GPT's Poetry is Incompetent and Banal: A Discussion of (Porter and Machery, 2024) , November 2024.
Review of Mathematica: A Secret World of Intuition and Curiosity by David Bessis, SIAM News November 2024.
Review of Vector: A Surprising Story of Space, Time, and Mathematical Transformation by Robyn Arianrhod. SIAM News September 2024.
An Ill-Designed Study of Math Problems in Large Language Models: Review of (Ye, Xu, Li, and Allen-Zhu, 2024). August 2024.
Review of Encounters with Euclid: How an Ancient Greek Geometry Text Shaped the World by Benjamin Wardhaugh. SIAM News, June 2024.
Review of The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Fei-Fei Li. SIAM News. May 2024.
Review of Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York City, by Ross Perlin. Unpublished. March 2024.
Review of Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines by Joy Buolamwini, and Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It by Kashmir Hill. SIAM News, March 2024.
Comment on (Romera-Paredes et al., 2023), “Mathematical discoveries from program search with large language models” . January 2024
Review of Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance. by Karen Levy. SIAM News, December 2023.
Review of Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës by Devoney Looser. Unpublished. August 2023.
Review of Phenomena: Doppelmayr’s Celestial Atlas. by Giles Sparrow. SIAM News, April 2023.
Review of Axiomatics: Mathematical Thought and High Modernism by Alma Steingart. SIAM News, March 2023.
Review of The Story of Proof: Logic and the History of Mathematics by John Stillwell. SIAM News, January 2023.
Review of John Venn: A Life in Logic by Lucas Verburgt. SIAM News, November 2022.
Review of Rules: A Short History of What We Live By by Lorraine Daston. SIAM News, October 2022.
Limits of an AI program for solving college math problems. August 2022.
Review of Mathematician with the Soul of a Poet: Poems and Plays of Sofia Kovalevskaya. translated, edited, and introduced by Sandra DeLozier Coleman. SIAM News, April 2022.
Review of Uncountable: A Philosophical History of Number and Humanity from Antiquity to the Present. by David Nirenberg and Ricardo Nirenberg. SIAM News, March 2022.
Deep Learning and Mathematical Intuition: A Review of (Davies et al. 2021) ArXiv preprint 2112.04324. December 2021.
Review of Curves for the Mathematically Curious: An Anthology of the Unpredictable, Historical, Beautiful, and Romantic. by Julian Havil. SIAM News, December 2021.
Review of Journey to the Edge of Reason: The Life of Kurt Gödel, by Stephen Budiansky. SIAM News, October 2021.
Thoughts about The Premontion by Michael Lewis. Unpublished.
Review of Shape: The Hidden Geometry of Information, Biology, Strategy, Democracy, and Everything Else, by Jordan Ellenberg. SIAM News, July 2021.
The Use of Deep Learning for Symbolic Integration: A Review of (Lample and Charton, 2019) arXiv 1912.05752, December 2019.
Review of How to Walk on Water and Climb Up Walls: Animal Movements and the Robots of the Future, by David Hu. SIAM News, November 2019.
Review of Laura Bassi and Science in 18th Century Europe: The Extraordinary Life and Role of Italy’s Pioneering Female Professor, by Monique Frize. SIAM News, September 2019.
Review of The Life and Work of George Boole: A Prelude to the Digital Age. by Desmond MacHale; New Light on George Boole by Desmond MacHale and Yvonne Cohen; and The Continued Exercise of Reason: Public Addresses by George Boole ed. Brendan Dooley. SIAM News, June 2019.
Review of The Pendulum Paradigm: Variations on a Theme and the Measure of Heaven and Earth. by Martin Beech. SIAM News, April 2019.
Review of Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, by Virginia Eubanks. SIAM News, May 2018.
Review of Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science, by Karl Sigmund. SIAM News, February 2018.
Review of Roman Portable Sundials: The Empire in Your Hand by Richard J.A. Talbert. Unpublished. January 2018.
Review of A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age, by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman. SIAM News, November 2017.
Review of The Turing Guide by Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak, and Robin Wilson. SIAM News, July/August 2017. Chinese Translation in Mathematics , Chinese Academy of Sciences, 37:1.
Review by G. Marcus and E. Davis of The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed Our Minds, by Michael Lewis. Unpublished.
Review of Eniac in Action: Making and Remaking the Modern Computer by Thomas Haigh, Mark Priestley, and Crispin Rope. SIAM News, October 2016.
Review of Leonhard Euler: Mathematical Genius in the Enlightenment by Ronald S. Callinger. Computing Reviews, Review #CR144743 September 2016.
Review of Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life by Tamara Plakins Thornton. Siam News July 2016.
Review of Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. Artificial Intelligence, vol 239, 1-6.
Review of Dance Notations and Robot Motions ed. Jean-Paul Laumond and Naoko Abe Computing Reviews, Review #CR144189 February 2016.
Review of The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World. by Pedro Domingos. SIAM News January 2016.
Does the World Look Different in Different Languages? Review of Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Different Languages, by Guy Deutscher, The Language Hoax: Why The World Looks the Same in Any Language, by John McWhorter, Artificial Intelligence, December 2015, 229:202-209.
Review of Machine Translation by P. Bhattacharya. Computing Reviews, Review #CR143722 August 2015.
Review of Numerical Notation: A Comparative History by Stephen Chrisomalis. SIAM News, June 2015.
Review of
Mathematics without Apologies: Portrait of a Problematic Vocation,
by Michael Harris. SIAM News, March 2015.
Harris's response.
Ethical Guidelines for a Superintelligence: Review of SuperIntelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom. Artificial Intelligence 220, January 2015, 121-124.
