"Clustering-Induced Localization of Quantum Walks on Networks"

One of my papers came out in published form today. Here are some details.

Title: Clustering-Induced Localization of Quantum Walks on Networks

Authors: Lucas Böttcher and Mason A. Porter

"Bounded-Confidence Models of Opinion Dynamics with Neighborhood Effects"

One of my papers just came out in final form. Here are some details.

Some Other 2025 MLB Awards

Major League Baseball announced various other awards (such as the Comeback Players of the Year) today.

2025 MLB Most Valuable Player (MVP) Awards

Major League Baseball announced it's 2025 Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards today, and here too there were no surprises.

In the American League, Aaron Judge of the Yankees win his 3rd MVP award in a close vote over Mariners' catcher Cal Raleigh. In the National League, Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers won his 4th MVP. This was also Ohtani's 4th unanimous MVP award, and nobody else in MLB history (or in any of the four major US professional sports) has won more than a single unanimous MVP award. In MLB history, Ohtani's four MVP awards is second all time to Barry Bonds' seven MVP awards. Ohtani's four MVP awards have come in a 5-year span, which David Schoenfield recently compared to other all-time 5-year spans in baseball history.

2025 also marks the first time in MLB history that both AL and NL MVP awards were repeat winners from the previous year.

You can see the full MVP voting on this page.

2025 MLB Cy Young Award Winners

Major League Baseball has announced its 2025 Cy Young Award winners, and again there are no surprises. Tarik Skubal beat out Garret Crochet in the American League (and did so slightly more handily than I was expecting) for his second consecutive Cy Young award, and Paul Skenes was a unanimous selection in the National League (with Christopher Sánchez receiving all 2nd-place votes and Yoshinobu Yamamoto finishing in 3rd).

You can see the full voting results on this page.

2025 MLB Managers of the Year

Baseball's 2025 Managers of the Year were announced today, and both winners are repeat winners from last year.

Stephen Vogt of the Cleveland Guardians won the American League Manager of the year award for the 2nd year in a row, and Pat Murphy of the Milwaukee Brewers accomplished the same feat in the National League.

You can see the vote totals for every manager that received a vote on this page

2025 MLB Rookies of the Year

Major League Baseball announced its 2025 Rookies of the Year today, and the results in both leagues were the expected ones. Namely, Nick Kurtz of the (West Sacramento) Athletics unanimously (as expected) won the American League Rookie of the Year award, and Drake Baldwin of the Atlanta Braves won the National League Rookie of the Year award.

Major League Baseball's 2025 Silver Slugger Awards

Major League Baseball has announced its 2025 Silver Slugger Awards for offensive excellence.

2025 Gold Gloves

Major League Baseball's Gold Glove Awards for defensive excellence were announced today.

Update (11/07/25): Fernando Tatis Jr. and Bobby Witt Jr. have been awarded Platinum Gloves as the best overall defenders. The Texas Rangers and Chicago Cubs were awarded team gold gloves.

Dodgers Win 2025 World Series! (Back-to-Back!)

What an epic battle against the Blue Jays!!!!

Back-to-back World Series championships!!!! (the first time since the Yankees in 1998–2000)

Yoshinobu Yamamoto is obviously going to win the World Series MVP.

Will Smith caught the most innings ever in a single World Series.

There were many other records set, records tied, and epic performances. This was quite a series!

What Happens in the Twin Cities Stays in the Twin Cities

I am taking my first trip to Minnesota, where I'll be going to the Twin Cities to give a mathematics colloquium at University of Minnesota.

"Dynamical Processes on Metric Networks"

A paper of mine was just published in final form. Here are some details.

Title: Dynamical Processes on Metric Networks

Authors: Lucas Böttcher and Mason A. Porter

The Dodgers are Heading to the World Series Again!

The Dodgers have swept the Brewers in the National League Championship Series (NLCS) and are heading back to the World Series to try to repeat as World Champions.

In today's game, Shohei Ohtani pitched six dominant shutout innings and hit 3 home runs. Wow! For this effort, he was named NLCS Most Valuable Player.

With this win, the Dodgers are the first team to win back-to back pennants since the Phillies in 2008–2009. They are trying to become the first back-to-back World Series champions since the Yankees in 1998–2000.

What Happens in Stockholm Stays in Stockholm (2025 Edition)

I am off to Stockholm to give a talk and visit Nordita!

What Happens in Dresden Stays in Dresden (2025 Edition)

I'm heading to Dresden to give a colloquium at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems.

