Did I mention that Doug Glanville is awesome?

Here is former baseball player Doug Glanville's latest op ed piece in the New York Times.

(I saw the link to this article on Rob Neyer's blog.)

I'll have some other entries coming reasonably soon (I hope). This includes the Rome summary and some long-awaited stuff.

An academic version of the Arbesman-Strogatz Monte Carlo study of hitting streaks

Samuel Arbesman and Steve Strogatz have now posted an arxiv paper that extends their earlier New York Times op ed piece on baseball hitting streaks. I asked Steve at the time whether there would be a technical article as well. He had said he wasn't sure they'd bother, so I'm glad that they decided to put something on the arxiv (and presumably submit it for publication as well). Here is the reference:

\\
arXiv:0807.5082
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:40:15 GMT (1064kb)

Title: A Monte Carlo Approach to Joe DiMaggio and Streaks in Baseball
Authors: S. Arbesman, S. H. Strogatz
Categories: physics.pop-ph physics.data-an
Comments: 14 pages, 10 figures
\\
We examine Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak and look at its likelihood,
using a number of simple models. And it turns out that, contrary to many
people's expectations, an extreme streak, while unlikely in any given year, is
not unlikely to have occurred about once within the history of baseball.
Surprisingly, however, such a record should have occurred far earlier in
baseball history: back in the late 1800's or early 1900's. But not in 1941,
when it actually happened.
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.5082 , 1064kb)


I don't have time to read the paper for now, but I'm printing it out and will get to it in the next few days. (I'd normally put this farther back in the queue, but it's about baseball, so I'm going to make a point to read it earlier than I otherwise would.) I don't actually like the style of the abstract. I think it makes sense to make it informal, but I think it could use some polishing.

I want to write a scientific article about baseball! I do have a project in the works, but my collaborators and I are very far away from posting anything at all...

Dodgers acquire Manny Ramirez

Today the Dodgers traded for Manny Ramirez. Ramirez is a sure-fire first-ballot Hall-of-Famer. Here are his career stats. I think the trade is a good attempt to win things this year, though I think I would prefer not picking up his $20 million yearly option for 2009 (and also not to pick up the 2010 option at the same price, of course). I was just telling one of my friends at dinner that I doubted Manny would be traded because there had been constant rumors involving him for several years and he was still with the Red Sox after all this time. Oops. I missed that one completely. The Sox are paying Manny's salary for this year, which is great! (It also means that Andruw Jones will hardly be playing at all, and I hope that I can say the same thing for Juan Pierre.) We lost two minor leaguers: third baseman Andy Laroche (who it was clear we were never going to give a chance to play) and pitcher Bryan Morris (about whom I know nothing) went to Pittsburgh. (Our minor league system is absolutely stocked right now, so this doesn't bother me at all.) The Pirates also got outfielder Brandon Moss and pitcher Craig Hansen from the Red Sox and gave up Jason Bay to the Sox. (I would rather have gotten Bay than Manny, but overall I am happy with this trade---though again I really hope we let Manny walk as a free agent after the year is over.)

Let's see if we can go anywhere with this. Certainly this is better than the Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones free agent signings.

Note: The Angels did much better in getting Texeira. If they can sign him to an extension, then they'll have one of the best young players in the game locked up for several years.

It's time to quote Q*Bert.

To quote Q*Bert, my laptop is "@!#?@!"ed.

Disk Warrior could state how it wanted to fix the directory hierarchy (in terms of giving me a preview of what the gloriously correct node structure should look like), but it wasn't able to actually do it. All hardware tests from Disk Profiler and Disk Warrior claim that nothing is wrong, but I just don't believe it at this point. I wiped my harddrive clean (again!), and I couldn't reinstall the OS on it because of an error. Moreover, there are stilling lingering chaotic evil directory structures in there. Bloody Hell!

Anyway, my MacBook Pro has a hot date at the Southampton Apple Store tomorrow. (Sadly, I can't say the same thing for myself.)

So, what should I call my next harddrive? This one was Vecna. Maybe I should go with somebody with a slightly more positive alignment?

Sigh...

The LHC Rap

Courtesy Predrag Cvitanovic, here is a music video about experimental attempts to go beyond the Standard Model. (You can also hear some MC Hawking at the beginning and the end.)

In case any of you, gentle readers, were wondering how something can be simultaneously awesome and "awesome", I ask you to behold this video!

|Tales from the arXiv: Entropy and Truth?

Here's a nice bit of psychoceramics that was just posted on the arXiv:

arXiv:0807.4337
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:58:10 GMT (5kb)

Title: Interaction between Truth and Belief as the key to entropy and other
quantities of statistical physics
Authors: Flemming Topsoe
Categories: math-ph math.MP
Comments: announcement
MSC-class: 94A17
\\
The notion of entropy penetrates much of science. A key feature of the
all-important notion of Boltzmann-Gibbs-Shannon entropy is its extensivity
(additivity over independent subsystems). However, there is a need for other
quantities. In statistical physics a parameterized family of non-extensive
entropy measures, now mainly known under the name of Tsallis-entropies, have
received much attention but also been met with criticism due mainly to a lack
of convincing interpretations. Based on the hypothesis that interaction between
Truth, held by ``Nature'', and Belief, as expressed by man, may take place,
classical- as well as non-classical measures of entropy and other essential
quantities are derived. The approach aims at providing a genuine
interpretation, rather than relying either on analogies based on formal
mathematical manipulations or else - more fruitfully, but not satisfactory - on
axiomatic characterizations.
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.4337 , 5kb)


The thing that amuses me is that the abstract seems reasonable and straight-laced at first. The author discusses the need for other quantities (which is fine, in principle), and then comes the zinger sentence that he/she derives them based on some garbage that I can't even parse. Next up: some thermodynamic quantities based on "Justice" and the Anerican Way. O, Superman! (OK, so this Bowie reference was gratuitous.)

