Unearthed: A Report I Wrote on the KdV Equation During College

Oh, wow. From some 'random' googling, I just found the rough draft of a report on the KdV equation that I wrote my senior year in college. This apparently got uploaded when various past things from courses that Jerry Marsden taught were collected, scanned, and uploaded.

My exposition (including of the KdV equation!), my citation practices and being very thorough about giving proper credit for results and the exposition of others (right now, I think that my old report should have included specific statements of whose discussions I was following and not just citations to those papers), and my work on nonlinear waves has advanced a lot since that report -- though I think that one can see many hints of my current style in it. Certainly one can see some of my current research interests. I had completely forgotten about this old report. (My handwriting in parts of the report is almost exactly the same as now, though! :P)

If you want to compare my old exposition to my current exposition, see the Scholarpedia entry on solitons that I wrote with Norm Zabusky.

I should perhaps use this as before/after to show my students for certain assignments. I think this could be helpful for some interesting teaching opportunities.

I'm not sure why the rough draft was uploaded, though. Maybe Jerry's copy of the final draft got lost?

April Fools Day Roundup (2013)

Here is TechCrunch's 2013 April Fools Day roundup.

Math Lab Bust!

Recently, five people were arrested in a math lab bust. I guess I better be very careful from now on! (I am guilty as charged.)

(Tip of the cap to I Fucking Love Science. This might actually be my favorite IFLS post ever, and that's saying a lot.)

Update: As Puck Rombach pointed out, maybe the news program actually misspelled "MATLAB BUST".

Play Ball!!!!!!!

Today is opening day (well, for one game) of the 2013 Major League Baseball season. Hooray!

The first Dodgers game is tomorrow!

What Happens in Vancouver Stays in Vancouver

I am in Vancouver to visit friends that I haven't seen in almost a couple of years. That is all.

Tim McCarver Stepping Down After 2013!

Tim McCarver announced today that he is stepping down from the Fox broadcast booth after this season. Yay! Though I wish he had stepped down multiple decades ago...

You Know You're Travelling Way Too Much When...

... The Supershuttle people at the airport curbside now recognize you.

Supershuttle person at the SFO airport curb: "Didn't I book you like a week ago over there?"

Me: "Yes, you did. I am travelling way too much."

Urinal Gaming System

Well, it looks like a urinal gaming system is about to be installed in a minor league baseball stadium. Yes, you read that right. Alright, let's have a contest: The article's lead ("Triple-A park to feature interactive urinal game") is the straight line. You provide the joke.

(There are actually plenty of jokes in the article, but I am sure that many of you can do much better. Additionally, I wonder if Wiimotes will be allowed?)

Don't Steal Meatballs!

Word to the wise: Don't steal meatballs!

(Also, don't steal toilet paper.)

What Happens in La Jolla Stays in La Jolla

Today I fly to San Diego --- yes, I know, I just got back on Friday night --- to give a talk in UCSD's networks seminar.

The Power of Fun-Noodles

So I was just walking past Walgreen's on Middlefield Road, and I noticed several large open boxes of fun-noodles (i.e., funnoodles --- or, apparently, "pool noodles" if one wants to use the official name) outside of the store. They appear like they might be on bulk sale (fingers crossed!), and the Techer in my soul screams "Opportunity!"

And there is a university nearby to whom we could demonstrate some Techer ingenuity...

So, who's with me?

(Honestly, I suspect that even in bulk, this is probably a several-hundred-dollar purchase. Where is the prank fund when I need it? And I'm doing work right now instead of actually trying to get this to work. But I have to admit that my heart and soul are both calling me...)

Adam Ant is Adamant About Adamantium.

The following is possibly one of the best sentences ever: "Adam Ant is adamant about adamantium."

I'm just saying...

I Can't Hide My Feelings

I am unable to hide my true feelings. As one of my collaborators just wrote in an e-mail: "I know your reservations about his stuff, i.e. I can still remember your facial expressions during one of his talks ... ;)" This talk occurred several years ago.

A Beer Called "Mason's Porter"

Well, at least the beer known as "Mason's Porter" is brewed with coffee. Really, could it have been any other way?

I'm not sure about the whole goat thing, though...

Principal Component Analysis of Sponge Cakes

Yes, really. (Hint: most of the variance is along the fresh-stale axis.)

(Tip of the cap to Annals of Improbable Research.)

"Casual" Relationship Between Time Series

One of the speakers today had a slide that indicated that there was a "casual" relationship between two time series. (Technically, the term on the slide was "casual influence", but it's much more amusing if we think of it as a "casual relationship".) Of course, he meant that the relationship was causal, which is far more serious.

Motion Sickness from an Optical Illusion in a Seminar

The talk that is just finishing in the neural rhythms and oscillations workshop concerns optical illusions. The speaker walked us through and demonstrated the "flickering pinwheel illusion" in his slide. It's a very interesting phenomenon, but unfortunately that slide has also very seriously kicked in my motion sickness. Sigh... I feel sick.

And then later on in the talk, the speaker was connecting this stuff to illusions in things like stroboscopic lights, drugs, and migraines. As some of you know, the latter of these is extremely familiar to me from my own experiences --- and stroboscopic lights have triggered them on occasion (and I specifically try to avoid stroboscopic lights). Sigh. Well, at least I have provided another data point.