Review of How Not to be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg. SIAM News September 2014.
Review of "An Empirical Perspective on Representing Time," by A. Scheuermann et al. Review #CR142575, Computing Reviews, August 1, 2014
Review of Three views of logic: Mathematics, Philosophy, and Computer Science, by D. Loveland, R. Hodel, and S.G. Sterrett, Review #CR142187, Computing Reviews, April 17, 2014.
Review of Who's Bigger? Where Historical Figures Really Rank by S. Skiena and C. Ward. SIAM News March 2014.
Review of Case-based reasoning: A Textbook, by M. Richter and R. Weber. Review #CR141932, Computing Reviews, Jan. 27, 2014.
Review of Probably Approximately Correct by Leslie Valiant, SIAM News, October 2013, p. 6,8.
Review of Jane Austen: Game Theorist by Michael Chwe. SIAM News, September, 2013.
Review of The Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths, by Nancy Marie Brown, in Mythprint 50:2, Summer 2013.
How Did Newton Go So Far Off Course? Review of Newton and the Origin of Civilization by Jed Z. Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold. SIAM News, May 1, 2013.
Embodied Simulation as a Theory of Language. Review of Louder than Words : The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning by Benjamin Bergen. Unpublished.
Review of Special Issue of Artificial Intelligence Journal on AI and Wikipedia, Vol. 194 No. 1. Edited by E. Hovy, R. Navigli, and S.P. Ponzetto. Review #CR140920, Computing Reviews, Feb. 8, 2013.
What Nate Silver Gets Wrong by Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis. Review of The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver. Review in the online New Yorker, Jan. 25, 2013.
Review of "Exploiting qualitative spatial reasoning for topological adjustment of spatial data" by J. Wallgrün, SIGSPATIAL 2012. Review #CR140872, Computing Reviews,, Jan. 25, 2013.
Physics and Computation. Review of Computation and its Limits, by Paul Cockshott, Lewis Mackenzie and Greg Michaelson. SIAM News, November 2012.
Review of Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens, by Andrea Wulf. SIAM News, July/August 2012.
Review of In Pursuit of the Travelling Salesman by William Cook. SIAM News, May 2012.
Review of "Robust grasping under object pose uncertainty", by K. Hsaio, L. Kaelbling, and T. Lozano-Pérez in Autonomous Robots 31(2-3):253-268, 2011. Review #CR140061 in Computing Reviews April 17, 2012.
Review of 9 Algorithms that Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas that Drive Today's Computers by John MacCormick, SIAM News, March 2012.
Review of From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages, ed. Michael Adams. Mythprint 49:1, January 2012.
Review of Language technology for cultural heritage : selected papers from the LaTeCH Workshop Series ed. C. Sporleder, Antal van den Bosch and K. Zervanou. Computing Reviews, Nov. 2, 2011, Review #139550.. Thanks to Deena Engel and Emily Morton-Owens for helpful suggestions.
Review of "A note on a generalization of the muddy children problem" by N. Gierasimczuk and J. Szymanik, TARK 13, 2011. Review #139441 in Computing Reviews, Sept. 9, 2011.
Review of Geometry Revealed: A Jacob's Ladder of Modern Higher Geometry by Marcel Berger. SIAM News, 44:7, September 2011.
Review of The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick. Times Literary Supplement, August 17, 2011. Thanks to my brother Joey and to Prof. Joy Connolly for useful information.
Review of Metareasoning: thinking about thinking ed. M. Cox and A. Raja, Computing Reviews Aug 12, 2011, Review #139347.
Review of Galileo by J.L. Heilbron, SIAM News, 44:4, May 17, 2011.
Review of The Cambridge Companion to Children's Literature , ed. M.O. Grenby and Andrea Immel, Mythprint May 2011 pp. 10-11.
Review of The Routledge Companion to Children's Literature, ed. David Rudd. Mythprint, 48:1, January 2011, pp. 3-4.
Review of Roads to Infinity: The Mathematics of Truth and Proof, by John Stillwell. SIAM News, 43:8, October 2010, pp. 6,7.
Review of The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways our Intuitions Deceive Us, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, American Scientist, Sept-Oct. 2010, 98:5, pp. 428-430.
In Brief review of Donald Michie on Machine Intelligence, Biology, and More, ed. Ashwin Srinivasan, in Times Literary Supplement, July 16, 2010. No. 5598, p. 27.
Review of In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and The Mad Dreamers who Tried to Build a Perfect Language by Arika Okrent. SIAM News, June 2010, pp. 4,6.
Mathematics as Metaphor. A review of Where Mathematics Comes From, by George Lakoff and Raphael Nunez. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical AI, vol. 17, no. 3, 2005, pp. 305-315.
Two Machine Learning Textbooks: An Instructor's Perspective. Review of Machine Learning by Tom Mitchell and of Data Mining by Ian Witten and Eibe Frank. Artificial Intelligence, vol. 131, Sept. 2001, pp. 191-198.
Godel, Escher, Bach redux. Retrospective review of Godel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid by Douglas Hofstadter. IEEE Expert vol. 11, no. 3, 1996, pp. 7, 9.
Review of The Uncertain Reasoner's Companion: A Mathematical Perspective, by J.B. Paris, Cambridge University Press. Review in IEEE Expert, vol. 10, no. 5, 1995, pp. 78-79.
Review of Qualitative Reasoning, by Benjamin Kuipers, MIT Press. Review in IEEE Expert, vol. 9, no. 6, 1994, pp. 70-71.
Review of Mirror Worlds, by David Gelernter, Oxford U. Press, 1991. SIAM News, vol. 25, no. 3, 1992, p. 6.