Big Brother is Listening to you (and your musics)

Courtesy Christopher Voyce, here is a nice new invasion of privacy that is apparently under active discussion.

Comment:: Fuck you and the horse you rode in on! (Customs is supposed to protect people from things that are dangerous, not prevent them from drowning out obnoxious young children who sing the Fanta theme song for the bloody entirety of a six-hour long flight!)

Addendum: Writing "musics" was a typo, but it reminds me of a certain cat meme (and also whence it came), so I'm going to go with it. I meant to type "music", however. Damn governments have me all riled up... (not to mention the stress from my computer issues... my Mac passed its harddrive test, so we'll see how DiskWarrior does in a couple of days).

More Computer Conniptions

My MacBook Pro is having conniptions again today. SIGH... I just want to get some work done. (I have a note for something to add to an in-progress paper, and I would love to actually be able to do that.)

By the way, did you know that "conniption" is one of the official 'favorite words' in OCIAM?

Here's it's entry in the Online Etymology Dictionary:

1833, Amer.Eng., origin uncertain; perhaps related to corruption, which was used in a sense of "anger" from 1799, or from Eng. dialectal canapshus "ill-tempered, captious," probably a corruption of captious.

That's right, we invented this one, you punks! ;) (I did tell the story of this OCIAM discussion in my blog, right?)

Adventures in Olympian Lameness

My brother Adam pointed me to the following article, in which the Olympic version of baseball will be sodomized in its 2008 (and "temporarily final", as it's not in the 2012 games at all) appearance in The Games.

Here's how things are going to work for extra innings (after the first 9 innings are played normally):

Under the new format, the 10th inning will be played normally. At the start of the 11th, teams will have the option of beginning at any point in the existing batting order and placing the previous two batters on base.

For example, a team that opts to lead off with its No. 3 hitter would begin with its No. 1 batter on second base and its No. 2 hitter on first with no outs.

The 12th inning and beyond would begin where the previous lineup left off, with the two hitters ahead of the batter scheduled to lead off that inning being placed on first and second bases.


Comment: This is fucking lame. It reminds me of Jose Canseco's suggestion of occasionally using a yellow ball, and when a homerun is hit with that ball the team that hits it gets an extra run.

The Return of Mike Hampton

If you take a look at the box score for today's baseball game between the Phillies and the Braves, you'll notice that Mike Hampton started today for the Braves. I'm shock -- I say, shocked! -- that Mike Hampton actually pitched today.

As I write this, the game hasn't yet ended. So should we put some overs/unders on how many innings Mike Hampton pitches this year before getting injured again? Let's say 22 innings.

Three Cheers for my Phylactery!

My MacBook Pro decided to have a conniption today. With a massive amount of help from a local (Christopher Voyce), my computer (Vecna) seems to be working again, although when I saw the same behavior for my G4 back in Atlanta, it was a sign that my harddrive was on the way out. (Indeed, it failed for good a couple to a few months after that.) Hence, I'm not convinced the issues won't crop up again, but right now the computer appears to be working perfectly so if I went to the Apple Store, it would just work and they'd wonder why I'm there. (I could just go ahead and buy a harddrive on my own and assume this one is on borrowed time, but what if it isn't? One thing I now have done is buy the Leopard-compatible version of DiskWarrior because unlike the last time this happened, I didn't have DiskWarrior here to help me out.)

By the way, the observed behavior that I mentioned above was when I noticed iTunes suddenly coughing when it tried to play a song---like it was having hiccups. Then when I did a verify with Disk Utility, I was getting an 'invalid node structure' error. I thought that only happened with social networks! :) At first the OS 10.5 install DVD didn't want to install anything on my harddrive, so I was thinking that I needed to head off immediately (i.e., tomorrow, as the places were going to be closed by the time I got there today---the nearest Apple Store is in Southampton, so I would have needed to get on the train) to deal with it. However, after going to the office to get some stuff (like a possible backup computer), we came back and were able to install 10.5 on my harddrive. We had to erase everything on there, so I am currently copying stuff from Phylactery, which is my back-up hard drive. Once I saw the first conniptions today, I immediately backed up my documents. Otherwise, the back-ups date from July 17th (i.e., right before I left for Rome) and the only changes since then that weren't to documents were some podcasts that I can redownload. Anyway, the back-up business is the explanation for this blog entry's title.

The giant Rome blog is coming, but because of today's events, I'm not in the mood to do it at the moment. Today was going to be a chance for me to revamp a section of a particular article, but that will now have to be done tomorrow. It can't be helped and in any event I really don't want to deal with it now. I will finally deal with a couple of software things now that I need to do some reinstallation anyway. Namely, I am downloading Firefox 3 and I will switch over from the Caltech-licensed copy of Matlab to the Oxford one. Moreover, I will download Oxford's copy of Mathematica, as my inertia had led me to not bother with that after my Caltech-licensed one expired.

I also found out that everybody who works in my building apparently gets a 10% discount at the ice cream place I frequent. The person behind the counter mentioned that they don't like to publicize this. I estimated that since October, this has cost me about 100 pounds---which is not enough to affect my life but definitely enough to annoy me. The thing I have to do, of course, is treat this as a sunk cost and enjoy my discount from now on. There isn't anything else I can do. I wonder how many of my colleagues in Dartington House have been paying more for ice cream than necessary? Well, since the ice cream bar won't publicize this discount, I will. (Colleagues: When you go to G & D's, make sure to mention that you work upstairs so that you can get your 10% discount! And for those of you who did know about this before, I think from now on we should make sure that all the new people know about this from the very beginning of their time here. If we don't tell them, they have no way of knowing, and that's just not the right way to do things.)

