What's Lurking in the OCIAM Drawers?

While trying to find an envelope to mail stuff (none in the mail room), I check in the drawers under one set of Mathematical Institute printers, I found reams of paper (of course), a few technical books, a book about what to do if one gets pregnant, and the supply of the old (from more than a decade ago) OCIAM t-shirts.

I couldn't find an envelope large enough to mail the book I want to send, but I wonder if the t-shirt that I bought almost 9 years ago was the last new one anybody acquired.

Back to the Future

It's good to know that we have a few spare blank 3.5 inch 'floppy' disks under lock and key in our filing cabinet (in Dartington House) in case we ever need them.

Look at all these Rumors

Somebody apparently started a false rumor that the seminar speaker that I am hosting on Thursday wasn't going to come. (I'm partly wondering what's going on, partly wondering whether somebody is trying to screw with me, and partly amused if somebody is indeed trying to screw with me this way.) Anyway, members of OCIAM and whoever else wants to come will most certainly be hearing about the FPU problem this Thursday.

The game is afoot.

Emergency Exit Fail

10/02/09: Emergency Exit Fail

This is one of the emergency exits on the second floor of Dartington House. It has been in this state at least since the first day that I started living in Oxford. (Actually, it used to be in much worse shape than this. Until recently, there was a bunch of 'do not pass' tape over the door.)

I wonder if I should submit this picture to the Fail Blog? Thoughts?

WTF of the Day

Professors have nightmares sometimes---thoughts and dreams that infect our souls, curve our spines, and keep our country from winning the war. There are a few of them, but for many of us, one of them is when we walk along a street like Cornmarket in Oxford and see one of our former students playing a guitar while people toss coins into his guitar case. Oh wait... that actually happened today!

The student in question (whose name I won't reveal, though I know he's read my blog occasionally, so I'll wave a brief 'hello') is quite clever. He is part of OCIAM's Masters program in applied mathematics and computational science. Actually, he just turned in his dissertation on Friday and will be formally defending it in an oral exam (a so-called "viva") in a couple of weeks. He sings in an a capella group (which performed at the Edinborough fringe festival, for example), needs to practice his guitar, and figured he might as well earn some money while doing so. That's pretty sharp and amusing, and I wouldn't be telling this story on a public web page anyway if it weren't innocent. I was a bit surprised to see him, and I asked two of the obvious questions: (1) What are you doing? and (2) Does our program really cost that much money? (Apparently it does.)

Now I wonder how many of the other street performers I see on Cornmarket Street are actually Oxford graduate students. Also, my student probably saw several other people he knows. Oxford is a small place and you pretty much always run into people you know when you're walking around. This student spent some time as a high school teacher, and if any of his former students saw him, they would have a field day! (For the sake of optimizing this story, I very much hope this happened.) My student is well on his way to having a fantastically successful career in whatever scientific field (academia or industry) he chooses, but I'm not going to ever let him forget about this incident, which with this blog entry should become part of the MSc's official lore. (On Friday, we actually had a celebration of the program's 30th birthday. I wish I could have told this story two days ago, but alas it only occurred today.)

Did I mention that I like good stories?

Doc Ock is now Prof Ock

Congratulations to OCIAM's illustrious Research Director formerly known as Doc Ock! As of about a week ago, he is now officially Prof. Ock.

To be honest, the only reason* I am writing this blog entry is that I wanted to post a link to this picture, which bears an uncanny resemblance to what Ock looks like in real life.

* OK, it's not the only reason. The other reason is that by writing this blog entry, I am avoiding revising a certain grant proposal just a little bit longer.

Anyway, enjoy!

OCIAM versus ComLab: Annual Cricket Game and BBQ

You know, part of me has the urge to write this entry in the form of George Carlin's famous Baseball and Football skit. ("In baseball, the object is to go home... and be safe. In cricket, the object is to stand in the outfield and drink beer. Wait... I should probably use a different argument to convince this crowd that baseball is better.")

Somehow I feel as if this particular blog entry is expected of me (although I was planning to do it anyway) after playing in my first cricket game. Actually, at some point I plan to write an entry on some of the strange sports people actively play and follow here---Like rowing. What the fuck is up with that? Apparently if you watch it live it's like watching a parade; they just go past you once. (Now that I've pissed off half my local readership, I can return to the main thread...)---but for today let's talk about our cricket match.