I guess some neuroscience talks ought to include motion-sickness alerts along with them? I really hope this doesn't mess me up for the rest of the day.

This also reminds me of Kramer's epilectic reaction to Mary Hart on Seinfeld. Just imagine that seen from Seinfeld, except with people at a conference watching a talk on optical illusions and me in the background playing the part of Kramer.

Update: It turns out that another audience member (who also has a history of migraines) who knew better purposely covered her eyes during that slide. I didn't know that such illusions could cause such things, so if I had possessed the scientific knowledge beforehand, I could have done something about it. Burned by my lack of knowledge!

"Robust Detection of Dynamic Community Structure in Networks"

One of my papers was published in final form earlier today. It concerns the construction of null models for time-dependent networks as well as other phenomena in the investigation of community structure in time-dependent networks. Here are the title, authors, and abstract. This is an "archival" paper rather than the type that one would put in a sexy journal, but I really like this paper a lot, because we went to town on a few things.

Title: Robust Detection of Dynamic Community Structure in Networks

Authors: Danielle S. Bassett, Mason A. Porter, Nicholas F. Wymbs, Scott T. Grafton, Jean M. Carlson, and Peter J. Mucha

Abstract: We describe techniques for the robust detection of community structure in some classes of time-dependent networks. Specifically, we consider the use of statistical null models for facilitating the principled identification of structural modules in semi-decomposable systems. Null models play an important role both in the optimization of quality functions such as modularity and in the subsequent assessment of the statistical validity of identified community structure. We examine the sensitivity of such methods to model parameters and show how comparisons to null models can help identify system scales. By considering a large number of optimizations, we quantify the variance of network diagnostics over optimizations ("optimization variance") and over randomizations of network structure ("randomization variance"). Because the modularity quality function typically has a large number of nearly degenerate local optima for networks constructed using real data, we develop a method to construct representative partitions that uses a null model to correct for statistical noise in sets of partitions. To illustrate our results, we employ ensembles of time-dependent networks extracted from both nonlinear oscillators and empirical neuroscience data.

What Happens in Columbus (Ohio) Stays in Columbus (Ohio)

I am flying out this morning to the Mathematical Biosciences Institute (MBI) at The Ohio State University to be participate in (aka, absorb) a workshop on "Rhythyms and Oscillations" in neuroscience. This is part of the 2012-2013 thematic year on Mathematical Neuroscience. I'm going to this conference just to learn stuff and absorb things, and it's nice to be able to do that. I was offered financial support by MBI to attend previous workshops in this theme year, but this is the first time I have actually been able to attend. I've had some sort of conflict during the other times.

I have gone to Ohio several times in my leave, and each time it has been to go to OSU for some sort of conference, workshop (including a previous MBI workshop), or job interview. I've never visited any other city in Ohio.

"No time to explain. GET ON THE DAMN UNICORN!"

I love applied mathematics. All mathematics is eventually applied mathematics anyway.

(Tip of the cap to Greg Fricke.)

A Clip of My Fake Unified Field Theory

As I discussed a few years ago, I was a consultant for the movie Meet Dave. I was thinking about it just now because someone who e-mailed me mentioned that he finally saw the film, so I decided to try to find a clip of the classroom scene that has my handiwork. I was able to find this clip on the IMDB site for the film. See if you can find the letters "DEI" in there.

De-Apostrophication of Great Britain

The Annals of Improbable Research blog has a new entry about some de-apostrophication that is occurring in the county of Devon to "avoid potential confusion". Confusion? Nah.....

Naturally, this hasn't yet arrived in Oxford. And when it does, not only will the " St Giles' " vs " St Giles " vs " St. Giles' " vs " St. Giles " battles be grossly simplified, but I will finally be able to put my correct street name (which is " St Giles' " ... I think) on all web forms*.

* Well, except for the fact that the Mathematical Institute will no longer be on St Giles' soon and will be on Woodstock instead.

Those crazy Brits...

(Courtesy of Annals of Improbable Research.)

Number of States in Credit-Card Swiping

When I am shopping and I slide my credit card incorrectly, it is common for a store employee to tell me to swipe the card "the other way". I am very confused by this statement (and, especially, the sense of obviousness that I am apparently supposed to feel but which I fundamentally don't), as there are clearly four different ways of swiping a card based on orientation alone because one can flip the card via either the vertical or horizontal axis. And to get only four different ways, one is already assuming that swiping forwards and swiping backwards is the same and that issues like adiabaticity versus non-adiabaticity of the swiping also don't matter. (The number of states is arguably uncountably infinite if one takes the latter into account.) I am willing to make those assumptions in the count of the number of ways to swipe, but this still yields four possible orientations for the card---so I just don't understand the comment of "the" other way that I have now received from numerous people. My usual response goes something along the lines of "Which other way? There are four in total. I have no way which of the other three ways you mean." tends to be met with a look that I can only describe as a mixture of confusion and pity. I am not doing this to be a pain in the ass---I really can't tell which of the three they mean!

The Professor, The Bikini Model, and the Suitcase Full of Trouble

Here is an interesting article about the University of North Carolina physics professor who was convicted of smuggling cocaine and is currently under house arrest in Argentina.