Anyway, I love my Phylactery. :)

My favorite picture from Rome

I've posted it here.

I am tempted to make some comments, but I think it's best to just recall the phrase that a picture is worth a thousand words...

(This picture was taken by Martin Centurion. I took one too with my non-digital camera...)

I'll blog more about Rome later, but not today. I have some more amusement to pass along, including my various attempts to get iced lattes and/or capuccinos.

Baseball imitates Bugs Bunny?

As part of a blog article today, Rob Neyer linked to an Onion article about the Brewers' overlarge players C.C. Sabathia and Price Fielder seeing each other as giant food items. It was quite reminiscent of a particular Bugs Bunny cartoon... (I'm pretty sure it was Bugs Bunny and not a different one from that era, though I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was more than one episode like this.)

Geek Life Flowchart

My student Mariano Beguerisse Diaz posted a link on Facebook to a Geek Life Flowchart that appeared recently in the New York Times.

Comment: This network is missing a lot of the edges that ought to be included. :)

P.S. I just got back from Rome. When I get more sleep (and catch up on some work as well), I'll blog a little more about my trip.

Matter-wave solitons with a periodic, piecewise-constant scattering length

Physical Review A just published one of my articles: Matter-wave solitons with a periodic, piecewise-constant scattering length.

My coauthors are A. S. Rodrigues, P. G. Kevrekidis, D. J. Frantzeskakis [who I met in real life for the first time at the conference I'm currently attending] , P. Schmelcher, and A. R. Bishop. [I have yet to meet Augusto Rodrigues, Peter Smelcher, and Alan Bishop in person.]

Here is our abstract: Motivated by recent proposals of “collisionally inhomogeneous” Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), which have a spatially modulated scattering length, we study the existence and stability properties of bright and dark matter-wave solitons of a BEC characterized by a periodic, piecewise-constant scattering length. We use a "stitching" approach to analytically approximate the pertinent solutions of the underlying nonlinear Schrödinger equation by matching the wave function and its derivatives at the interfaces of the nonlinearity coefficient. To accurately quantify the stability of bright and dark solitons, we adapt general tools from the theory of perturbed Hamiltonian systems. We show that stationary solitons must be centered in one of the constant regions of the piecewise-constant nonlinearity. We find both stable and unstable configurations for bright solitons and show that all dark solitons are unstable, with different instability mechanisms that depend on the soliton location. We corroborate our analytical results with numerical computations.


The idea behind this is that my collaborators and I (as well as others) have done some work on BECs in "nonlinear lattices" in which the nonlinearity coefficient (which is proportional to the two-body scattering length) is a periodic function of space: g = g(x). In my past paper on this topic, my collaborators and I looked at periodic waves and g(x) given by a trig function. To try to delve more deeper into some things analytically, we decided to take a step back and let g(x) be a periodic step function. One can solve the governing partial differential equation in closed form in the g(x) = constant regions and then one can try to match the solutions at the boundaries between those regions. This was motivated by some conversations with more theoretical mathematicians (Bjorn Sandstede and Percy Deift) and to try to find a setup that would be more tractable to some theorem-proof work by people closer to the pure side of the mathematical spectrum. In the just-published paper, we looked at localized solutions. Our plan is to look at periodic solutions (in the form of elliptic functions) as well.

In the boondocks?

My hotel is nice, but it's located in a place with tons and tons of graffiti, which makes me wonder a bit about the area I'm in. Right now I am in my hotel lobby waiting for my roommate to arrive. I had a bit of an arduous, sweaty walk from the train station. (It had to be a bit circuitous because the sidewalks on some streets were completely blocked and I didn't want to get run over. The estimated walking distance was from the opposite corner of the train station where my train landed, and it went up quite a bit further with the twists and turns.) The concierge asked to see my passport to copy down some information, and he seemed a little offended when I said I'd wait to get it back instead of going to my room and then coming back for it in 10 minutes. (My attitude: I'm sorry, but you're going to have to be offended because that would just be a stupid risk for me to take.)

I saw a bit of scenery during my treck (including a few cafes and, especially important, gelato places). When my roommate (who I know from Caltech postdoc days) arrives, we'll do some touristy stuff and also explore a bit. Now that I've taken a shower, I'm in more of a mood to do it. I'm exhausted because my 6am flight required me to get a 2am coach from Oxford--Why do I do this to myself?--but I slept on the flight due to my exhaustion and (with the kind help of some coffee) I should be able to manage. The conference starts tomorrow, so today is going to be the main touristy day. In the meantime, I'm happy to chill out and read some box scores.

At the airport, I was able to get through security quickly. There were tons of people in the EU line and tons of people in the non-EU line, which actually meant people with European passports from my places not in the EU. (So the Brits got screwed.) I went to the line for non-European passports, which only had 3 of us in it. We were all allowed right through. In fact, the country in which it consistently takes me the longest to get in is the US. (Thanks for welcoming me home, guys!)

What happens in Rome stays in Rome...

...which of course has the obvious subtitle of "When in Rome, do like the Italians." :) (Ave Maria. Gee, it's good to see ya.)

I am going to the SIAM nonlinear waves conference, which is held once every two years. This is the third conference in the series. The first was in Orlando and the second was in Seattle.

Two of the conference organizers e-mailed me early on to ask my collaborators and me to organize a minisymposium. (As you can probably guess, this is one of the conferences where I know a ton of people.) We chose to organize a two-part session on nonlinear waves in periodic media, which is a topic that is near and dear to my heart.

