RIP Jay Johnstone (1945–2020)

Baseball player and noted prankster Jay Johnstone died today. Here is ESPN's article about it.

Also, read his books. They're hilarious.

Personal Dice

Thanks very much to @chadtopaz for designing these dice for me!

It was awesome to wake up to these designs on social media.

I need to get these made in physical form. I especially want something in d20 form. pic.twitter.com/20gx0Vy6fq

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) September 27, 2020

2020 Ig Nobel Laureates

This year's Ig Nobel laureates were announced in today's ceremony. 

 I have some fondness for the Physics prize (for exciting Faraday-like waves in earthworms), given that nonlinear dynamics and pattern formation are involved, and several of the other ones are also very amusing, but I think that my favorite one this year is the one in Management:

(奚广安) Xi Guang-An, (莫天祥) Mo Tian-Xiang, (杨康生) Yang Kang-Sheng, (杨广生) Yang Guang-Sheng, and (凌显四) Ling Xian Si, five professional hitmen in Guangxi, China, who managed a contract for a hit job (a murder performed for money) in the following way: After accepting payment to perform the murder, Xi Guang-An then instead subcontracted the task to Mo Tian-Xiang, who then instead subcontracted the task to Yang Kang-Sheng, who then instead subcontracted the task to Yang Guang-Sheng, who then instead subcontracted the task to Ling Xian-Si, with each subsequently enlisted hitman receiving a smaller percentage of the fee, and nobody actually performing a murder.

"Spatial Applications of Topological Data Analysis: Cities, Snowflakes, Random Structures, and Spiders Spinning Under the Influence"

One of my papers was just published in final form today. Here are some details.

Title: Spatial Applications of Topological Data Analysis: Cities, Snowflakes, Random Structures, and Spiders Spinning Under the Influence

Authors: Michelle Feng and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: Spatial networks are ubiquitous in social, geographical, physical, and biological applications. To understand the large-scale structure of networks, it is important to develop methods that allow one to directly probe the effects of space on structure and dynamics. Historically, algebraic topology has provided one framework for rigorously and quantitatively describing the global structure of a space, and recent advances in topological data analysis have given scholars a new lens for analyzing network data. In this paper, we study a variety of spatial networks—including both synthetic and natural ones—using topological methods that we developed recently for analyzing spatial systems. We demonstrate that our methods are able to capture meaningful quantities, with specifics that depend on context, in spatial networks and thereby provide useful insights into the structure of those networks. We illustrate these ideas with examples of synthetic networks and dynamics on them, street networks in cities, snowflakes, and webs that were spun by spiders under the influence of various psychotropic substances.

Usage of the Word 'Oy'

Usage of the word 'oy' from The Joys of Yiddish: "It is uttered in as many ways as the utterer's histrionic ability permits." pic.twitter.com/Jwz5YmK5oM

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) September 13, 2020

"{Location, Location, Location}"

I am amused by today's xkcd.

I am going to steal the mouseover text for other nefarious purposes: "The most important attributes of a vector in 3-space are {Location, Location, Location}"

RIP Paul Steen (?? – 2020)

I received the sad news early today that Cornell Professor Paul Steen died on Friday.

I took a class on bifurcation theory from Paul, who was very supportive. My class project, in which I needed to use AUTO (an important aspect of the course), led to this publication.

Here is an excerpt from the Acknowledgements section:

Additionally, we express our gratitude toward Alan Champneys for several productive suggestions regarding the numerics, Alejandro Rodríguez-Luis for providing a preprint of his manuscript, and Paul Steen, whose guidance for this work as a project for ChE 753 (on which this paper is based) was particularly valuable.

RIP Lou Brock (1939–2020)

We've lost another one of the great ones: Hall-of-Famer Lou Brock died today at the age of 81. You can see his statistics at this web page.

(Tip of the cap to Gregg Schneider.)

Tales from the ArXiv: "Dandling" Ends in Networks

The typo in this paper is pretty amusing, and I think that the authors should go with it.

RIP Tom Seaver (1944–2020)

Baseball Hall-of-Famer and pitching legend Tom Seaver has died. You can marvel at his career statistics on this page.

(Tip of the cap to Gregg Schneider.)

UCLA's New Undergraduate Major in "Data Theory"

UCLA has a new undergraduate major in Data Theory. Here is its catalog entry.

The video blurb about @UCLA's new undergraduate major (which I helped design) in "Data Theory" went live a week and a half ago, and I managed not to notice until now.

Here it is: https://t.co/iIZVPxUCK8

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) September 1, 2020

Update: Also see some hyperlinks in my previous blog entry about our new major.