I love this quote from the article: "He’s a typical person trained at Oxford. He knows he’s part of an elite and can’t imagine such things would happen to him." Indeed, Frampton sees academia’s denizens as creative misfits who deserve special protection. "People who are socially inept can nevertheless be the most creative people," he told me one afternoon on the telephone. "It’s very important that they can’t be fired. This is the genius of tenure."

Meanwhile, let's see what Jane Goodall has to say about the chimps she studies...

The Truth About Physics Fantasies

Today's SMBC is spot on. This is exactly what physics fantasies are like.

Acronym Fail

"SDI" was really not the best choice of acronyms for the new fielding metric that will be used to help determine which Major League Baseball players win gold gloves. Just saying...

(And the Derek Jeter bit in the ESPN article to which I link is pretty damn funny.)

Without Loss of Generality...

New Rule: If you say or write "without loss of generality" when you do lose generality, then I have the right to smack you.

Don't Box Them In

The current issue of Beverly Hills Weekly includes the following quote about fences and gates being added to my high school: "We’re doing some perimeter gates, perimeter fencing, motorizing some gates, putting some alarms on the inside of doors so kids don’t exit unless we allow them to," said Superintendent Gary Woods. "They can exit for an emergency but then the alarm goes off."

And this scary little thing is said in a matter-of-fact fashion as if it's perfectly normal and ok to do something like this. Pathetic.

Is My Hair a Security Risk?

The security officer at San Francisco Airport needed to pat my hair to make sure that I wasn't hiding something in there.

(I am not making this up.)

I should also add that this is because the really invasive 'x-ray' (microwave?) machine apparently wasn't able to penetrate what might be in there.

MATLAB Does Super Mario

Do you want to listen to (a portion of) the theme song from Super Mario Brothers in MATLAB? Of course you do!

(Tip of the cap to whoever posts Facebook stuff for MATLAB.)

What Happens in Davis Stays in Davis

I am going to take a cab to the Fremont Amtrak station and then a train to Davis, where I will be giving a talk in UC Davis's math department. This is the first time I have visited UC Davis since I interviewed for a job there in 2005. Tomorrow, I will be having breakfast with a cousin who is a PhD student in biology and then talking to some of the networks people.

Also: I left on Friday night to go hang out with peeps in San Francisco. I am now back in Palo Alto, but tomorrow I fly to the UK to spend a week in Oxford.

"Report: Cops Look for Sausage"

Well, the Italian Sausage has gone AWOL.

You know, I really hope that Randall Simon is somehow involved. That would rock! (And in case you're wondering, Simon's claim to fame is this incident.)

Update (2/28/13): Well, the missing link has now been found. This article includes the following superb line: Bartender Jen Mohney told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that two men -- one wearing a hoodie pulled over his face -- brought the $3,000, 7-foot-long Italian Sausage costume into the bar, dropped it onto a stool and told her, "You did not see anything." Seriously, that ought to be the first line of a novel!

I'm... Too Sexy For This List... Too Sexy For This List...

Business Insider has published its list of the 50 sexiest scientists.

To paraphrase Right Said Fred: I'm... too sexy for this list. Too sexy for this list...*

* Full disclosure: I have not yet actually looked at the list.

Lloydies from my era should read that list with visuals from a certain airband skit, of course! :)

(Tip of the cap to Kevin Hickerson.)

Ancient d20

Oh, wow! Ancient Egyptians were apparently rolling 20-sided dice. That is incredibly awesome!

(Tip of the cap to Game Empire of Pasadena.)

Archives of Dragon Magazine are Online

The archives of Dragon magazine are online. Very cool! (This is a very nice resource for role-playing.)

(Tip of the cap to Andy Sayer.)

Today's Fortune: My "Emotional Currents are Flowing"

I just got the following fortune today: "Your emotional currents are flowing powerfully now [in bed]."

I guess "emotional currents" is what people call such things nowadays. Quite the euphemism, though this is more of a "fortune" than a fortune.

And, for the second time in 3 days, a fortune cookie is inviting me to learn the Chinese word for pumpkin.

"Multi-Stage Complex Contagions"

I just blogged about my new paper on billiards, which just got published in final form today in Chaos. Well, the very next article in the journal, which was (unsurprisingly, given these statements) also published today, is my new paper on modelling social influence. Here are the details for that paper.

Title: Multi-Stage Complex Contagions

Authors: Sergey Melnik, Jonathan A. Ward, James P. Gleeson, and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: The spread of ideas across a social network can be studied using complex contagion models, in which agents are activated by contact with multiple activated neighbors. The investigation of complex contagions can provide crucial insights into social influence and behavior-adoption cascades on networks. In this paper, we introduce a model of a multi-stage complex contagion on networks. Agents at different stages --- which could, for example, represent differing levels of support for a social movement or differing levels of commitment to a certain product or idea --- exert different amounts of influence on their neighbors. We demonstrate that the presence of even one additional stage introduces novel dynamical behavior, including interplay between multiple cascades, which cannot occur in single-stage contagion models. We find that cascades—and hence collective action—can be driven not only by high-stage influencers but also by low-stage influencers.


Fun Fact: This might be the first published mathematics paper that uses the word "hipster". You should click on the link and see how we use it. :)

"Two-Particle Circular Billiards Versus Randomly Perturbed One-Particle Circular Billiards"

My first paper on billiards since 2006 has just been published in final form. Here are the details.