I will let you know if I see anybody doing the Vatican Rag. (By the way, my musical jokes for the blog entry I write for my Vienna conference in September will be better. Some of you will see it coming from miles away, but I'll be doing it anyway.)

A new occurrence of DEI in films

There's a new film called Meet Dave that just came out. I was the mathematical consultant on the film, which was produced by the same luminaries who brought us Norbit. (I was asked to produce a fake grand unified field theory, so I took [fair] advantage of that opportunity and inserted a DEI into the formula, which I can confirm made it into the official movie props. My gamma delta beta gamma didn't make it into the props, as I describe below). I was worried that I would have to actually go see the film in order to see the one scene about which I cared (namely, the one with my stuff in it).

Thankfully, due to the magic of the Web, I don't have to waste 2 hours of my life and actually go see the film (which currently has a 3.3/10 on IMDB, which is even lower than Norbit's rating) to see how my efforts turned out, because this clip in IMDB conveniently includes the relevant scene (or at least part of it). If you fast forward to when there are about 8 seconds remaining, then you can see a massive formula being put very quickly on the board. That massive formula just so happens to be the fake grand unified field theory that the movie people asked me to come up with (for which I was paid, of course). I included a DEI (as a subscript of the wave function in the upper left... sadly, it's basically impossible to read --- let me know if you were able to do it) and a gamma delta beta gamma. The latter got cut off because the film's prop people simplified the relation by reducing the size of the 4 x 4 matrix that I included. (Anyway, if you wanted an idea of how film people change mathematical formulas, now you have one.) I saw the prop and the DEI made it on there, but it gets cut off on-screen during the close-up and it's too small to read when they show the full board.

By the way, the 'periodic orbit expansion' (which the movie folks called a 'period orbit expansion') is a nod to one of my Georgia Tech postdoc advisors.

By the way, I would have laughed hysterically if the music they had chosen to use during the clip were The Ride.

Anyway, enjoy!

Interesting tidbits involving the prehistory of community detection

I am writing a survey article on community structure in networks, and part of my hard work in doing this is to look up classical algorithms from the computer science and other literatures that give a prehistory to its modern descendants that are being used in network science.

One of the things that I looked up in the process was of course the Kernighan-Lin algorithm for graph partitioning. In the process, I became extremely impressed with Brian Kernighan for several reasons. For one, it looks like he devised this algorithm as part of his Ph.D. thesis. At around the same time, he and Lin devised an important algorithm for the traveling salesman problem (this is usually called the Lin-Kernighan algorithm. Then I looked further and found out that he is the one who devised the ubiquitous "Hello, world" paradigm, co-authored the first book on the C programming language, and contributed fundamentally to Unix from its inception. (His wikipedia entry credits him with coming up with a pun leading to Unix's name. That statement seems more speculative, so I'll just report that this is stated in the entry. Mabye Lemming or Zifnab might be able to comment on this?) The only thing that would be cooler would be if he had coauthored The Mythical Man Month.

Another vote for iced espresso drinks

Lemming just sent me the following story about trying to order iced espresso drinks. Apparently I'm not the only person who prefers caffeine over ice.

I both appreciate and empathize with the reference to Five Easy Pieces.

I'm definitely with this guy telling this story on his frustration of the barristas refusing to give him an iced espresso out of coffee snobbery. (You can read in his blog entry just how extreme it got in his case.)

I've definitely gotten a few odd looks as a result of ordering iced espresso drinks (I greatly prefer them that way). I've once or twice seen such snobbery (though not at the level that guy did), although it's more common that places that can't do it simply don't have ice machines or ice.

The couple of times that baristas refused on principle, I just voted with my feet and left. (I've had one or two similar experiences with trying to substitute things on menus.) They can have whatever policy they want, and I can take my business where I want.

He was being a dick with what he did with the "tip", however. That's not cool.

Jim Healy tribute page

I am watching the telecast of the Diamondbacks-Phillies game, and Fox announcer Matt Vasgersian commented on Adam Eaton's pitching by stating that he's "gone the Leonard Toas route." Wow, that takes me waaaay back, as that was an expression that the late, great Southern California broadcaster Jim Healy used to use. He would then play a sound clip: "Leonard Toas has... uh... lost it."

When I was a kid, my brother introduced me to a hilarious, snarky radio show by Jim Healey. The format of his radio shows, which were wonderful, is described on his wikipedia entry:

Healy's shows (at least those from the late 1970s onward) took the form of him reading headlines, with the clicking sound effect of a teleprinter in the background. In response to his own headlines or comments, Healy would then play one of his many favorite audio clips, such as "That's a bunch of bull," "That's just plain poppycock," or "Jim Healy, you've got a weak show." (Howard Cosell) Among his sound effects was a silly laughtrack, sounding like, "Hee-hee-hee-hee..." (Norm Sherry)


Basically, he would give a headline (or give some commentary), occasionally being snide and sarcastic in his own deadpan way and constantly being snide and sarcastic through his sound bites. (Let me guess. You're shocked that I enjoyed this show. Just shocked.)

Anyway, the reminder inspired me to look at his wikipedia page and find a link to a Jim Healy tribute page that draws some of it's material from a site that no longer exists. (The Way Back Machine was, of course, of great help here.)

There's also an off-again/on-again podcast show hosted by Rich Perlman that is specifically of the same format called "The Sports Examiner: Out Loud!" In fact, I just checked and it's back after being gone for close to a year. Awesome! I'm going to listen to it now.

