Tuesday, May 21, 2024
– Live Presentation with Scott Kim–
Session at 12 Noon Atlanta time
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After this virtual CoM presentation on Zoom, we will meet for an informal social session in a different Zoom space where we can all see each other (see the blue button below). That Zoom meeting will start around 1pm ET.
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How to read Gödel, Escher, BachWhen Martin Gardner stopped writing his monthly Mathematical Games column for Scientific American in 1981, his successor was Douglas Hofstadter, who is an AI researcher at Indiana University and author of the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book Gödel, Escher, Bach. I met Doug in 1975 at Stanford as he was writing GEB, and I had started a lively correspondence with Martin Gardner. In today’s session I’ll reminisce about the creation of GEB, and share excerpts from The Strange Loop Gazette, a lengthy letter I wrote to Martin Gardner to help him understand this dense and unusual book, which many find daunting to read, let alone finish.
Scott Kim is a puzzle designer, ambigram artist and startup coach, who studied mathematics, music and computer science at Stanford University under Donald Knuth. He wrote the first book of ambigrams, Inversions, in 1981. Since then he has contributed thousands of puzzles to magazines like Discover and game like Bejeweled and Tetris. He was a frequent contributor to Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games column, and helped start the Gathering 4 Gardner with Tom Rodgers in the early 90s. You can see his ambigram lettering designs and read his thoughts on math education on his site, scottkim.com