My Six-Word Horror Story

"Microsoft Word format required for submissions."#SixWordHorror #SixWordHorrorStory https://t.co/NQ19cnvWio

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) June 18, 2019

Complex Analysis, Simple Analysis, and Congressional Support for Perverse Sheaves

This quote encapsulates one of the great stories in the history of U.S. government funding (and legislative and others' skepticism of such funding):

"On April 9, 1975, Congressman Robert Michel brandished a list of new NSF grants on the floor of the House of Representatives and selected a few that he thought might represent a waste of the taxpayers’ money. One of them (on which I happened to be one of the investigators) was called “Studies in Complex Analysis.” Michel’s comment was, “ ‘Simple Analysis’ would, hopefully, be cheaper.” I shudder to think of what might happen if certain members of the current Congress discover that the NSF is supporting research on perverse sheaves."

You can see some more details in an old blog post from John Baez.

Fires and Queueing

Tonight I heard a story that I think encapsulates the UK perfectly. The server at the pub noticed a fire in a trash receptacle (I think that's what it was) just outside of a Starbucks on the High Street. He went inside and asked for water to put out the fire, indicating explicitly that it was a fire. The employees at Starbucks wouldn't let him jump the queue, so he stood in line to get water so that he could go outside and put out the fire with it.

Maybe the guy was trolling us, but this is a story that I want to be true.

Awesome Story: 102-Year-Old Women Sets Record for Oldest Ever Doctoral Recipient

This story is a great one: 102-year-old Ingeborg Rapoport has become the oldest ever recipient of a PhD after an old Nazi injustice is righted.

Of course, the reason behind the story is very unfortunate to say the least, but I love the story's ending. This is really awesome.

(Technically, she will be given the doctorate in a ceremony on 9 June. She has already successfully defended it.)

(Tip of the cap to A Mighty Girl.)

Update (6/10/15): Ingeborg Rapoport now officially has her doctorate.

Being Part of the Story of Science

When you are an undergraduate student, and for the most part when you're a graduate student (though it starts to change then), you read scientific and mathematical results that have been neatly polished and compiled into books --- and then somewhat less neatly polished and compiled into papers. You probably will see that there are many mysteries left to uncover, but it's still knowledge and somehow something that already exists. And then you become a scientist (and mathematician) and you realize that there are stories --- often very interesting ones --- behind the knowledge and that can occasionally be just as fascinating (or even more so) than the knowledge itself. It's not just that some of the personalities are genuinely interesting (though that is also true) but that the path to knowledge is typically a maze of twisty little passages, all alike --- and there are a lot of inside jokes and events that become part of the stories, and these jokes and stories often have many layers (pun intended).

Being a professional scientist isn't merely about creating new knowledge (though that definitely is part of the deal). It means that you're part of an ever-enfolding story that people outside can watch and appreciate, but you are actually in the story, because you're one of the people helping to create it.

And let me tell you: It is incredibly awesome being one of the players in this evolving story! It's hard to beat being part of that, and I can't imagine trading it for anything.

So the next time you open a math book and see a theorem (or some other important or maybe not-so-important result), remember that that theorem might well have an interesting story behind it. It's more than just a piece of deductive reasoning. And, obviously, the same goes for all other scientific discourse. :)

And what made me think of all this particularly poignantly right now? Ergodic clams, of course. None of the thoughts above are new to me (I have had them many times, in fact), and I'm sure that I could have phrased them more eloquently, but I have to thank Petter Holme and Sang Hoon Lee for the immediate inspiration for writing this post when I should have gone to bed instead.

Now I better start thinking about what my theme song should be...

Achievement Unlocked: Use the Fibonacci Sequence to Verify ID to Complete a Purchase

Achievement Unlocked: Use the Fibonacci sequence instead of an ID card to verify my identity and complete a purchase.

This evening, I found a nice practical real-world application of the Fibonacci sequence: I was buying a game (called "Pix") at Game Empire and was paying by credit card. The guy behind the counter asked to see an ID card, but I didn't have any with me. After I mentioned that the only thing I could do was to go back to my hotel room to get an ID, he decided that if I could correctly define the Fibonacci sequence that that would suffice instead of an ID card. So I gave him the correct definition, and we finished up the purchase.

(His idea came from the fact that I was using a Caltech Credit Union credit card. He wanted to make sure that card was legitimately mine. OK, I now have a nice story to tell --- which I appreciate --- but the logic was somewhat flawed. I did tell the guy that we both get an "Achievement Unlocked" for this.)

So don't ever let anyone tell you that there aren't any practical applications for the Fibonacci sequence!

Update: As Ernie Barreto points out, doing a Taylor-series approximation correctly was once a matter of life-or-death for physicist Igor Tamm. I am going to use that story when I teach Taylor series to my students.

Story: The Rabbit's Dissertation

Today I am going to tell you the story of The Rabbit's Dissertation, which was told to me tonight by political scientist Zeev Maoz.

A rabbit was busy typing up its dissertation when a fox came by to ask it about its thesis topic. The rabbit answered that it was typing a dissertation about "How Rabbits Eat Foxes". The fox---a very skeptical canine---said that surely that the rabbit was wrong and had gotten things in reverse. Surely foxes eat rabbits and not the other way around.

So the rabbit said that it would take the fox over to its cage and the fox should wait there so that the rabbit could come back that night and demonstrate that its dissertation was correct.

A wolf came by later, and the same thing occurred. Then a bear came by and the rabbit took the bear over to its home cage, and then the rabbit locked the door on all three and went away.

The rabbit worked on its dissertation some more and came back the next morning. It opened the door, and it walked through the bones of the fox and the bones of the wolf and the bones of the bear. In the back of the cage was a lion.

Moral: It doesn't matter what your dissertation topic is, but it matters a great deal who your thesis advisor is!

(I had never heard this one before, but Zeev gave me permission to steal it. I don't think the way I told the story did his telling justice. Best. Story. Ever.)

Messing with the Youngsters

My brother recently told me a short story about my Grandma Doris, who was sharp as a tack until the day that she died (in December 2003 at, I think, age 93). I don't remembering hearing this story before, but I have to say that it doesn't surprise me.

Although Doris was sharp as a tack (unlike most people her age, who usually exhibit a good amount of dementia), she did seem to occasionally be forgetful. One might start out a story with something like "Did I tell you about the time...?" And, on occasion, Doris would do that with a story maybe 5 minutes after having told us that same story. Well, one time, my brother caught her doing that on purpose---with full knowledge of having just told the story---just to fuck with us. And I bet she did it a lot; I certainly wouldn't put that past her, and I'm sure we deserved it, too.

I am so going to steal this idea when I'm old (assuming I last that long) and it's my turn to tell stories to the youngsters. Right before I tell them to get off my ****ing lawn...