Three Baseball Links

Courtesy Rob Neyer's blog, here are three extremely funny baseball links:

1) Baseball frivolities (March, April), as compiled quite snarkily in a blog known as The Baseball Analysts

2) Baseball frivolities (May-July), as compiled by the same folks.

3) An absolutely wonderful meltdown by the manager of the Wichita Wingnuts. Check out the oscillatory dynamics of his head at the beginning of the video clip... I was extremely impressed by the head-bobbing. (I ought to do my all-time baseball meltdown blog entry at some point. It will have a separate section for audio and video. Maybe I'll even be able to find the Carlos Perez versus the dugout watercooler --- which is the best baseball dugout fight ever, by the way! --- video online by that point.)

OCIAM versus ComLab: Annual Cricket Game and BBQ

You know, part of me has the urge to write this entry in the form of George Carlin's famous Baseball and Football skit. ("In baseball, the object is to go home... and be safe. In cricket, the object is to stand in the outfield and drink beer. Wait... I should probably use a different argument to convince this crowd that baseball is better.")

Somehow I feel as if this particular blog entry is expected of me (although I was planning to do it anyway) after playing in my first cricket game. Actually, at some point I plan to write an entry on some of the strange sports people actively play and follow here---Like rowing. What the fuck is up with that? Apparently if you watch it live it's like watching a parade; they just go past you once. (Now that I've pissed off half my local readership, I can return to the main thread...)---but for today let's talk about our cricket match.

First of all, OCIAM won for what I am told is the third time in a row. Apparently, the players who led to this victory correlate quite well with the players who led to the previous victories. ComLab, the Computing Laboratory, scored some ungodly double-digit number of runs in their inning (which in sensible sports like baseball is called a "half inning." Apparently, it's considered good if you keep them under triple digits in one inning. (In case you ever wondered why cricket games can last for several days, wonder no more. Somebody can become a full professor, start playing in a cricket game, and then be of mandatory retirement age before the game is over. Wait... that won't convince this audience that baseball is better either.) So we had a pretty successful inning. I learned a few lessons during our inning in the field: (1) I prefer catching balls with a baseball glove rather than my bare hands (which is required in cricket, except for their equivalent of a catcher). (2) Cricket balls that are hit hard really sting when they impact your hand shortly thereafter. (3) Being used to catching with a glove makes it harder when you suddenly try catching with your bare hand. (4) I'm a much better baseball player than cricket player. (OK, I already knew that one.) Not that I'm a great baseball player, but in that situation I can use my knowledge of the game to make up for my minimal actual talent. In cricket, I just stink---though I was getting the hang of the differences at bat when I took batting practice.

In our inning, we scored some ungodly number of runs that was slightly larger than ComLab's ungodly number of runs. That gave us what is now known in baseball as a "walk-off win." (I believe that that term dates from the 70s among professional baseball players, but it became much more popular outside those circles starting in the late 90s.) That is, in the bottom of the last inning (or the last inning, in the case of cricket, which for today's game was the second inning), you surpass your opponent's score and, having won the game, you walk off the field. I was going to be the next batter to come into the game, so I didn't get a chance to display my baseball stance during the game. However, I got some nice batting practice in and there are pictures of me in some cricket regalia specifically using a baseball stance. (In batting practice, I basically found an isomorphism between the last part of the baseball swing and the entire cricket swing, and that allowed me to start hitting reasonably at least during practice---I'm not game-tested yet, but hopefully we'll fix that next summer.) I'll post the picture when I get a copy of it. I assume it's good because I was scaring people with my baseball stance. And I was doing my best Gary Sheffield with lots of bat waggling in addition to my usual thing of banging the plate with the edge of the bat. I guess the sophisticated folk of this country simply aren't used to such behavior.

Anyway, the company and the game-playing were fun, though baseball is a much better sport---not that I'm biased or anything! One thing that was really cool, by the way, was being able to use all 360 degrees while batting at one of the two "wickets," which is their version of a plate. (Yes, there are two of them.) This gives quite a bit of strategy when it comes to angling the ball. A couple of people had some success just turning around and hitting the ball backwards. (You can move wherever you want when you're batting.)

I guess aside from the promised pictures, that's about what I wanted to say. Maybe I'll even call my shot next year. I think enough people would get the joke.

Baseball All-Star Rosters (mostly) announced

The rosters for Major League Baseball's All-Star game have been announced, except for a set of five players from each league for whom the fans can now vote (and for the replacement of injured players, of course). Here is the American League roster and the National League one.

As usual, there are people who should be there (such as the Phillies' Pat Burrell, though he's one of the 5 NL players who the fans can now vote in) and those who really, really shouldn't (Jason Varitek? You've got to be fucking kidding me!).

By the way, in my opinion Tim Lincecum (who is extremely awesome, by the way) deserves to be the NL's starting pitcher and Cliff Lee deserves to be the AL's starting pitcher.

The worst selection is clearly Jason Varitek, and it's not even close. (Apparently, the players are the ones who voted him in.) He's been craptacular this year, so it's not like it's even somebody having a meh year. He's been so bad that he ought to actually be relegated to the bench at this point. So let's send him to the All-Star game instead, eh? There are a number of candidates for worst ommission, but I don't think any of them are as blatant as the Varitek thing because there is a numbers game after all. Putting Brian Wilson on the NL roster instead of deserving starters like Cole Hamels or Johan Santana (or even a reliever having a better year, such as Takashi Saito) is bad, but not close to the Varitek level.

Hmmm... looking at ESPN, it seems that the Sabathia trade between the Indians and Brewers has indeed gone through. I already thought the Brewers were going to win the NL Central, and now I really think they're going to win that division.

