What Happens in Washington, D.C. Stays in Washington, D.C.

I suppose that truer words were never written.

In any event, today I am heading off to Washington, D.C. to principal-investigator workshop that is related to a new NSF grant of mine.

On Thursday, I'll be giving a seminar in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at George Mason University. It will be Mason@Mason — a fixed point!

Knight Rider and the Non-Existence of Functions

I think that some mathematics presentations would benefit from an obvious allusion to Night Rider (where you need to imagine the proper word emphasis from the TV series).

"In this paper, I will present a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a function that does not exist."
Coming in 2018 to a university near you.

Here is the original quote (which you can find on this page): Narrator: Knight Rider, a shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist. Michael Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

My Slides on Data Ethics for Mathematicians (and Others)

I have made some slides on data ethics for mathematicians (and others). I'll be presenting them later this term to my graduate course in network science.

My slides on "Data Ethics for Mathematicians" (n the era of Big Data) #appliedmathematics #bigdata https://t.co/JBqOcMyf6f via @SlideShare

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) February 19, 2017

Public Lectures on M. C. Escher

A couple of weeks ago, we had really nice public lectures on M. C. Escher in the Mathematical Institute. Now, you can watch them online. Watch for the modernized version of one of Escher's famous paintings that plays a role in one of the talks.

Vladimir Arnold on Russian Versus American Mathematicians

Not only are these comments about Russian versus American mathematicians vintage Arnold, but there is also a very fundamental truth in his comment: spending time working to produce new results versus spending time talking about prior stuff that you did.

Modelling Human Butts

The Improbable Research Blog has highlighted an abstract on modelling of human buttocks. This was presented last December at the 7th Australasian Congress on Applied Mechanics, and surely this is a very important topic in mechanics. And if you look at the first reference in the bibliography, you'll notice that it is my Dong et al. :)

Advice for Giving Talks

In a blog post, Aaron Clauset enumerates some excellent advice for giving talks. If you are a student of mine---or, in fact, a scientist or academic of any kind---please read this blog post.

And while I essentially agree with every point on this list, of course it's not like I actually follow all of the points of advice, but I do follow many---or at least several---of them.

Anyway, I am far from a perfect speaker (though I don't think that I am horrible at it), but in my position as advisor, co-advisor, and mentor of various kinds, I think the most important thing is to pass along good advice no matter the extent to which I actually follow it. :)

Enjoy!

Presentations by 2007 SURF Students

For those of you near Pasadena, my 2007 SURF students will be presenting talks about their research at Caltech on Saturday (10/20). I don't have final versions of their papers yet, so I'll post those in a future blog entry, but I'll provide links to the two sessions in which they're speaking and give the titles of their talks.

The synchronization students are speaking in this session. They are as follows:

Alex Cayco-Gajic, Synchronization in Coupled Phase Oscillators

Sherry Chen, Antiferromagnetic Synchronization in Nanomechanical Oscillators

Matt Grau, Small Systems of Nonlinear Oscillators



The networks students are speaking in this session. They are as follows:

Ye Pei, A Network Theory Study of Roll Call Votes in the United States Congress

Olga Mandelshtam, Growth Models of Online Social Networks



Additionally, at least four of my former SURF students are going to be giving talks on Saturday about work they have done with other people. They are Sean Li, Tom Mainiero, Austin Webb, and Tatjana Wiese.

For people on my side of the pond, I am very actively continuing my work on social networks and I am trying to find local students to work with me on that stuff. I also plan to continue the synchronization stuff, which is a new area for me.