Title: Two-Particle Circular Billiards Versus Randomly Perturbed One-Particle Circular Billiards

Authors: Sandra Ranković and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: We study a two-particle circular billiard containing two finite-size circular particles that collide elastically with the billiard boundary and with each other. Such a two-particle circular billiard provides a clean example of an “intermittent” system. This billiard system behaves chaotically, but the time scale on which chaos manifests can become arbitrarily long as the sizes of the confined particles become smaller. The finite-time dynamics of this system depends on the relative frequencies of (chaotic) particle-particle collisions versus (integrable) particle-boundary collisions, and investigating these dynamics is computationally intensive because of the long time scales involved. To help improve understanding of such two-particle dynamics, we compare the results of diagnostics used to measure chaotic dynamics for a two-particle circular billiard with those computed for two types of one-particle circular billiards in which a confined particle undergoes random perturbations. Importantly, such one-particle approximations are much less computationally demanding than the original two-particle system, and we expect them to yield reasonable estimates of the extent of chaotic behavior in the two-particle system when the sizes of confined particles are small. Our computations of recurrence-rate coefficients, finite-time Lyapunov exponents, and autocorrelation coefficients support this hypothesis and suggest that studying randomly perturbed one-particle billiards has the potential to yield insights into the aggregate properties of two-particle billiards, which are difficult to investigate directly without enormous computation times (especially when the sizes of the confined particles are small).

New Punctuation Marks

Here are eight new punctuation marks for you to use and abuse. A couple of them are awesome. Sadly, they missed to 'bidirectional semicolon' :: (which I saw discussed in an awesome short play whose mechanism of delivering its premise was a seminar in which the speaker introduced many new punctuation marks that were heretofore missing), in which the left side explains the right side and vice versa. The example used in the play was "To be a Jew :: To be a Jew".

(Tip of the cap to Meredith Alden for the website.)

Jose Canseco's Theory of Gravity

Jose Canseco promised his thoughts on gravity and then he delivered his theory of gravity in a sequence of Twitter posts.

Wow. Why didn't I think of that explanation?

Comedy Gold.

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

"Dark Solitary Waves in a Class of Collisionally Inhomogeneous Bose-Einstein Condensates"

A new paper of mine just got published in final form today. It's my first paper on Bose-Einstein condensates since 2008 (or, as Georg Gottwald called it, "a relapse"). Anyway, here are the details.


Title: Dark Solitary Waves in a Class of Collisionally Inhomogeneous Bose-Einstein Condensates

Authors: Chang Wang, Kody J. H. Law, Panayotis G. Kevrekidis, and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: We study the structure, stability, and dynamics of dark solitary waves in parabolically trapped, collisionally inhomogeneous Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) with spatially periodic variations of the scattering length. This collisional inhomogeneity yields a nonlinear lattice, which we tune from a small-amplitude, approximately sinusoidal structure to a periodic sequence of densely spaced spikes. We start by investigating time-independent inhomogeneities, and we subsequently examine the dynamical response when one starts with a collisionally homogeneous BEC and then switches on an inhomogeneity either adiabatically or nonadiabatically. Using Bogoliubov-de Gennes linearization as well as direct numerical simulations of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we observe dark solitary waves, which can become unstable through oscillatory or exponential instabilities. We find a critical wavelength of the nonlinear lattice that is comparable to the healing length. Near this value, the fundamental eigenmode responsible for the stability of the dark solitary wave changes its direction of movement as a function of the strength of the nonlinearity. When it increases, it collides with other eigenmodes, leading to oscillatory instabilities; when it decreases, it collides with the origin and becomes imaginary, illustrating that the instability mechanism is fundamentally different in wide-well versus narrow-well lattices. When starting from a collisionally homogeneous setup and switching on inhomogeneities, we find that dark solitary waves are preserved generically for aligned lattices. We briefly examine the time scales for the onset of solitary-wave oscillations in this scenario.

What Happens in Chapel Hill Stays in Chapel Hill

I am now in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to visit my collaborator Peter Mucha at University of North Carolina. I will also be giving their applied mathematics colloquium on Friday.

And to describe dinner at the hotel restaurant tonight, let me just mention the following: Douchebags are drawn to sports bars like moths to a flame. [[...groan...]]

Tales from the ArXiv: Baby Names and Random Walks

Well, how about that: using things like PageRank and other random-walk algorithms to come up with baby names. It's crazy, but I kind of dig it. :) Also, I these somebody wants an Ig Nobel prize (in Peace?)...

You can try it for yourself at the Nameling website.

Sacrificing Privacy in Order to Referee a Paper?

Maybe I am just in an ornery mood this morning, but I don't think I should have to sign an annoying web privacy policy when I am being asked to provide my services for free to a journal. Here is part of what I wrote to the editor who had the misfortunate to ask for my refereeing services (and to get my name wrong, for that matter):

"The JStat website forces one to actively agree to an insidious 'privacy' policy to use it. (This is the first page one gets when logging in.) Refereeing is something academics do as a service and I am content to do my duty just like everyone else, but I am not going to sign such a policy in order to do it. I have signed such things in other contexts, but that is when I am receiving the service --- not providing it. Accordingly, please do not ever ask me to referee a paper again. I suggest recommending to the journal that they change how they do things."

The interesting thing is that if I ever submit there, then I suppose I would be agreeing to it, but now I am going to think twice if I ever consider submitting there. (I'm not saying I won't do it, but I would think harder about it than I would have otherwise.)