UK government data mash-up

My collaborators Nick Jones and Peter Mucha separately e-mailed me to let me know about the new UK government data mash-up.

Basically, the UK government has launched a competition to find innovative ways of using the mass of data it collects. Towards this end, they have released (in SQL format) a ton of data from the National Health Service and other interesting parts of their bureaucracy.

While there will presumably be many cooks stirring this pot, I still am quite pleased to have access to cool data for student projects. (Currently, I really need to recruit somebody to help me study the longitudinal cabinet data that I got from Brian Uzzi...)

Also, the UK government is being very smart to release the data in this fashion. Kudos!

ECMI

I just got back from ECMI yesterday. I was going to come back this morning (because I had paid for a dorm room stay up through last night instead of the night before due to some bait-and-switch with respect to details of my attendance at this conference), but I was so tired that I came home early. (I was going to go to the theatre last night, as there were several things I wanted to see.) The conference had ended a couple of hours earlier and I had just finished a discussion with a couple of the speakers in the session I organized. The advantage of trains instead of planes includes the idea of a "period return", in which I can come back at any point during a one month period. So after I was done with my conversation, I was thinking that I was tired and I could just go home. The 40 pounds for the extra night (that I didn't want) was a sunk cost. The room was small and hot. The shower was aggressive---the water temperature could be adjusted, but the intensity of flow couldn't---and the room had a dank, musty smell. I was exhausted in general and didn't want to set my alarm this morning. So I just put my stuff away, went to the tube station next door, took the tube to Paddington, got on the train, and was home within 2 hours of my decision to 'fuck it' and return home. Not bad. Then I took a bath (rather than those stupid shower things), got some ice cream, read some Dungeons and Dragons, went to see Kung Fu Panda, and felt much better. I need to remember this lesson that things like that are a sunk cost and I shouldn't punish myself by the stubbornness of insisting to use the room for every day for which I paid.

Here are the top sites seen while in London:

1. Lloydies in London (Jit Kee Chin, Anatole Faykin, and David Richard --- Reza Mohsin has two young kids and is hard to track down)

2. Very bored and angry exhibitors. (In fact, this situation appears to have been an epic failure. The exhibit hall was in a different building from all the talks, so people didn't come back to visit it very often. When they did come back, the coffee was mostly in nearby hallways rather than where the exhibits were themselves. So the exhibitors didn't get many customers, and I overheard comments from some of them expressing boredom, anger, and the possibility of never coming back to ECMI again. Somebody screwed-up big time on this point.)

3. Some good talks. (There was some crap as well, but that's how it always works.)


The conference also included the Quote of the Week:

"The IMA are a bunch of parasites."

I'm obviously not going to pass along who said this, but based on what I saw with this conference, I'm inclined to think that there's at least some truth to this. (At the very least, some of the people they employ are tools.) Things with registration could have been more flexible (then I wouldn't have had to eat 40 pounds), the conference was rather expensive (we'll see after time passes whether I get my money's worth in connections I made... I have already gotten one seminar invitation from this, so I am feeling somewhat better about this than I was a couple of days ago), and I am apparently one of many minisymposium organizers whose invited speakers were annoyed about how expensive things were. (In fact, I agree with them.) Worse than that, one of the speakers I invited was insulted in an e-mail by one of the IMA staff. (I should mention that I have seen the e-mail and the tone was pretty sarcastic. It was out of line.) They were also briefly talking about me behind my back (Hey Dudes: If you're reading this, my name is "Mason", not "Manson"!) when they didn't realize I was in the room and could hear them. They weren't horribly unkind or anything, but one person wasn't entirely kind either. (I couldn't tell everything he said, but he seemed to be acting like my entirely reasonable request to upload both my .ppt and .pdf files for each of my two talks---which he seemed to think were all for one talk---was not a reasonable request. As I said, not horribly unkind, but perhaps it might have occurred to him that I might have been in the room and hearing him say this.)

I think if the conference were less expensive, I'd feel better about it. That said, it is important for me to meet more of the UK applied and industrial mathematicians and going to this conference certainly seems like an effective way to do so. Its price is quite prohibitive and may well keep me away, but we'll see how things go.

Now I think I've "seen" everything...

I just came back from seeing Kung Fu Panda (which is really awesome, by the way!) and I can hear a wedding party outside of my flat in Somerville. (I decided to come back from London today instead of tomorrow because I am absolutely exhausted. I was going to stay tonight and see a show, but I just wanted to return to my adopted home and relax.) OK, so what's the special thing that I wanted to mention? Well, as I entered my flat, I heard some very prominent lines from this song coming from the wedding party. Wow. (Hmmmm... and they appear to have the track on repeat. I'm going to have to drown this out with my own music because while the "song" is great, I don't want to hear it that often.)

Subatomic particle plush toys

This is just so wrong... and yet it's both awesome and "awesome"...

Namely, this site is selling stuffed toys of subatomic particles. I was tempted to buy some, but the price is a bit too steep. Apparently, the weight of the stuffed toys is supposed to have some correspondence (via 'light' versus 'heavy') with their actual weights. I'm amused.

And when you complete your subatomic particle collection, don't forget to buy some stuffies of internal organs and microbes. (I've seen the microcrobes in a couple of places---first at DragonCon and then at J/L's place.)

There are also a bunch of crocheted Lorenz manifolds out there. (My link is to a page of the Bristol mathematicians who made the first one. Their page links to a few others.) I'd be up for buying or making something like a stuffed network. Does anybody want to help make a stuffed Watts-Strogatz graph? (I was going to suggest a random graph, but that would take more nodes to be able to appreciate.) One could get a bunch of stuffed spheres and connect them with stuffed rods.