What Happens in Tempe Stays in Tempe (2025 Edition)

I am heading to Arizona State University to visit its mathematics department, give a talk, chat with junior mathematicians, and do other valuable things.

What Happens in Santa Fe Stays in Santa Fe (2025 Edition)

I am off to Santa Fe to visit the Santa Fe Institute!

"Oscillatory and Excitable Dynamics in an Opinion Model with Group Opinions"

The published version of one of my papers just came out today. Here are some details.

Title: Oscillatory and Excitable Dynamics in an Opinion Model with Group Opinions

Authors: Corbit R. Sampson, Juan G. Restrepo, and Mason A. Porter

Abstract:

What Happens in Seattle Stays in Seattle (2025 Edition)

I am heading to Seattle to go to WorldCon 2025 (the World Science-Fiction convention). Here is my panel schedule for the con.

RIP Tom Lehrer (1928–2025)

As started appearing in obituaries in many venues today, the great Tom Lehrer died yesterday.

There have been many published obituaries, and the New York Times one (which is the first one that I saw) has lots of nice snarky comments by Lehrer.

I first encountered Lehrer's music late in my high-school time when I found and started listening to The Dr. Demento Show. The first of Lehrer's songs that I heard was "The Masochism Tango", and it remains a favorite. I fell in love with Lehrer's darkly humorous muse, which naturally is a wonderful fit for my own snarky sense of humor. Some obituaries even described Lehrer tersely as a "satirist and mathematician", and that's definitely a terse description to aspire to.

What Happens in Montreal Stays in Montreal (2025 Edition)

I am heading to Montreal for the first time in several years to attend the 2025 SIAM Annual Meeting, which is being held jointly with the CAIMS Annual Meeting.

What Happens in Berkeley Stays in Berkeley (2025 Edition)

I am heading off to Berkeley for the Smale@95 conference, which is a short event in honor of Steve Smale's 95th birthday. It was very cool to be invited to it!

Clayton Kershaw Records 3000th Career Strikeout!

In today's Dodger game, Clayton Kershaw became the 20th pitcher with at least 3000 career strikeouts. He is the fourth left-handed starter in that club and is the fifth pitcher to record at least 3000 strikeouts for one franchise.

Here is the rank-ordered list of Major League Baseball's sll-time strikeout leaders.

Bradford Doolittle did an interesting exercise to rank the 20 pitchers with at least 3000 strikeouts. (He puts Kershaw at 11th.)

Update (7/03/25): Jay Jaffe has written a nice article about Kershaw's accomplishment and its context.

"Perceived Community Alignment Increases Information Sharing"

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

Title: Perceived Community Alignment Increases Information Sharing

Authors: Elisa C. Baek, Ryan Hyon, Karina López, Mason A. Porter, and Carolyn Parkinson

Abstract: It has been proposed that information sharing, which is a ubiquitous and consequential behavior, plays a critical role in cultivating and maintaining a sense of shared reality. Across three studies, we test this theory by investigating whether or not people are especially likely to share information that they believe will be interpreted similarly by others in their social circles. Using neuroimaging data collected while people who live in the same residential community viewed brief film clips, we find that more similar neural responses across participants is associated with a greater likelihood to share content. We then test this relationship using two behavioral studies and find (1) that people are particularly likely to share content that they believe others in their social circles will interpret similarly and (2) that perceived similarity with others leads to increased sharing likelihood. In concert, our findings support the idea that people are driven to share information to create and reinforce shared understanding, which is critical to social connection.

What Happens in Bristol Stays in Bristol

A few days ago, I was in Bristol to visit University of Bristol's School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology.

"Competition Between Group Interactions and Nonlinearity in Voter Dynamics on Hypergraphs"

One of my papers just came out in final form. Here are some details.

Title: Competition Between Group Interactions and Nonlinearity in Voter Dynamics on Hypergraphs

Authors: Jihye Kim, Deok-Sun Lee, Byungjoon Min, Mason A. Porter, Maxi San Miguel, and Kwang-Il Goh

What Happens in "Snowbird" Stays in "Snowbird" (2025 Edition)

I'm off to the 2025 "Snowbird" SIAM dynamical-systems conference. I love this biennial migration to my favorite conference series!

2025 Inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has announced its 2025 inductees.

It's great to see Cyndi Lauper, Warren Zevon, and Joe Cocker take their place in the Hall among the greats!

"A Non-Expert’s Introduction to Data Ethics for Mathematicians"

My chapter in our new book is also out. Here are some details about it.