(And, while you're at it, get off my damn lawn!)

By the way, the offending journal is Journal of Statistical Mechanics. Maybe it's just how they presented this that really irked me? The other journals probably all have something like this as well.

APS is Going to Kathmandu?

The American Physical Society seems to have farmed out is page proof productions to a company whose employees are e-mailing me from the +0530 timezone --- I didn't know that fractional timezones even existed! They do, and this appears to be Nepal. I guess the APS is pulling a Bob Seger? (I hope somebody understands this reference without looking it up.) Excuse the cynicism, but this is making me think of the customer service stuff.

Importantly, the people working on the page proof of my article that I have in mind have been very fast and efficient about things, but I still find this to be a bit strange.

Update: Alan Champneys tells me that +0530 covers much of India.

Profiling?

A funny thing happened on the way back from campus...

I was walking from campus to the bus station when a police officer pulled me aside and said he wanted to talk to me. He explained that there had been an Asian male who had spent an inordinately large amount of time in a bathroom on campus and that I somewhat matched his description. (What?)

So I explained to him that I was a mathematician and that I was going home from a seminar, and he let me go.

I think that I played the 'mathematician' card to get out of trouble rather than the 'not Asian' card out of pure instinct (or perhaps reflex).

I almost never actually try to get into trouble, but I really have developed a strange knack for getting into these types of situations.

P.S. And it gets better. This was Officer Lee (who had some Asian features but wasn't obviously Asian) who stopped me to have a word with me.

I think that this story really has to become part of my legend---especially because it's 100% true.

How to Woo a Scientist

Here is some published advice for how to woo a scientist.

Here is one excellent quote from the article: Scientists are also typically stood alone in a social environment, looking quite fearful. It's OK to approach them, but do so slowly and calmly, and if possible hold your hands out, palms open and facing upwards, to emphasise that you pose no threat.

And here is another one: If you do manage to strike up an initial dialogue with a scientist, it's important to keep things going. Should the conversation falter or hit a lull, try asking the question "How is your grant application going?"

(Tip of the cap to Alex Cayco-Gajic.)

Awesome Google Doodle!

Today's (Feb 14) Google Doodle is superb! It honors both Valentine's Day and George Ferris. It is also interactive, and you can see different pairs of animals go out on dates. The fox is pretty damn funny, and the date between the bear and the octopus is hilarious. I approve!

Mathematicians and OCD

No, mathematicians do not have OCD. Not at all.

P.S. I am guilty as charged. (And for what it's worth, I actually find the idea in this article to be interesting.)

Ambiguous Fortune Cookie

"The world will soon be ready to receive your talents [in bed]."

The two possible meanings are pretty different from each other (though they do overlap a little bit).

This Space Left Intentionally Blank

For the second time in my blog's history, I have deleted one of my posts. I am happy to talk about this offline. (I think I am becoming more sensitive with age, which is a good thing.)

Actually, "sensitive" isn't the right word; I have always been very sensitive. I am thinking of sudden bouts of empathy being somewhat more common than they used to be. (Empathy is difficult for me unless I know somebody well, and even then it often challenges me.) You can thank some of my good friends for that!

Tales from the ArXiv: Heavy Metal Edition

I just saw a new paper on the arXiv that looks like it will be a promising contender for an Ig Nobel Prize.

Title: Collective Motion of Moshers at Heavy Metal Concerts

Authors: Jesse L. Silverberg, Matthew Bierbaum, James P. Sethna, Itai Cohen

Abstract: Human collective behavior can vary from calm to panicked depending on social context. Using videos publicly available online, we study the highly energized collective motion of attendees at heavy metal concerts. We find these extreme social gatherings generate similarly extreme behaviors: a disordered gas-like state called a mosh pit and an ordered vortex-like state called a circle pit. Both phenomena are reproduced in flocking simulations demonstrating that human collective behavior is consistent with the predictions of simplified models.


Bonus:This paper, entitled Data Mining of the Concept "End of the World" in Twitter Microblogs (but do the authors feel fine?), also seems like it might be a legitimate contender.

Separated at Birth?

Separated at Birth: preppy Tim Lincecum (baseball player) and preppy Rob Ghrist (mathematician).

By contrast, here are Tim Lincecum and Rob Ghrist with long hair.

Novel Strategy for Proving Theorems

Seriously, whispering to yourself while using a urinal in a public restroom is creepy. (I am in Stanford's math building right now.)

Maybe this is how this guy proves his most important theorems?

Oh, Rats!

I find this SMBC much funnier now than I would have in the past now that I have been reading neuroscience papers with rats.

The Derivator

Algebraist: "You don't want the full definition of derivator. It would take five journal pages."

Me [after conversation about this continues among others for a bit]: "I think it would be fine to have a five-page article for the definition as long as it includes a picture of The Terminator."

Quote of the Day: Money Edition

My quote of the day actually occurred yesterday. I was going to lunch with some Rutgers people (and one of my fellow visitors, who I know and was very surprised to see yesterday), but I had forgotten to bring money or a credit card with me. I had my wallet in my computer bag at the time, so I suddenly exclaimed something like "Oh! I need to go to my computer to get some money." This didn't make too much sense to anybody besides me, and the deadpan response I got of "Do you also need a printer?" was absolutely priceless.