(Tip of the cap to Jonathan Adams for posting the link to the subatomic particle zoo.)

Tales from the arXiv: strong (and likely false) claim edition

One of my students (Mariano Beguerisse Diaz) just sent me a link to the following paper, which was recently posted on the arxiv:

A proof of the Riemann hypothesis

Xian-Jin Li

(Submitted on 1 Jul 2008 (v1), last revised 2 Jul 2008 (this version, v2))

By using Fourier analysis on number fields, we prove in this paper E. Bombieri's refinement of A. Weil's positivity condition, which implies the Riemann hypothesis for the Riemann zeta function in the spirit of A. Connes' approach to the Riemann hypothesis.


If this paper actually does what it claims to do, then this is obviously quite a big deal. This is ridiculously far from my area, but I'll take the safe attitude of being skeptical of the author's claims unless acknowledged experts on the topic come to a consensus that this paper accomplishes the trick. I did some googling to try to find reactions, but it came up empty (though I did find articles about a 2004 attempt). The wikipedia article to which I link above has a small section that briefly discusses false claims of a successful proof.

Anyway, it will be very exciting news if this new claim turns out to be well-founded, but I'm not about to start holding my breath.

Kickin' it old school

I found this webpage just now. It's a blog entry from a physicist (who presumably found me by some sort of googling) and has a link to a certain to a certain facetious article I wrote a few years ago. (It also has a link to my Caltech writing page, which mostly has the same stuff as my Oxford writing page.) I actually don't keep the link for this particular article on my Oxford writing page, but finding someone else linking to it makes me want to point to that blog entry.

For all I know, maybe this is my most-read paper. (Actually, my pieces in the AMS Notices are likely my most-read paper, followed by my BCS ranking system article in the American Mathematical Monthly, followed by my PNAS Congress article and my introduction to LaTeX in some order. (I went to give a seminar in Durham last fall, and one of the grad students informed me that she first saw my name a few years ago when she used my latex intro to help her write her report. At least one of the papers I wrote was useful, though I never bothered trying to polish that one to publish it anywhere official. It does appear on random resource pages in various corners [both public and private] of the web.

Dodgers get no-hit (but still win...)

On occasion, there are some especially interesting baseball games. For example, yesterday the Dodgers won even though they didn't get a single hit. This is pretty rare, but it has happened a few times before.

What happens at ECMI stays at ECMI

I just got back from NetSci at 12:30 am this morning and I will head off tomorrow for another conference. (A quick piece of advice: Attempting to go to back-to-back conferences is a very bad idea. I already feel quite exhausted...) This time the conference is in the ECMI series. By the way, there is no truth to the rumor that ECMI, which stands for "The European Consortium For Mathematics In Industry", has Wile E. Coyote as its mascot. (Also, I'm not sure whether or not there will be any super geniuses at the conference...)

For this conference, I was asked to organize a session on mathematics and social networks. The main message I want to send is that this is an exciting frontier for the mathematical scientists. For this particular meeting, I will also be stressing as part of my message the increasing important and prevalence of this stuff in industrial problems (such as for online recommendation systems), though I'll concentrate on my own research for the bulk of my talk. I will also give a talk about my work on wave propagation in granular lattices as part of a session on asymptotic analysis.

By the way, NetSci was a very good conference. (I gave a talk on my Congressional research there.) I acquired some awesome new data on political cabinet networks and will be collaborating with Brian Uzzi from Northwestern's business school (in addition to some of the usual math/physics crowd) in studying it. (Brian was already working with some Oxford folks, so I got to meet with him and talk with him a couple of times at the meeting. He gave a great invited presentation that included references to both Wang Chung and the Traveling Wilburys. Dude!) I'm not as well-known in networks as in the applied math/nonlinear dynamics community, but things seem to be on the upswing here as well. (FYI: More important is that those who do know me respect my work...)

On the way back from NetSci, a delay for one train, cause me to miss the last connection at Birmingham New Street. I then walked 5 minutes to a nearby station so that I could visit a couple of extra nodes in Britain's train network and finally get home. I made it to my apartment at 12:30 --- about 2 hours later than planned, but at least I made it and could sleep in my own bed. During this ordeal, it occurred to me that my knowledge of British geography is almost entirely network-based. I basically think of how I can get from one city to another almost entirely based on how I how between different nodes of the network. I have figured out a little bit about how this network is embedded in two-dimensional space, but I know far more about travel in Britain along the network. This can occasionally cause mistakes on my part because the embeddedness in two-dimensional space of the network is quite important (as Mark Newman and Michael Gastner have stressed in several papers over the last couple of years).

RIP George Carlin (1937-2008)

George Carlin died yesterday, apparently of heart failure. Here is the New York Times obituary.

George Carlin was one of my favorite comedians (if not my favorite), and I thankfully had the chance to once see him perform live. Many consider him quite offensive, but I love his stuff. I highly recommend googling to find his 'Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television' skit. It's awesome.

Here is an excellent quote from George Carlin that appears in the article: "Scratch any cynic and you’ll find a disappointed idealist."

What happens at NetSci stays at NetSci

Tomorrow I am heading back on the train (for the third time in the last few days) to go to the scintillating city of Norwich to attend NetSci, a networks conference I've never had the chance to attend before. It's been in the US in the past, but it's conveniently nearby this year.

Oxford's complex systems group will be well-represented at the conference, so it should be both fun and scientifically interesting. (Not that there's much to do in Norwich, but I'm sure we'll find something...)

4th Edition D & D: I'll have time to read it eventually

I picked up my core rule books of 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons from my mailbox today. It arrived yesterday while I was away giving a seminar (or possibly today earlier than I checked my mailbox). I am about to finish Dune (I only have the appendices left) and then in early July two Dragonlance books I really want to read will be shipped to me. I'll read some of the new Player's Handbook between now and then, but I'm mostly planning to go through those books first before I really delve into the new edition.