First of all, OCIAM won for what I am told is the third time in a row. Apparently, the players who led to this victory correlate quite well with the players who led to the previous victories. ComLab, the Computing Laboratory, scored some ungodly double-digit number of runs in their inning (which in sensible sports like baseball is called a "half inning." Apparently, it's considered good if you keep them under triple digits in one inning. (In case you ever wondered why cricket games can last for several days, wonder no more. Somebody can become a full professor, start playing in a cricket game, and then be of mandatory retirement age before the game is over. Wait... that won't convince this audience that baseball is better either.) So we had a pretty successful inning. I learned a few lessons during our inning in the field: (1) I prefer catching balls with a baseball glove rather than my bare hands (which is required in cricket, except for their equivalent of a catcher). (2) Cricket balls that are hit hard really sting when they impact your hand shortly thereafter. (3) Being used to catching with a glove makes it harder when you suddenly try catching with your bare hand. (4) I'm a much better baseball player than cricket player. (OK, I already knew that one.) Not that I'm a great baseball player, but in that situation I can use my knowledge of the game to make up for my minimal actual talent. In cricket, I just stink---though I was getting the hang of the differences at bat when I took batting practice.

In our inning, we scored some ungodly number of runs that was slightly larger than ComLab's ungodly number of runs. That gave us what is now known in baseball as a "walk-off win." (I believe that that term dates from the 70s among professional baseball players, but it became much more popular outside those circles starting in the late 90s.) That is, in the bottom of the last inning (or the last inning, in the case of cricket, which for today's game was the second inning), you surpass your opponent's score and, having won the game, you walk off the field. I was going to be the next batter to come into the game, so I didn't get a chance to display my baseball stance during the game. However, I got some nice batting practice in and there are pictures of me in some cricket regalia specifically using a baseball stance. (In batting practice, I basically found an isomorphism between the last part of the baseball swing and the entire cricket swing, and that allowed me to start hitting reasonably at least during practice---I'm not game-tested yet, but hopefully we'll fix that next summer.) I'll post the picture when I get a copy of it. I assume it's good because I was scaring people with my baseball stance. And I was doing my best Gary Sheffield with lots of bat waggling in addition to my usual thing of banging the plate with the edge of the bat. I guess the sophisticated folk of this country simply aren't used to such behavior.

Anyway, the company and the game-playing were fun, though baseball is a much better sport---not that I'm biased or anything! One thing that was really cool, by the way, was being able to use all 360 degrees while batting at one of the two "wickets," which is their version of a plate. (Yes, there are two of them.) This gives quite a bit of strategy when it comes to angling the ball. A couple of people had some success just turning around and hitting the ball backwards. (You can move wherever you want when you're batting.)

I guess aside from the promised pictures, that's about what I wanted to say. Maybe I'll even call my shot next year. I think enough people would get the joke.

OCIAM to fund research on camel-spitting distance

Update (6/26/08): Enough time has passed, so I put the correct 2008 posting year back in.

Note (added 4/30/08): This is actually a blog entry from 4/29/08, and I am burying it elsewhere on this page by request.



Remember that a few weeks ago I wrote this blog entry, which I then relegated to a "2007" post with a date change until it was safe to announce things officially. (I'm sneaky that way.) Well, I have now been given word that the news can be made public. So here goes.

I'll start with the official words from our research facilitator:

I'm delighted to announce that the department has just been awarded $25M
by the Global Research Partnership of the King Abdullah University of
Science and Technology to set up the Oxford Centre for Collaborative
Applied Mathematics (OCCAM), to be run in the first instance by John
Ockendon and 6 collegues drawn from OCIAM, CMB, Numerical Analysis and the
Computational Biology Group.

The Centre will be based in the Gibson Building and will have 4 new
faculty, 4 research fellows, 16 PDRAs and 14 graduate students. It will be
formally launched on 1 Oct 08.

We will be making a presentation on 16 May in the Industrial and
Interdisciplinary workshop slot to describe what'll be happening with
OCCAM and how you can get involved. I hope everyone will be able to come
along.