Old Baseball

Now that is an old baseball. And it's also way cool.

Sudden Insight

Insight: "One more reference letter" is just like "one more turn". This stuff is for very good causes and I am happy to help people (and will of course continue to help people in this way when I am a relevant person to do so), but sigh...

There are so many things in my life that paper-cut me to death at times.

I know, I know: For some people, this is also known as "payback".

What Happens in New Brunswick Stays in New Brunswick

I am now visiting Rutgers for a few days to give a talk and to have good discussions about computational homology, data, and networks (and probably other things too). I am being hosted by Konstantin Mischaikow, who I know from my Georgia Tech years.

"(And Applied)"

More trips down Memory Lane...

I walked by Thurston. At the front of the building, if you look carefully, you can still notice the remnants of the parentheses that someone once snarkily put around "and Applied" in "Theoretical and Applied Mechanics". (Those parentheses were there for at least 2-3 years.) Now, the department no longer even exists.

Also, when I was walking back to campus from Collegetown, without thinking I took my old route that would take me directly back to Rhodes Hall and had to stop myself from walking all the way there.

Well Played

It turns out that sometimes you have to be very careful about what you write in the acknowledgements (and biography and preface and the like) of your PhD thesis, because it might come back to haunt you.

When I was finishing up in 2002, I had decided that because that was the only part of a thesis that most people read that I would have some fun in it and put easter eggs of various sorts to amuse my friends and future students (and in general to just be playful with it).

Well, today the introduction right before my colloquium was a bit unusual---and not like any other speaker introduction I have ever witnessed in my career thus far. With some help from the current CAM students (actually, my understanding is that it was their idea), some of my words from that part of my thesis were taken out and used for my introduction instead of doing the usual career path and honors that are typical in such things. My host's flight was cancelled and he could only make it for dinner and had to miss the seminar, and Peter Frazier did the introduction and was thus the MC for the shenanigans. (Peter is now a faculty member at Cornell and was my classmate in Lloyd House back in the day at Caltech.)

Wow. This caught me completely by surprise. Well played. Very well played.

And I probably deserved it. :)

P.S. Some of these CAM students specifically looked up and listened to "Tarzan Boy" just to see what on earth I was talking about in that document!

The Fouriest Transform

Really! A Fourier transform is a transform that has 4 occurring more often in it.

What Happens in Ithaca Stays in Ithaca

I am back at Cornell for the first time since I left in July 2002 (after graduating with my PhD in May 2002). I will be giving tomorrow's Center for Applied Mathematics (CAM) colloquium. As some of you (many of you?) know, I am an alum of that program.

I am staying in the Statler Hotel on campus (of course). One of the first things that came to mind as I was entering the hotel was a friend of mine who was an undergrad in Cornell's hotel school. I met her in my bowling class my first term at Cornell (she was a frosh), she insisted on becoming my bowling partner for the class, and we became friends. Sadly, we haven't had any contact since 2003, and she has one of those ungoogleable names. This is somebody with whom I would love to get back in touch.

Update: All of a sudden, I am wondering if 'The Elevator Nazi' still works in Rhodes Hall. (Though given how old she was back in the day, I would think that she must be retired by now.)

Quote of the Day: Snarky Edition

Here is my latest beauty: I'll comment on scientific things after I finish going through all of your e-mails. Snark first, science later.

What Happens in Potsdam (NY) Stays in Potsdam (NY)

I am here at Clarkson to give a talk tomorrow. This is my first time in the state of New York since I graduated from Cornell and left in 2002.

Getting here was a bit challenging --- this is the first leg of the most complicated travel itinerary I have ever arranged --- and my luggage has yet to make it here (sigh...). Hilarity is in the process of ensuing.

Liquid Sculpture Photography

Markus Reugels has produced some really awesome high-speed liquid sculpture photography. For example, see the gorgeous works on this page and this page.

Naturally, this should remind you of the Gallery of Fluid Motion, which is usually a big win, as well as of research by certain people (of whom my OCIAM colleagues will certainly be familiar). Sometimes, fluid mechanics can indeed produce some pretty damn awesome stuff!

(Tip of the cap to Jimmy Lin.)

News Reporter Fail Compilation

There are some really awesome moments in this compilation of mess-ups by news reporters. My favorite part is the series of failed attempts to demonstrate how to quickly break into a car to steal stuff.

(Tip of the cap to Sammy Kline.)

Possibly Overheard at a Comic Book Store

The quotes on this blog were supposedly actual quotes overheard at a Comic Book store. They certainly play to certain stereotypes and the ones I read are pretty damn funny. I can't vouch for their veracity, though. (I do, however, want them to be real!)

(Tip of the cap to Keith Fraser.)

Oxford, Not London!

I dedicate my version of this meme to everybody who has ever asked me what it's like to live in London. :)

Update: It occurs to me that I should create one of these with a complex systems or networks theme. :)

Update (1/26/13): Here is attempt 1 at one with a complex systems theme. I think it's ok, but I also think I can do better. Attempt #2 is a slight improvement (thanks to Mariano Beguerisse Díaz for the suggestion), though I still think the whole thing can be improved greatly.

The Mason Experience

My new slogan: "I hope you enjoyed the Mason experience." :)

[I seriously need to get a specialized stamp with that tagline.]