Title: A Non-Expert’s Introduction to Data Ethics for Mathematicians

Author: Mason A. Porter

Abstract: I give a short introduction to data ethics. I begin with some background information and societal context for data ethics. I then discuss data ethics in mathematical-science education and indicate some available course material. I briefly highlight a few efforts—at my home institution and elsewhere—on data ethics, society, and social good. I then discuss open data in research, research replicability and some other ethical issues in research, the tension between privacy and open data and code, and a few controversial studies and reactions to studies. I also discuss ethical principles, institutional review boards, and a few other considerations in the scientific use of human data. I then briefly survey a variety of research and lay articles that are relevant to data ethics and data privacy. I conclude with a brief summary and some closing remarks.

My focal audience is mathematicians, but I hope that this chapter will also be useful to others. I am not an expert about data ethics, and this chapter provides only a starting point on this wide-ranging topic. I encourage you to examine the resources that I discuss and to reflect carefully on data ethics, its role in mathematics education, and the societal implications of data and data analysis. As data and technology continue to evolve, I hope that such careful reflection will continue throughout your life.

"Mathematical and Computational Methods for Complex Social Systems"

Our edited book is out! You can find it on this website. Here are some details.

Title: Mathematical and Computational Methods for Complex Social Systems

Authors: Heather Z. Brooks, Michelle Feng, Mason A. Porter, and Alexandria Volkening

"Bounded-Confidence Models of Opinion Dynamics with Adaptive Confidence Bounds"

Another of my papers just came out in final form. Here are some details.

Title: Bounded-Confidence Models of Opinion Dynamics with Adaptive Confidence Bounds

Authors: Grace J. Li, Jiajie Luo, and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: People's opinions change with time as they interact with each other. In a bounded-confidence model (BCM) of opinion dynamics, individuals (which are represented by the nodes of a network) have continuous-valued opinions and are influenced by neighboring nodes whose opinions are sufficiently similar to theirs (i.e., are within a confidence bound). In this paper, we formulate and analyze discrete-time BCMs with heterogeneous and adaptive confidence bounds. We introduce two new models: (1) a BCM with synchronous opinion updates that generalizes the Hegselmann–Krause model; and (2) a BCM with asynchronous opinion updates that generalizes the Deffuant–Weisbuch model. We analytically and numerically explore our adaptive-confidence BCMs' limiting behaviors, including the confidence-bound dynamics, the formation of clusters of nodes with similar opinions, and the time evolution of ``effective graphs,"" which are time-dependent subgraphs of networks with edges only between nodes that are receptive to each other. For a variety of networks and a wide range of values of the parameters that control the increase and decrease of confidence bounds, we demonstrate numerically that our adaptive-confidence BCMs result in fewer major opinion clusters and longer convergence times than the baseline (i.e., nonadaptive) BCMs. In our numerical simulations, we also observe that our adaptive-confidence BCMs can have adjacent nodes that converge to the same opinion but are not receptive to each other. This qualitative behavior does not occur in the associated baseline BCMs.

What Happens at the Global Physics Summit Stays at the Global Physics Summit

Later this afternoon, I will be taking a train to Anaheim to go to the Global Physics Summit, where I will be participating in the March-Meeting wing of this summit. I'll only be around for about a day and a half or so, but nevertheless I will be making my triumphant return to the March Meeting (which I last attended in 2016).

Update: I ended up just taking a Lyft directly to my hotel and not bothering with the train.

What Happens in the Research Triangle Stays in the Research Triangle (2025 Edition)

I am flying over to the Research Triangle in North Carolina to give talks at NC State and UNC Chapel Hill and also to talk shop with some of my collaborators.

“An “Opinion Reproduction Number” for Infodemics in a Bounded-Confidence Content-Spreading Process on Networks”

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

Title: An “Opinion Reproduction Number” for Infodemics in a Bounded-Confidence Content-Spreading Process on Networks

Authors: Heather Z. Brooks and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: We study the spreading dynamics of content on networks. To do this, we use a model in which content spreads through a bounded-confidence mechanism. In a bounded-confidence model (BCM) of opinion dynamics, the agents of a network have continuous-valued opinions, which they adjust when they interact with agents whose opinions are sufficiently close to theirs. Our content-spreading model, which one can also interpret as an independent-cascade model, introduces a twist into BCMs by using bounded confidence for the content spread itself. We define an analog of the basic reproduction number from disease dynamics that we call an opinion reproduction number. A critical value of the opinion reproduction number indicates whether or not there is an “infodemic” (i.e., a large content-spreading cascade) of content that reflects a particular opinion. By determining this critical value, one can determine whether or not an opinion dies off or propagates widely as a cascade in a population of agents. Using configuration-model networks, we quantify the size and shape of content dissemination by calculating a variety of summary statistics, and we illustrate how network structure and spreading-model parameters affect these statistics. We find that content spreads most widely when agents have a large expected mean degree or a large receptiveness to content. When the spreading process slightly exceeds the infodemic threshold, there can be longer dissemination trees than for larger expected mean degrees or receptiveness (which both promote content sharing and hence help push content spread past the infodemic threshold), even though the total number of content shares is smaller.

Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia, and Billy Wagner Elected to the Hall of Fame

Ichiro Suzuki, CC Sabathia, and Billy Wagner have been elected to Major League Baseball's Hall of Fame. They join Dick Allen and Dave Parker, who were elected to the Hall by one of the era committees in December.

As one can see in the voting results, Suzuki was named on every ballot except for one. (Therefore, Mariano Rivera remains the only player who has ever been elected to the Hall unanimously by the baseball writers.) Suzuki and Sabathia are both in their first year of eligibility, and Billy Wagner is in his 10th and final year of eligibility. I initially thought that Sabathia would get about 50% of the vote in his first year, but I saw quickly from the vote tracker (which I follow religiously every year) that he was going to make it this year. For Suzuki, the only question is whether or not he'd be elected unanimously. Wagner missed election last year by a measly 5 votes, so it was clear that he'd make it this year.

The strong election of Sabathia, the stronger-than-I-expected debut of Féliz Hernández (who got 20.6% of the vote), and the big gains of Andy Pettite (who roughly doubled his vote percentage from last year to 27.9% after making essentially no progress for several years) illustrate that the writers are looking much more intelligently than they used to at what constitutes a Hall-of-Fame starting pitcher.

Carlos Beltrán made a lot of progress to reach 70.3% of the vote. The newcomers on the 2026 ballot constitute a weak field, so Beltrán will surely be elected in 2026 and the other holdovers should make strong progress. Andruw Jones improved a little bit to 66.2%, and he may well be elected next year. I think it's about 50/50 that Jones gets elected in 2026 — a selection of ESPN baseball writers are much more optimistic than I am — but I am confident that he'll make it in 2027 (his 10th and final year of eligibility) if he does not make it in 2026. Jones barely survived the 5% cut on the ballot in his first couple of years, so he's made a ton of progress since then. Chase Utley also made a lot of progress this year, going from 28.8% of the vote to 39.8% of it. I expect that he will surpass 50% next year, but I think that he's likely still a few years from election.

Update: Here is Jay Jaffe's post to summarize the voting results and his thoughts on them. The navigation bar at the top of that website gives hyperlinks to his other articles for the 2025 Hall of Fame voting cycle.

Update (1/23/25): Here is Jay Jaffe's extended rundown of the election results.

Update (1/27/25): Here is Jay Jaffe's 5-year forecast of upcoming Hall of Fame elections.

What Happens in Athens (Georgia) Stays in Athens (Georgia)

I am heading off to Athens for my niece's bat mitzvah. Maybe I will see some homage to the Athens music scene at some point?

RIP Bob Uecker (1934–2025)

Former player, Brewer broadcaster, and legendary baseball personality Bob Uecker has died.

One of the great things when Baseball started broadcasting games over the internet many years ago is that I got a chance to hear Uecker broadcast a bunch of games. He was damn funny, an amazing broadcaster and storyteller, and a lifetime .200 hitter (as he sometimes pointed out with his wonderful self-deprecating humor).

You can read more about Uecker at his Wikipedia page.

What Happens in San Juan Capistrano Stays in San Juan Capistrano (Wildfire Edition)

UCLA is officially still online on Monday, so I am heading over to visit friends in San Juan Capistrano for an unplanned visit. If we are teaching in person on Wednesday, I will return on Tuesday. Otherwise, I will return at some later time.

Additionally, as in games like Pandemic, the regions of 'evacuation warning' (in this case) are also getting closer to my home region, so it's good to get out of town when it's prudent.

Update (maybe 20 minutes after I wrote the text above, with a scheduled posting for tomorrow afternoon): Then again, it looks like the Pacific Palisades wildfire has taken a hard east (though somewhat north of me) with some regions going from nothing to warning to GTFO very quickly. My region doesn't yet have even a warning, but the prudect act is to GTFO tonight and go to my friends already.

What Happens in Denver Stays in Denver (2025 Edition)

I am flying to Denver for the US Dynamics Days 2025 conference. I really love this conference series! This year, the conference hotel is actually about half a mile from the 2025 Snowbird-conference hotel.

I am really looking forward to this year's Dynamics Daze conference!