Now that we're getting funding from Saudi Arabia, there are going to be a few changes around here. For example, here are just a few of the new topics from which the newly-hired researchers will be allowed to choose:

1. Optimization of camel dynamics (including the kinematics of spitting).

2. Modelling oil extraction.

3. Optimal design of chadors.

4. Community detection in terrorist networks


Now let me be a bit more serious for a second. I have mixed feelings about this whole thing. While it's really exciting to be in a research group (especially one in mathematics) that is getting a grant of this magnitude and it will be "intellectually awesome" (to borrow some old phrasing from the efforts to get the grant and twist it slightly) to have lots of new faculty, postdocs, and graduate students around, there are some very serious ramifications. One of Oxford's student newspapers had an article last term about various programs here that have gotten money from sources that could be construed as dirty. Presumably, we will be henceforth be included on this list, so I expect that there will be at least some political backlash to this funding that the Powers That Be in our group will just have to deal with however they see fit. This new grant also has the potential to have ramifications on the politics within the group (and I have seen some signs of this already), so we're all going to have to work hard to make sure things remain pleasant in this respect. (One of the things that I like best about OCIAM is how much everybody seems to like each other.) I am not one of the central players on this grant, and right now my plans are to remain on the periphery. I will certainly interact with the new people we hire (and people already here, of course), but I currently don't feel comfortable accepting any money that percolates from this grant. I haven't decided for sure if I won't ever accept any, but I am definitely leaning against it. At the very least, I would have to think very seriously about the decision. Part of my discomfort certainly comes from my Jewish ancestry, and while my religious beliefs (obviously) differ greatly from what is "expected" of me, I have enough of a connection to my background that I wouldn't be able to accept funding from the source in question without serious thought/soul-searching. To be fair in my discussion, I should also mention that the grant has the potential to do a lot of good---and not just for the research group I'm in. With this grant, Oxford has been selected to help found a Western-style applied mathematics group in Saudi Arabia, so my colleagues have the chance to play a leading role in bringing something potentially very important to that country.

In closing this entry, let me recall for some of you that Arcane Gazebo jokingly phrased his decision to go into finance as "selling out". I hereby raise my plastic cup (with the remnants of this morning's iced latte, of course) in the fervent hope that we haven't done just that. I plan to be a passive observer in this whole thing (with a slight amount of "mo' money" attitude with respect to what OCIAM is getting) and look forward to the significant side scientific benefits from the additional academics that will be buzzing around the place. But it's also worth mentioning that I'm extremely glad that I'm not a central player in this grant and most definitely plan to remain that way. Maybe I'll change my mind later, but right now I feel like I can't accept any of the money that comes through this grant (which means, in practice, that I will make no attempt to fund any of my grad students or postdocs through this mechanism).

Now, in which direction am I supposed to bow? I can never get that straight.

Quote of the Day

Today's quote is: "[Name] is a big cuddly teddy bear compared to you."

Context: I was recently recruited to be one of the assessors of the dissertations that OCIAM's M.Sc. students will be submitting in September. I am replacing someone else, and the comment above reflects our different marking/grading styles and our expectations of what the students probably think of this change.

Anybody who doesn't believe that the above statement is accurate should ask members of my research group who have witnessed the sea of red on their manuscript drafts. (And nobody who knows me should be surprised.)

The Top 10 Differential Equations of All Time

Now that I know that I am providing endless amusement to the grad students, faculty, and (dare-I-say) postdocs in OCIAM, here's a little survey that I have been meaning to do for a while.

Basically, I want to write (or co-write, if anybody else is interested) an article for a venue like the AMS Notices or American Mathematical Monthly that discusses the "top 10 differential equations of all time" (a la David Letterman). The thing is that I need some sort of survey first, so if I just choose 10 that I like, it would be geared too much towards specific subjects. So, if anybody wants to pipe in here, by e-mail, or by any other venue, I would be greatly appreciative. (List of differential equations written on napkins are particularly encouraged, but toilet paper is right out.)

I'd like to get enough lists from people so that I can take the 10 most popular choices from that list and write the article. For each equation, I'd include some (reasonably brief) discussion of where it comes from and why it's important.

