
- Bridge
- "Wikipedia - Principle of Restricted Choice", and relevant Chapters in:-
→ "Kelsey (Hugh) & Glauert (Michael) - Bridge Odds for Practical Players", and
→ "Reese (Terence) - The Expert Game"
- "Wikipedia - Monty Hall Problem"
- "EBU - Various Papers on Duplicate Bridge Movements"
Mathematical Resources
In-Page Footnotes:
Footnote 3:
- As this project is substantially inactive, I don’t usually update the text quarterly as for the active projects, but only at the end of the academic year.
- YTD figures and tasks are somewhat redundant at the end of the first Quarter, but it saves remembering to update the report in future quarters.
- However, while the Quarterly figures appear against that plan and are “as at” the end of the last Quarter, the YTD figures and tasks are as at the date of production of the report.
- The YTD Activity-list is to make the end-year task easier, and to give a clearer idea of what – if anything – has been going on in the interim.
Footnote 6:
- Trying out Math Trainer ("Admin - Math Trainer") seems a bit eccentric, but I’ve found that – as the time has passed – I’ve got lazier and lazier with mental arithmetic, and could do with perking up a bit. The App seems of some use.
Footnote 8:
- These are not left over from my Cambridge days as these few books were given away to my sister’s high-school in Gloucester by my mother during my brief sojourn with the Carthusians.
- I learned (in January 2025) that I gave some of my maths books to my friend Dave Turner.
- Anyway, I found my current collection going cheap in bulk at a local second-hand bookshop.
- They are accessible via …this link.
Table of the Previous 12 Versions of this Note: (of 74)
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Text Colour Conventions
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026