RIP Ken Arrow (1921–2017)

Ken Arrow, who was the youngest recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, has died

Like many Nobel-memorial laureates in economics, Arrow has an undergraduate degree in mathematics (in his case, as part of a double major with social science). He also earned a Masters degree in mathematics. Arrow has an entry in the Mathematics Genealogy Project.

Some of my students have heard me mention "impossibility theorems" in voting and social choices. If you're going to name one pioneer in that area, that person is Ken Arrow.

(Tip of the cap to Jennifer Nicoll Victor.)

The Mario-Kart System of Economics

Maybe we should try the Mario-Kart system of economics. With Spiny shells, I hope. And well-timed lightning bolts. Not to mention well-placed banana peels.

RIP John Nash (1928–2015)

Mathematician John Nash and his wife were killed yesterday in a taxi accident.

Nash won the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for the work in his 27-page PhD thesis that invented the theory of non-cooperative games. Not bad. (As Joe Jewell pointed out, Nash's thesis also only has 2 references.)

Nash had recently accepted his Abel Prize (the mathematics equivalent of a Nobel Prize) for entirely different work.

Sylvia Nasar's 1994 article about John Nash, which is based on her book, is a fascinating read. Nasar's book formed the basis for the movie A Beautiful Mind.

Nash is also one of the people who invented the game Hex.

If you want to read more about Nash, go to FAQ maintained by Princeton University.

(Tip of the cap to numerous people, and thanks to Carlos Castillo Chávez for posting the article by Sylvia Nasar.)

Update (5/26/15): As I suspected, this was the final leg of their journey home after Nash was in Norway to receive his Abel Prize.

Update (5/29/15): Here is an article in the popular press about Nash's work on isometric embeddings.

Apology Cards Sorted by Discipline

Today's SMBC, which shows some apology cards sorted by discipline, is a big win! The psychology apology is the best one.

Delusions of Grandeur

I like today's SMBC, possibly because it makes fun of physics students. :)

2014 Ig Nobel Prizes

The 2014 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded last night.

The clear winner among this year's awards is the Economics prize, whose citation is as follows: ISTAT — the Italian government's National Institute of Statistics, for proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants.

I also really like the prizes in Physics, Neuroscience, and Biology. (As concerns the Pyschology Prize, maybe I should point out that I am a night owl...?)

RIP Elinor Ostrom (1933-2012)

Elinor Ostrom, the only Nobel Laureate to be produced by my high school (Beverly Hills High School), has died of pancreatic cancer.

(Tip of the cap to James Fowler.)

Penis Economics

Annals of Improbable Research posted blurbs of a couple of interesting-looking papers on Facebook.

One paper, according to the first sentence of its abstract, "explores the link between economic development and penile length between 1960 and 1985."

Another paper discusses etiquette versus effort in door-holding, which some of you know quite well is actually very important to me. Here is a link to the actual paper. I should mention, though, that my purpose in doing this is not to minimize total effort; I do it because it's the right bloody thing to do!

But are both players perfectly rational?

The new issue of Mini-AIR includes a pointer to a paper called Costly but worthless gifts facilitate courtship.

Let me guess: Both players (or maybe only one of them is a player?) are assumed to be perfectly rational. Yup, this is how it all works.

Bloody economists. :)

RIP Paul Samuelson (1915-2009)

Nobel Laureate Paul Samuelson, one of the 20th century's giants in economics, died on Sunday. As you can read in his wikipedia entry, the Keynesian Samuelson was (among other things) a pioneer in mathematical economics. (For example, as a grandstudent of Gibbs, he used some ideas from thermodynamics.)

In reading the New York Times obituary to which I linked, I was reminded of their annoying style of putting "Mr." in front of the last name of any guy about whom they write---no matter what the correct title actually should be. This is one of multiple stylistic conventions in the New York Times that really annoy me.

First Beverly Hills High School graduate to win Nobel Prize

I didn't realize this until I just saw this in the new issue of Beverly Hills Weekly, but Elinor Ostrom, one of the two new Nobel Laureates in economics (and the first woman ever to win this particular Nobel) was graduated from my High School in 1951. She thus becomes the first person from Beverly High ever to win a Nobel, and presumably my high school will place her in its hall of fame soon. (This seems like it's a pretty severe oversight that this hasn't happened already.)

I have to admit a very small bit of mixed feelings because I was kind of hoping (though obviously without thinking it would actually happen) that I might eventually become the first Beverly alum to do that. Ah well. Not that I'm ambitious or anything...

Steve Strogatz on Networks and the Phillips Machine

I had never heard of the Phillips Machine, but there is a refurbished one at Cambridge that "works". As Steve Strogatz explains in his latest guest column in the New York Times, it's basically a miniature hydraulic caricature of the economy. The article then relates this briefly to some modern work in networks and complex systems, more generally bringing up the point that one of the really exciting and challenging things of these subjects is the attempt to move beyond reductionism.

New Game: Finding Constellations in Economic Graphs

In these days of financial crises and universal brouhahas, I think we should adapt our old practice of finding patterns in stars to discovering similar constellations in economic graphs.

For example, here you can see something like The Big Dipper.

Maybe this can be a new meme?

(Or perhaps we should just use the iTunes Oracle to determine economic policy?)