Here is a list that partially reflects my opinion but also reflects how little time I'm going to spend typing up the rest of this entry:

10. Lorentz equations

9. the Nesterenko equation*

8. the Klausmeier equation (because it's named after a former colleague who made a great Thanksgiving turkey)

7. Duffing's equation

6. Einstein's field equations (if for no other reason than because it made a guest appearance in The Triplets of Bellevile, and I got a free book out of that)

5. Navier-Stokes equations

4. the linear Schrodinger equation

3. the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation

2. the cubic nonlinear Schrodinger equation (aka, the Gross-Pitaevskii equation) [notice the correlations from 2-4; that's why I need help writing this list]

1. x' = 0


Honorable mention: That equation I "derived" on my AMa 95b final back in the day. (Actually, I could have mentioned any number of courses here, and I think 95b is one of the few in which I didn't develop my own equation of one sort or another with some misplaced derivation. But it amuses me to attribute this to AMa 95, so I won't let the truth get in the way of a good story.)

* This is the "unnamed" equation in a recent paper of mine (and several upcoming ones!) that my collaborators and I decided to name after the person who first derived it because it makes citing his results less cumbersome for the exposition. I wonder if this is how other equations have gotten named?

I swear I'm going to write my review for Avenue Q in the relatively near future.

It's all about the meta-

I'm a bit tired and don't feel like writing too much at the moment. (I think I'll read a bit of Neuromancer, figure out which of my perturbation methods students should be in which sections [without a solution to the optimization problem discussed earlier today], and then turn on the Diamondbacks-Rockies game --- though with the game starting at 1:37 am, I won't actually be able to listen to very much of it.)

I feel like I should make a meta- post today, and I was given a great opportunity to do so because one of my colleagues said she wanted to do something interesting enough to end up in my blog. So if anybody wants to volunteer any good ideas, let me know. But I think the chance for me to go all meta- on everybody is good enough for me (though I think I have more of a fixed point than was in the movie Adaptation). Anyway, I'm always happy to help people out.

There are also games of Mah Jong planned for the future and requests for coming over to my place to play games on the Wii. (This is in addition to the students of mine who come over to play Wii games with me, because I'm just going to have to fail the lot of them if they refuse to do that.)

I didn't end up going to the games night tonight because I went to the pub and then to dinner with my colleagues. Plus, we have plans for future board games (blokus was discussed) and I have gotten a space in a Vampire campaign run by some person I'll meet during the first session. I hope to get into a D & D campaign at some point, but it will be interesting to try Vampire.

An American Mathematician in Oxford

I've got ethernet set up in my apartment now, so I've got regular online access again.

I'm exhausted and I have a ton of stuff to do to get settled (and prepare for my perturbation theory course, which starts next week).

Once I got online at work, I went through the built-up e-mails quickly because I knew there would be a lot of stuff to do. The first thing I did online at home is to check on the Rockies-Padres game. I couldn't get online last night, so I didn't get a chance to listen to it. The Rockies won! Their assent to the playoffs was really incredible! I'll blog some more about baseball later.

One thing I've noticed in Somerville is that I keep getting duplicate online and hard copies of things (actually, I was given multiple copies of some things because different people wanted to make sure I get everything I need). At US universities (at least the ones I've been at), most stuff comes only online now, but here they're still in the transition period where one gets copies both ways. For the one day while I didn't have access it was helpful, but now I see that a lot of Somerville College's resources are going to get wasted this way. Apparently, the older folks don't want to have to go online for such things, and I've heard some of the older Tutors are set in their way, so I'm looking forward to getting chastised for my newfangled ways.

I get free lunches and dinners whenever I want, so I won't have too many expenses for a while. (I do plan to get some ice cream tonight though...) When eating in the dining hall (so, for dinners that aren't for private parties), I get to eat at the High Table, which is quite literally on higher ground than where the students (in full view of the table) are eating. Tonight isn't one of the regular dinner nights where Tutors go and I doubt there will be the requisite minimum of 3 to eat in the private dining room, so I'll eat in the regular hall tonight. This could be my chance to eat at the special seat reserved for the Principal (or, in her absence, the highest-ranking Tutor present), but then it seems to me that that almost becomes like the old Table of Shame situation we had in Lloyd. I'm thinking I might just go ahead and eat on the regular tables with the students (a la Feynman). As the Senior Tutor said, I'm a member of the Senior Common Room (which refers simultaneously to an actual room and to the social group of Tutors and Administators in Somerville), so I can do what I want. Many people have confused me for a new student anyway---so I have the power of faculty (which gives much more benefits in this system than in the US one) and I can blend in (to whatever extent I can blend in with anything) with the students. This could be fun.