"Delta Machine"

Depeche Mode's upcoming new album (out 26 March!) is called "Delta Machine". That's right! I am going to have the opportunity for many puns that combine mathematics and Depeche Mode.

For some of you, this is probably your worst nightmare.* Consider yourself suitably warned!

* Remember what happened when their 1997 album came out...?

Sketchy Futon

Fun Fact: The Stanford psychology department has a very sketchy futon in front of its ground-floor bathrooms.

I assume that it gets used for 'experiments'.

Tales from the ArXiv: Statistical Physicists Conclude that Love is Universal

Here is a new paper about love.

Title: A model about love in human dynamics

Authors: Bin Zhou, Shujia Qin, Xiao-Pu Han, Bing-Hong Wang

Abstract: Human-initiated systems are the most complex systems. From now on, many people have done lots of works which are mostly centralized in time and space aspect in human dynamics, but relative to the cognizance which we have known, there must be underlying mechanisms about human society behavior that have not yet been discovered. We should research human society behavior form more other aspect to get more deeply and externally truth. In this letter, we propose a love model from a completely new angle to explain the love question between males and females in human society behavior. First, we establish the dynamics mechanism about the love model and get the exact analytical result about our love model, we compare the simulative results with the analytical predictions and find they completely coincide with each other, therefore, the analytical results can absolutely express the rule of our love model. Second, in several different conditions, we get the approximative and compact results which almost agreement with the simulative results, hence, the approximative results is dependable. Finally, we collect the experimental date by the network and compare it with the simulative results, and we can find, when the model parameter is given a specifical value, that the experimental evidence corresponds with the simulative results. This explains the love question which is universal existent between the male and female in reality and indicate the correctness and practicality of our love model in a certain extent.

One Person's Tribute to Vin Scully

No, not mine. But Grant Brisbee has written an interesting tribute to Vin that I am including here partly to make it easier for me to find the link in the future. :) And Vin Scully really is the best announcer ever. It's been such a joy to listen to him announce baseball games for more than 30 years.

Mathematics vs Physics

The new Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal illustrates the difference between mathematics and physics.

I know what side I'm on. :) [And no biases whatsoever here...!]

RIP Stan Musial (1920-2013)

Baseball has suffered another big loss, as Hall-of-Fame player Stan ("The Man") Musial died today.

RIP Earl Weaver (1930-2013)

Earl Weaver, long-time cantankerous (and Hall-of-Fame) manager of the Baltimore Orioles, died while on an Orioles-associated cruise.

One thing worth mentioning is that the canonical manager-umpire arguments that one sees in commercials and the like often has a manager modeled after Earl Weaver (e.g., turning the cap backwards and going face-to-face with the umpire).

I sometimes have a soft spot for cantankerous people, by the way. :)

Proposed Mash-Up: "Baby Love" and "Back to Black"

Do you know what the world needs?

A mash-up of The Supremes' "Baby Love" and Amy Winehouse's "Back to Black" --- that's what.

Seriously: Listen to those two songs side by side, and you'll see what I mean. [The different levels of darkness in this song admittedly make this mash-up a bit distributing, but (a) that is part of the charm and (b) musically this just works.]

Glass Viruses

These glass viruses are extremely awesome!

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

[Good Supervisor] >> [Big Name]

I just got an e-mail from a student who wants to do a PhD. This person asked me about who are the big names studying complex systems from mathematics and applied mathematics.

Something is just so epically wrong with the way we're doing things when random students wanting to work in the area ask me "Who are the big names?" rather than "Who are good advisors?" or "Who are good people with whom to work?"

Damnit, the fact that this is the usual question (instead of my alternatives or similar) means we're sending the wrong damn message!

I don't care who the bloody big names are. I care about who has relevant expertise and is doing something interesting and is good to work with and is a good advisor and is not an asshole. They don't need to be high on any sort of stupid totem poll. Damnit, that's not what it's about.

Almost the whole damn world is missing the point. (You might be working with a big shot, but are you really helping yourself by making yourself miserable? If somebody is a big name, great. It doesn't hurt. But it is fundamentally the wrong question to ask! And students ask these kinds of questions rather than the better alternatives because their teachers are not steering them in the right direction regarding what questions they should be asking.)

I am waiting for the big award whose descriptive text says that the recipient "must be a competent scientist who is not an asshole." I want to see that award. It needs to exist.

[[steam coming out of every part of my body]]

Update (1/17/13): As it turns out, I completely misunderstood this student's question. This student apparently wanted to know what areas of mathematics to study to do research in networks. Now that is a good question!

'C' Doesn't Stand for Fruit, Idiot!

I agree 100% with this demotivational poster!

Quote of the Day: Spoiler Alert

I think my best line from last night (after my cousin mentioned that she didn't want to hear info about the Steve Jobs biography before she reads it) was the following: Not to spoil the ending, but he dies.

You're welcome.

Do You Have Enough Subject Classification Tags?

Really, Alex and Alan? Are 19 separate classes in the Mathematics Subject Classification truly necessary? Don't you think that's just a bit extreme?

There is nothing wrong with this, but you've managed to win my WTF award for the day. (That said, this paper now makes me wonder if this is the record.)

In summary:

(a) That seems a bit extreme.
(b) I wonder if this is the record.
(c) Seriously, WTF?


