Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid has been recorded as a series of video lectures for MIT's Open Courseware project.
posted by loquacious on May 30, 2009 - 74 comments

The Mathemagician and Pied Puzzler (PDF, rough table of contents here) is a collection of puzzles created by members of the Gathering 4 Gardner Foundation, in tribute to the man himself (previously). Also freely available at the G4G site is Puzzle Craft (PDF), by Stewart Coffin. (The Puzzling World of Polyhedral Dissections, also by Coffin, is available here.)
posted by cog_nate on Oct 1, 2008 - 9 comments

Geek Logik is Garth Sundem's book & blog about equations for every day living, including how many cups of coffee you require to be functional, who to vote for, and others.
posted by xmutex on Nov 7, 2006 - 9 comments

Who has the fish? Einstein logic puzzle. If I can do it, you guys can.
posted by swift on Aug 4, 2005 - 53 comments

Gödel and the Nature of Mathematical Truth : A Talk with Verena Huber-Dyson
posted by Gyan on Jul 29, 2005 - 77 comments

Godel's theorems have been used to extrapolate a great many "truths" about the world. Torkel Franzen sets the record straight in his new book Godel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse. Read the introduction (PDF). If you want, check out his explanation of the theorems.
posted by Gyan on Jun 29, 2005 - 65 comments

The Logic of Diversity "A new book, The Wisdom of Crowds [..:] by The New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki, has recently popularized the idea that groups can, in some ways, be smarter than their members, which is superficially similar to Page's results. While Surowiecki gives many examples of what one might call collective cognition, where groups out-perform isolated individuals, he really has only one explanation for this phenomenon, based on one of his examples: jelly beans [...] averaging together many independent, unbiased guesses gives a result that is probably closer to the truth than any one guess. While true — it's the central limit theorem of statistics — it's far from being the only way in which diversity can be beneficial in problem solving." (Three-Toed Sloth)
posted by kliuless on Jun 20, 2005 - 6 comments

"WARNING!!! The puzzles on this site are very difficult, and most require the use of a good spreadsheet program in order to solve them. It will take many hours, perhaps days, to solve each puzzle..."
posted by limitedpie on Aug 11, 2004 - 7 comments

What Color is My Hat? I [heart] these mathematical conundrums -- simple, easy-to-state, seemingly obvious logic problems that have solutions that completely defy common sense. Here's another you can spring on a friend: "You want to fry up three pieces of french toast. You have a frying pan that is just large enough to accomodate two pieces of bread at a time. If it takes you 30 seconds to fry one side of bread, and each piece of must be fried on both sides, how long will it take you to cook up three pieces (assuming that the act of flipping a piece or adding/ removing it to or from the pan takes no time). Think about it. Answer inside.
posted by Shadowkeeper on May 25, 2001 - 24 comments