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.