Update (1/14/13): One of my students checked the data that we have, and the maximum number between 1980 and 2009 appears to be 8 secondary MSCs (the one above has 1 primary MSC and 18 secondary MSCs). Wow.

A Log-Log Plot, Anyone?

I have to admit that my first reaction to seeing this infographic about penis sizes in the animal kingdom was a strange desire to make a log-log plot. :) (Also, I am amused by the appearance of the 'Enlarge' command above the chart. Alright, my mind is safely in the gutter now.)

And now this is making me think of a possible new t-shirt design for the Power Law Shop. I think I better step away from my computer before bad things start to happen...

Mason Being Mason

I just started looking at an article in Notices of the American Mathematical Society. My first reaction: "I'm pretty sure this author gave me a ride once."

That's how I'm supposed to react, right? (I told you I was awesome.)

"Our Simplification Simplifies the Dynamics"

I just noticed the beautiful phrasing "Our simplification simplifies the dynamics, ..." in the page proofs of one of my papers. This is going to have to be changed, though at some level it is admittedly kind of 'awesome'.

Conference on Ad Hoc Biological Adaptation Hypotheses

I would totally attend this event!

To be honest, though, sometimes I wonder how much this differs from some things I see in real scientific conferences and papers (not to be cynical or anything).

No Death Star For Us

Here is the US Government's response to a petition to build a Death Star by 2016. Very well played!

Overly Honest Methods

The Twitter hashtag #overlyhonestmethods is getting really big these days (or, it is "trending", to use Twitter terms). Here is an article about it. It's interesting how most of these seem to come from biology, though I don't know how much this is just because there are so many bloody biologists. :) You can see more doozies in this Huffington Post article.

I have to say that this is not optimal for my productivity, though I have managed to be pretty good about things thus far. :)

(Tip of the cap to I Fucking Love Science for the article above and to Kreso Josic for first letting me know about this meme. I'm not up for looking up the html codes for the accents Kreso's name at the moment, but I'm sure he'll forgive me.)

The Evolutionary Advantages of Wrinkled Fingers When Wet

I was always wondering why fingers and toes become wrinkled when wet. A new study has shed some interesting light on the subject. (It appears to be basically for traction, much like the treads in a tire.) Very cool!

The research reported in this article was done by biologists. Given the topic, I was actually thinking that certain fluid mechanists I know might have been involved. :) I wouldn't be surprised if some of them picked up this problem in the future. (Tip of the cap to I Fucking Love Science.)

Writers Don't Elect Anybody to Baseball's Hall of Fame

Well, nobody got elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame from the writers' ballot this year. Lame.

Well, at least I wore my 'Plunk Biggio' shirt in support. That doesn't make up for the additional 39 votes needed.

Anyway, lame.

Update: As I write this, the article above doesn't include the vote totals (though I am sure it will later). Rob Neyer's article has the vote totals among those who received enough votes to stay on the ballot next year.

I Guess the UK Doesn't Want Me to Pay My Taxes?

And for at least the second time (and possibly the third?), Barclays has blocked my debit card as a result of my attempt to pay my UK taxes. I think that I should take this as a sign that I shouldn't pay taxes...

Sigh... I will never get those 30 minutes of my life back.

My Face Hurts. :(

So, remember my recent experimentation with Newton's laws (which, of course, follows up on several past experiments with Newton's laws).

Just to remind you, birds are not the only ones who crash at full speed into glass doors and windows. :) A few minutes ago, I walked into the glass door face first. Ouch. It totally looked like it was open, so I just tried to walk through it! (And my name isn't even Luka...)

And the cherry on top of all this is that, a couple minutes later, my landlady, wondering what the noise was, came and asked me with complete seriousness if I crashed into the door (as if that were the obvious explanation).

It is times like these when I wonder how I got this far. Anyway, about Newton's laws: they still work pretty well.

My face hurts. :(

"Refereeing Nirvana"

My somewhat snarky letter to the editor has appeared among the letters in the February 2013 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society. Notice the reference to a certain bit of 90s music that I included? (Yeah, I know: It's the wrong decade. It works, ok?)

Commuting

I am commuting more these days.

That's not a bad thing, though. If nothing else, at least it makes me easier to measure accurately. :) (I have always loved this joke.)

Discussion of Science Books and Other Sources of Inspiration on 'Quantum Frontiers'

John Preskill has written a blog entry on Quantum Frontiers about books and other sources of scientific inspiration from when we were kids. Thus far, three of us have brought up baseball cards as part of such inspiration.

Update (1/09/13): In case you have not peen following the comments on the IQIM blog post above, let me urge you to read what various people have had to say about what popular science books (and other things) got them interested in science when they were kids. I think it's really cool to read what a lot of people are writing about that.

"Awesome" Headlines

Some of these newspaper headlines are "awesome" (as well as awesome). I approve!

I have seen a few of these circulating around the internet, and I remember at least two of them (the baseball ones) from the original newspaper articles themselves before they were circulated because of their humor content.

(Tip of the cap to Jed Yang.)

Achievement Unlocked: "Divine Light of the Porcelain Goddess"

Achievement Unlocked: "Divine Light of the Porcelain Goddess": Use iPod as a flashlight to avoid killing oneself on the way to the bathroom.

Don't Believe the Hype!

Don't believe the hype! It's still 2012. Seriously.

In fact, that's not accurate either. It's still 1988! At least in my world.