XKCD: Math Work

Today's xkcd is highly amusing.

Fact check: True √

America's New STEM Initiative (According to The Onion)

Yup, The Onion wins yet again.

"An Emergent Property"

This is how I feel about many claims of "emergence" in scientific articles.

New to the Blogroll: Improbable Research

I probably should have added the Improbable Research blog to my blogroll years ago, but I have a special impetus to do it now: I'm now going to be writing some blog entries for that site.

The people behind that blog, by the way, are the ones who award the Ig Nobel Prize. Unfortunately, I don't (yet) have an Ig Nobel Prize. On the bright side, I am a proud member of Luxuriantly Flowing Hair Club for Scientists.

Additionally, a couple of my papers --- this one and this one --- have been covered by the Improbable Research blog, and Marc Abrahams wrote about them in The Guardian. (I included the links to the Guardian articles above rather than to the associated blog entries.)

I have also performed in a cover of the Improbable Research shows. You can take a look at one of my blog entries from last year for details.

I'm not sure how often I'll write blog entries for Improbable Research --- it essentially depends on my own business and desire to avoid the work I am supposed to be doing --- but I'm certainly looking forward to it! I really like quirky scientific and mathematical (and scientific-ish and mathematical-ish) things, and it will be great to have a wider circulation for my particular brand of snark.

Pancake Art

Here is some very cool pancake art. This includes some very scientific pancakes (e.g. a Lorenz attractor), which isn't a surprise given that the creator is a math teacher. (I have an odd feeling of deja vu that I might have posted a link to this pancake art a while ago, but I am doing it now anyway.)

(Tip of the cap to I Fucking Love Science.)

"No Boundary Rd"

Near JFK Airport, I saw a sign for "No Boundary Rd".

I assume that compact cars are not allowed on it.

And my reaction upon seeing this sign was to think that "No Boundary" was a strange name for a road rather than to think that "No" meant "North". Math makes the world fun!

Dinosaur Comics and Doing Arithmetic in One's Head

This issue of Dinosaur Comics is pretty funny. (I hadn't actually been aware that new "issues" of Dinosaur Comics were still being produced.) Of course, I remain partial to the one about Rotating Hell.

-1% of the Vote

Apparently, it is now possible to get -1% on a poll. Wow. That is kind of "awesome", though.

(Tip of the cap to Jed Yang.)

Adventures in the Montreal Airport

Here are some things that happened after my arrival in the Montreal airport.

1. I got a bit confused when I tried to dry my hands in the bathroom. A condom dispenser was where a hand dryer should be, so I held my hands and waited expectantly for about 20 or 30 seconds before realizing that the dryer was the object next to the dispenser. (It's kind of like the Mr. Coffee and Mr. Radar scene in Spaceballs.) Sometimes I wonder how I got this far in life.


2. I was in line at customs when I overheard the following conversation:

Teenage or college-age guy: Physics is everything, and everything is physics.

Young girl (maybe 13 years old): I thought everything is math.

(Comment: I approve!)


3. The Canadians gave me a bit of a hard time after I got through customs and I was trying to leave. First, a security guy bugged me while I was trying to get my luggage and asked to see my passport and my entry card, and he asked me to explain myself. (This lasted a few minutes and was a much more significant grilling than what I got from the customs officer.) Then I got asked stuff a third time when I tried to turn in my entry card and leave. What the Hell, people? I'm here to do math!

How Embarrassing!

Well, here's another embarrassing retraction of an article in a science journal. On looking at the actual article, the only response I can reasonably give is "Seriously? What the fuck!"

And do you know what I find most embarrassing about this whole incident? That this journal actually rejected one of my articles once. Oy vey!

Sin-trees

Apparently, there is something called a sin-tree in probability theory. Obviously, they're a religious bunch. (Do a 'find' on the website to which I link if you want to see what a sin-tree is.)

Math Skills Versus Time

This particular strip of PHD Comics hits way too close to the truth.

(Tip of the cap to Mariano Beguerisse Díaz.)

The Geometry of Music

There is a new article in Time Magazine about Dmitri Tymoczko's the geometry of music, as illustrated by his articles in Science on music theory. (I vaguely remember blogging about that article last year.) If you take a look at his web site, you can look at interesting videos that show links between music and geometry.

I definitely remember hearing about at least one of the Science articles when it came out, but to say that this stuff borrows stuff from string theory is quite a stretch. (It's like say that one thing borrows from something else because one uses calculus for both of them. In this case, one uses geometry for both things.)

Tymoczko is giving a plenary talk at the 2010 SIAM Annual Meeting, and I would definitely have loved to go to that seminar.

(Tip of the cap to SIAM's Facebook team, who posted a link to the Time article.)

Quote of the Day

Today's quote comes from me: "It's surprising that there are two gaps... I'm too tired to calculate exactly how surprising it is."

The context: A large number of us (around 12 people, I think) at the conference were in the elevator after dinner. The elevator can stop at floors 1--6. We got on at floor 1 and nobody needed to get off either on floor 2 or on floor 6. I wouldn't have been too surprised to see one gap, but I think having two gaps put us near the extreme of the probability distribution.

Tales from the arXiv: Romance edition

\\
arXiv:0911.0013
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:32:25 GMT (2544kb,D)

Title: Stochastic Nonlinear Dynamics of Interpersonal and Romantic
Relationships
Authors: Alhaji Cherif, Kamal Barley
Categories: physics.soc-ph nlin.AO physics.pop-ph
\\
Current theories from biosocial (e.g.: the role of neurotransmitters in behavioral features), ecological (e.g.: cultural, political, and institutional conditions), and interpersonal (e.g.: attachment) perspectives have grounded interpersonal and romantic relationships in normative social experiences. However, these theories have not been developed to the point of providing a solid theoretical understanding of the dynamics present in interpersonal and romantic relationships, and integrative theories are still lacking. In this paper, mathematical models are use to investigate the dynamics of interpersonal and romantic relationships, which are examined via ordinary and stochastic differential equations, in order to provide insight into the behaviors of love. The analysis starts with a deterministic model and progresses to nonlinear stochastic models capturing the stochastic rates and factors (e.g.: ecological factors, such as historical, cultural and community conditions) that affect proximal experiences and shape the patterns of relationship. Numerical examples are given to illustrate various dynamics of interpersonal and romantic behaviors (with emphasis placed on sustained oscillations, and transitions between locally stable equilibria) that are observable in stochastic models (closely related to real interpersonal dynamics), but absent in deterministic
models.

\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0911.0013 , 2544kb)



Comment: All I have to say is that the 3-body problem is known to be chaotic.

There's got to be a good joke to go with this...

Or maybe Gazebo can write another comic strip for this one.

The term of the day is "ZZ topology". OK, it's not a real term, but in my current tired state, I noticed an article whose first two words are "Z2 topological" (the e-mail was in plain text, so the latex formatting wasn't present) and I misread it as "ZZ topological".

So, what would a ZZ topology look like? :)