Is the sum of the carnivalettes greater than? Hmm.

Kurt Van Etten at Learning Computation has a new carnival up. Carn-O-Math #XVI is divided into “The Good,” “The Bad,” and “The Ugly.”

The categories are for math educators, mathematicians, and computer scientists, respectively. More about that below. Kurt grabbed some good posts without waiting for submission. And so it should be. And so, I hope, it will be.

The quality is there. The size? Even though the academic year has just started, I hoped for a bit more. Next time.

Oh, and the semi-partition? There’s been discussion of dividing into two carnivals. I remain, strongly opposed. One of the nice things about a carnival is that there is a mix of topics that normally you wouldn’t find together. The reader chooses, and if you’re a computer geek but a post about long division catches your eye, more power to you. Can’t do that with separate carnivals.

Even in COM10000, my recreational puzzle is in the educator section (because of me, not the topic), while the sex partner post is in the mathematicians group (perhaps since it is such a major top of theoretical speculation for undergrad math majors…) On the basis of the math, though, think about “what is a random figure?” vs “what is the difference between mean and median?”

I don’t mean Kurt did bad. He didn’t. I mean that I would be concerned if any structure were made permanent.