The head researcher in OCIAM (Oxford's applied math group) is extremely blunt. I was told about him before, and he really utters some off-the-cuff remarks. He was pleased to know that I'm blunt, though given the stuff that he utters, I'm afraid I am beaten hands down in this regard. Plus, I usually need time to become comfortable for that stuff. Anyway, I met some of my fellow applied math faculty members and they seem really nice. There are 5 new ones out of 20 in total (with a couple of the other 15 to retire soon), so there's a lot of new blood in the department. Two of us are Americans, so we plan on taking over (as I indicated to the head of OCIAM's research program). It's our manifest destiny. (Plus, we need more room to breathe.) This is the largest turnover in this group in a looooooong time, so there are some really exciting opportunities to build up some nice new things in addition to what's already there. Oh, and the Tutor assigned to mentor me is an American. The Senior Tutor figured that somebody else who also had to make the US->UK transition would be a good person to choose, and I agree with her completely. I can also ask my colleague in OCIAM (who finished up as a grad turkey in applied math at Caltech when I was a frosh), as he moved here a couple of months ago and has already figured out some of the stuff I need to figure out.

Getting to Oxford was pretty uneventual. The luggage I was taking with me weighed over a metric fuck ton (by which I mean more than 100 pounds), and having two heavy suitcases was a bit of a pain. My brother helped me with that a bit in LAX and then I used a cart to lug them from the baggage claim to the coach when I arrived at Heathrow. (Incidentally, getting into the country was trivial. They wanted to see my work permit in addition to the VISA. Thankfully, I had the work permit in my carry-on suitcase. (I hadn't remembered if I had put it there or in the check-in stuff, which I didn't have back yet at that point, but thankfully I was thinking clearly at some point.) He stamped that, so now I just need to show my passport to get back in. Using the cart helped a lot but things were still a bit difficult when I went on downhill ramps. I had to exert force to prevent gravity my making the cart careen away and because the wheels on my cart were suboptimal, I think I almost twisted one of my ankles a couple of times. There might have been the chance to do some damage, but I managed to be ok.

I got on the coach and then made it to Oxford at about 3:40 pm yesterday. Here is where the tricky part with luggage would come. It was about a .5 mile walk to Somerville but a .25 mile walk to the place that taxis go without being expressly called. Even the .25 walk promised to be very rough with my laptop, my red carry-on, and about 115 pounds of stuffed pastel purple and light blue suitcases, and I felt pretty stupid walking .25 miles just to take a cab to go another couple of blocks. OK, so what happened? I started trudging my way to the cab stop and a girl (Eda, who just arrived 10 days ago from Turkey for a Masters program in some sort of social work thing) walking in the other direction saw me struggling and offered to help. I normally would be stubborn, but the circumstances were extreme, so I wasn't about to protest in this situation. So, the half mile walk become much more pleasant both because I had someone to talk to and because I was dragging one big suitcase instead of two. Anyway, a big thanks goes out to Eda (I'm pretty sure the second letter was a 'd'; my memory is already hazy), who I'll hopefully run into again at some point.

What else... my apartment is a bigger than the one I had before. The bathroom could be bigger, and I really wish the kitchen were bigger and that the fridge I have weren't so piddly. I have a crapload of bookshelves --- something like the equivalent of 8 or more full-sized bookshelves (8 full shelves, not 8 levels in one shelf) in space, so finding room for all my D & D books won't be a problem... Oh, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but the apartment is too cold and I need to figure out a way to get the heat to blast a bit more.

That's it for now. I'll shortly send a spammy e-mail with my contact information and then I need to start dealing with bank account stuff.

Update: I just got a good-natured ribbing for a subset of the above comments from the head of our research group. (I also watched him put a copy of the text into the OCIAM director's box.) I'm also supposed to expect a witty response, so we'll see how that goes. Oh, and I think I should take this as a lesson to learn to be more careful. This also means that my readership has expanded, which kind of goes hand-in-hand with the being more careful part.