RIP David Goodstein (1939–2024)

David Goodstein (an emeritus physics professor at Caltech) died yesterday. This is the end of an era.

I watched many of The Mechanical Universe videos in high school. The beginning and end of each video showed Goodstein lecturing to students in the big Caltech physics lecture hall. I had Goodstein for Physics 1a (mechanics) in fall of my frosh year in that same lecture hall, and I remember how surreal it felt. That was one of my big "Wow, I am now at Caltech." things. Also, I came out of lectures feeling that I understood the material — but then I tried the homework and saw that I didn't actually yet understand it.

(h/t Barry Simon)

Extra Special Mathematics Terminology

One of my favorite terminology fails in mathematics is the notion of an "extra special group" (which has the added bonus that my undergraduate abstract-algebra professor was unable to say it without also giggling): https://t.co/BsW1dgDYaC

So inspired!#terminologyfail

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) November 27, 2018

RIP Joel Franklin (1930–2017)

Joel Franklin, one of my favorite Caltech professors, died 11 days ago. Caltech posted an obituary yesterday.

During Junior year, a bunch of us took Joel Franklin's AMa 153 course on stochastic processes (especially during the first term, which could be used to satisfy Caltech's probability and statistics requirement). I also took Joel Franklin's linear programming course during my senior year.

Let's start with a story from Steve Van Hooser: "We'll start with the best story. Steven Michael, going through his material at the end of the term, found a homework set for Stochastic Processes that he forgot to turn in. He went to Franklin's office, and described his mistake. Franklin merely said: "Well..did you do it?" And Steven said yes. "Well...is it right?" And Steven said he thought so. So Franklin wrote a handwritten message to the registrar saying something to the effect of "Dear Judith [Goodstein], please change Steven's grade in AMa153 to an A. -J.N. Franklin". And that was that."

We invited Joel Franklin as a dinner guest in Lloyd House a couple of times, and Steve recounted a couple of those in his Facebook post.

Additionally, in Legends of Caltech III, we included a story filled with quotes from Joel Franklin. They give a good idea of the Joel Franklin experience, and this compilation from Jason Kastner (which I remember finding on his website at some point) inspired me to compile quotations from other professors who uttered many witticisms. Here is a version of the story from a .pdf of a pageproof version of the book. (I am pretty sure the typo in "the Navy way" definition was corrected before the final version.)

When I was in graduate school, I suggested Joel Franklin's book Methods of Mathematical Economics for the SIAM "Classics in Applied Mathematics" series, and thankfully that worked out. (Franklin originally published it with Springer, but there was some sort of falling out, and for a while the only way to get a "new" copy was as printed notes.)

In his honor, today we should all do something in "the Navy way".

(Tip of the cap to Steve Van Hooser, who was part of our AMa 153 contingent.)

Bringing Mathematics to the Traumatized and the Perplexed

As many of you know, Steve Strogatz is one of my mathematical heroes. One of the reasons is that he's a master teacher and expositor. (Whenever I get his seal of approval for one of my articles or other efforts, I always feel like I did a good job on it.) Take a look at this new article.

Quoting Steve from this article: "So many of the things that we do in math education—and maybe more generally in education—are giving students answers to questions that they would never think of asking. By definition, that's what it is to be boring."

Conversely, this also speaks to why so many students find networks exciting from the start. They're already asking many of these questions! They just need the words and concepts to make the questions more precise to be able to answer them in a better way.

"Directed Evolution of the Full Professor"

Easter Eggs in Scientific Papers has pointed out a gem this time. It is a farcical abstract for a paper called "Directed Evolution of the Full Professor". Read the whole fake abstract; it's awesome! Here is one of the sweet parts:

"Assistant professors that displayed such proteins (so-called ‘stressed-out’ mutants) were then fused to the M13 coat protein, displayed on phages and passed over a friend and family members column to identify those that were incapable of functional interactions. These were called ‘full professors’. Although these mutants arose independently, they shared striking phenotypes. These included the propensity to talk incessantly about their own research, the inability to judge accurately the time required to complete bench work, and the belief that all of their ideas constituted good thesis projects."

Prof. or Hobo?

Here is a small visual quiz to see whether you can tell profs and hobos apart. I scored 7/10. (Tip of the cap to Thomas Kroedel.)

Professorial E-Mail Signatures

The new PHD Comics strip concerns the semiotics of professorial e-mail signatures.

In general, I do sometimes wonder if particular signatures from friends or colleagues signify anything relative to other things I have seen them use. Obviously, one must consider the habits of the individual in each case.

I don't follow the pattern described in the comic strip at all. I either use my first name or I use nothing at all (I never use initials), and then of course there is a .signature file (which includes my first name) if I am sending something from my regular e-mail account. I never use something formal like "Regards," or "Sincerely," unless I am ballistically pissed off or upset at the recipient(s) of my message. If I use my last name or my formal title outside of what's already in the .signature file, then there is Hell to pay. I will sometimes write "Thanks," if my .signature file that has "Mason" in it is too far down from where I am typing (and hence I will actually be typing my name instead of using what is in the .sig file), and I only use that as a surrogate for writing "Thanks." or "Thanks!" when my name in the .sig file is immediately below. Hence, my putting "Thanks," in my signature usually doesn't indicate anything (though it admittedly can on occasion mean that I am mildly upset).

For my friends, I also mostly use my first name or nothing at all, though for specific extremely close friends I'll use "Love," as a sign of affection. (Sometimes I'll use "Take care," in specific circumstances as well, especially if it's a friend from whom I haven't heard in a while.)

(Tip of the cap to Mariano Beguerisse Díaz.)

RIP Phil Saffman (1931-2008)

I just saw on the Physics Today obituary notices that Phil Saffman, one of my Caltech professors, died on August 17th. Here is the Los Angeles Times obituary.

As some of you probably know, AMa 95 was essentially created by Phil Saffman. (In fact, I have my copy of the Saffman lecture notes in my office and I still refer to them on occasion when teaching relevant material.) So in this way, he impacted a lot of Caltech undergrads (though given the level of popularity of that class, I suppose many wished he hadn't). I had Saffman for AMa 101 during my junior year (1996-97). This was the last class he taught at Tech, and he specifically decided he wanted to end his classroom lecturing career with that course (which he had previously taught 20 years ago). So he was the first person who showed me things like steepest descents, WKB theory, multiple scales, hypergeometric functions, etc. On the last day of class, he very quietly said he was retiring and had specifically decided to end with that class. (I had been wondering why his TAs and random people---including his daughter---were in the audience.) That remains the one time I have ever seen champaign in a classroom, and I remember we all had a laugh after one of his TAs accidently fell backwards into her chair after taking her first sip. (There were comments about how little alcohol she could handle.)

Anyway, so while I didn't know Saffman that well, I do have some memories of him and definitely was influenced by him to some degree academically through AMa 95 (intro methods in applied math, for non-Techers; this was a one-year course) and AMa 101 (methods in applied math; this was also a one-year course).