A Great 'Team' Page

The 'team' page at the Institute for Disease Modeling is spectacular!

Take a look at it for the short video clips!

(Tip of the cap to Carl Bergstrom.)

Spot-On SMBC Comic about Scientific "Findings"

The comic-strip author this one.

Mouseover text: "Somewhere, there's a scientist reading this, wonder[ing] why I made a comic with no hyperbole."

Some scientists get all the breaks pic.twitter.com/l327NT5vFd

— Adam J Calhoun (@neuroecology) June 14, 2019

Highlighting Lead Junior Scientists in SIMODS

For the journal SIAM Journal on the Mathematics of Data Science (SIMODS), one of the things I did as a member of the editorial board was to suggest (based on having seen this in the journal Biology Open and really liking the idea) to our Editor-in-Chief (Tammy Kolda) that we could highlight lead junior authors with a Q & A once their articles are published. Tammy supported the idea, so we're doing it; and today the first such profile appeared in SIAM News online.

Creating Wikipedia Entries for Underrepresented Scientists and Engineers

As described in this article, physicist Jess Wade has been doing incredible work on writing new Wikipedia entries.

Meet @jesswade, a scientist working to increase the number of underrepresented scientists and engineers on @Wikipedia: https://t.co/4JAJirmWDp #WomenInSTEM @WikiWomenInRed pic.twitter.com/f6jiX47WLL

— Wikimedia (@Wikimedia) July 13, 2018

Awesome Journal Idea: Young-Researcher, First-Author Interviews for Accepted Papers

Today, one of my papers was accepted by Biology Open, with which I didn't previously have any experience.

As part of their correspondence today, they also let the first author (my former doctoral student) know about the option of a young-scientist, first-author spotlight. They wrote the following (which you can also find on their website):

Congratulations on acceptance of your article in Biology Open. To help early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers, we have launched a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in BiO. If you would like to be included in this interview series, please tell us more about yourself by answering the questions below. You can answer all or just some of the questions, and you may also suggest additional questions and provide your answers to them if you wish.

How interesting! I have never seen a journal do this before. What a great idea! We really need to do something like this in the mathematics and physics communities.

Here are their suggested questions:

What is your scientific background and the general focus of your lab?

How would you explain the main findings of your paper to non-scientific family and friends?

What are the potential implications of these results for your field of research?

What has surprised you the most while conducting your research?

What, in your opinion, are some of the greatest achievements in your field and how has this influenced your research?

What changes do you think could improve the professional lives of early career scientists?

What's next for you?

They then added the following:

So that we can create a short biography to accompany your interview, please ensure that you include your job title, the name of the Principal Investigator of your lab, your contact address and a one-line synopsis of your research interests. Include your Twitter handle, if you have one, so we can tag you in any related tweets.

They also asked for a picture of the first author and "a particularly striking, interesting or unusual image" from their research (along with a caption describing it).

"Interval Signatures of Celebrities and Researchers on Twitter"

In case you ever wanted to compare my tweeting behavior to that of Lance Armstrong and other celebrities (and several network and data scientists), here is your chance.

It's always nice to be analyzed (for my tweeting behavior) alongside luminaries like Katy Perry, Shaquille O'Neal, and Steve Martin. Lots of my peeps from network and data science are also put under the data-analytic microscope (or perhaps I should write 'mesoscope') on this page.

Also in Physics Today: Mary Somerville!

In my obsession yesterday with the article about the physics of croissants (which has a lovely picture of a croissant network) from the same issue, I failed to notice that the cover article in the January 2018 issue of Physics Today is about Mary Somerville. Here is the cover.

Walk-Up Music for Keynote Talks by Scientists

I've expressed this sentiment before, but let me reiterate it before the year is over.

When scientists give keynote talks at conferences, we ought to play personal walk-up music (a la professional wrestling) to set the mood.

(On days that I particularly want to empathize with the audience, I might choose "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" by the Pet Shop Boys.)

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) December 31, 2017

"Skype a Scientist" Program

I just received a classroom 'match' through the Skype a Scientist. My match is a 9th-grade classroom, but the range is kindergarten through 12th gradel.

Fellow scientists: You should sign up for this! It's a really good cause!

"Skype a Scientist matches scientists with classrooms around the world! Scientists will skype into the classroom for 30-60 minute Q and A sessions that can cover the scientist’s expertise or what it’s like to be a scientist. We want to give students the opportunity to get to know a “real scientist”, and this program allows us to reach students from all over the world without having to leave the lab!"

Update (9/06/17): I now have been matched with a second classroom. I believe I indicated that I was happy being matched with up to two classrooms.

"The Tonight Show" Starring Edward Teller?

Wow. Here are some pictures of Edward Teller as a television-show host.

OMG OMG. Edward Teller tried a run as a television show host in 1955. How did I not know this? These photos are AMAZING. This is so bonkers. pic.twitter.com/lGsPPpQkbz

— Alex Wellerstein (@wellerstein) July 19, 2017

Print and Play Cards: Women in Science

These print-and-play cards of Women in Science include some nice artwork and some very familiar names. My favorites are the mathematicians, of course.

A couple of years ago, I blogged about playing cards of Women in Computing.

"Skype a Scientist": Matching Scientists with School Classrooms

I signed up to talk to a couple of classrooms via the Skype a Scientist initiative. Maybe you will too?

(Tip of the cap to Noelle Beckman.)

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.

Science has no Borders

As demonstrated at my undergraduate alma mater Caltech today, science has no borders.

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.)

Origin of the Word "Scientist" and Happy Birthday to Mary Somerville!

Mary Soverville was born on this day in 1780, and the word "scientist" (as opposed to "man of science") was coined initially for her. Also see the Facebook post by Physics Today.

(Tip of the hat to John Dudley for retweeting Maria Popova's article about the origin of the word "scientist".)

Update (1/16/17): In terms of the origin of the word "scientist", the claim above is not accurate. I sit corrected. (Tip of the cap to Thony Christie.)

Francis Crick and Old-School Snark

I love this!

Francis Crick sometimes handled unsolicited requests by ticking a box & replying with this funny postcard (Fig 3 in https://t.co/eTotS5Ek8d) pic.twitter.com/1CdSu06yXt

— Steven Strogatz (@stevenstrogatz) December 23, 2016

Science Kombat

Two words: Finish him!

Based on what I see from the graphics, so far I think Stephen Hawking is the best playable character.

(Tip of the cap to Joshua Bodyfelt.)

Ranking Scientists According to Sarcasm

"Instead of using citations, I think we should rank scientists from most sarcastic to least."

Naturally, I was accused of using my own CV after I proposed that criterion for measuring quality.

Maybe I should call this metric the "p-index"? We could call it the "s-index", if you prefer, but then I wouldn't be naming it after myself.

"Parasitic Disease Scientists Win Nobel"

CNN.com's tagline to their article about today's Nobel Prize doesn't distinguish between "parasitic disease-scientists" and "parasitic-disease scientists".

The power of the hyphen. :)