I haven't made any effort to find a gaming group for the summer (and ideally beyond), but maybe I'll get around to it at some point. There is some sort of game day on Saturday, but I'm going to have to miss it because I am visiting Bristol tomorrow and going to the first of two back-to-back conferences on Sunday, so I really need to do work on Saturday. In particular, I have some papers nearing the finish line and others making reasonable progress that would be nice to advance further (and, ideally, one I want to advance enough to be comfortable showing it to people at the upcoming conference!).

I might post some thoughts on Dune later, though that's likely to wait for my year-end review of books. I'm definitely planning to discuss some 4th edition stuff after I go through it in detail. (I only glanced at it for a minute because I want to read some baseball articles, work a bit on a paper [perhaps], and play some Super Mario Galaxy.

In other news, congratulations to all my Somerville students who finished their exams today! (I don't think any of them read this blog, but congratulations to them anyway.)

Petition to prevent mathematics cutbacks at USQ in Australia

I just got an e-mail on the Project NExT list about upcoming cutbacks (that would basically decimate the entire mathematics program) at University of Southern Queensland in Australia.

Please sign the petition on Terry Tao's website.

Here is the text of the petition (you can find out more information on Terry's website):

I believe that the proposed severe cuts to mathematics, statistics, and computing at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) will do severe and permanent damage to the quality of education in maths and the sciences for USQ students, at a time when the need to support such education is both urgent and widely accepted in Australia at all levels. Service teaching alone, especially at reduced staff levels, cannot deliver the level of mathematics education that the students of USQ deserve. I urge the university administration to negotiate with the Department of Mathematics and Computing to find a compromise solution that will preserve the proven capability of this department to train students and teachers in the maths and sciences at the highest levels of quality.


I hope that you'll take a look at the petition and sign it.

Depressing baseball stat of the day

I was just reading an unsurprising article confirming the fact (that was essentially already known) that Dodger shortstop Rafael Furcal won't return until after the All-Star break. This article includes the following sentence:

Furcal is tied for the team lead in runs scored -- even though he has not played since May 5 because of a bulging disk in his back.

Holy shit. That about sums up the way the season has gone thus far.

What happens in Loughborough stays in Loughborough

This afternoon, I'll be heading on a train to Loughborough to give a seminar to Loughborough University's nonlinear waves group tomorrow. Is there anything else to do in that town? (I have no idea how large a city it is, as I've only heard of it because of the university.)

Which Superhero and Supervillain are you?

(Hmmm... my copy-and-paste job gives html that looks horrible. I really don't have the patience to do anything about it beyond acknowledging that it's crap. Anyway, you'll just have to scroll a little more for this entry.)


I'm a sucker for quizzes like this, and I decided that I was curious what superhero I'd be. While I was at it, I saw the supervillain quiz and decided to take that one too. There are unsurprisingly many more superhero and supervillain quizzes available from all corners of the Web. (I know, I know: Those sites probably aren't true corners, though one can actually define a rigorous notion of a corner in a graph---just consider nodes whose edges all have low betweenness centrality.) Let me know if you find any betters ones.

Anyway, here is my result for superheroes:


You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 70% Hulk 70% Batman 60% Green Lantern 55% Robin 50% Supergirl 35% Superman 25% Iron Man 25% Wonder Woman 20% The Flash 20% Catwoman 20%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Comment: 35% Supergirl? What the fuck? The combination of Spider-Man and Hulk is kind of odd, but I can see it to some degree. I don't follow comics, so I'm sure there are characters out there who would fit better.


Here are my results for supervillain:


You are Mr. Freeze

Mr. Freeze 57% Riddler 53% Dr. Doom 48% Apocalypse 46% The Joker 44% Green Goblin 44% Two-Face 40% Magneto 37% Venom 36% Poison Ivy 36% Lex Luthor 33% Dark Phoenix 31% Catwoman 20% Mystique 20% Juggernaut 12% Kingpin 0%

You are cold and you think everyone else should be also, literally.

Comment: I didn't match particularly well with any of the supervillains, but the choice probably makes reasonable sense. I'm apparently not at all like Kingpin. :)

Quote of the Day

Today's quote comes from a deadpan statement meant to succinctly describe the results a student in my extended research group saw with some network analysis:

"The US is isolated with Israel and some remote island nations."

The Geometry of Music

Here is a really neat article about applying geometric analysis to music that appeared in Time Magazine in January 2007. Orbifolds show up a lot. :) (Thanks to Jaideep Singh for bringing this to my attention.)

"The Rise of Coffee"

Continuing further into the backlog of popular and/or expository science articles I want to highlight is this gem on the origins of coffee. Mmmmm... coffee. (Click on the cover of the magazine for the article's abstract. If you or your institution have appropriate subscriptions, you should be able to access the full text as well.)

According to the article, the first coffeehouse in Europe opened in Venice in 1645 and the second opened in Oxford in 1650. I believe that Queen's Road Cafe is supposed to be in the location of the first one in Oxford (at least according to the claim on their menu... ), though I don't know for sure if there has been one continuously in that location. (Queen's Road's menu seems to claim that this is the case.)

There is no known truth to the rumors that they had iced lattes and wi fi access back in the day. (Actually, I have no idea if they have wi fi access now!).

I'll end this entry with a question: Do you turn coffee into theorems or theorems into coffee?

Travelling Waves in Guinness

That was what the applied math colloquium was about today. (Can you believe we get paid to study and discuss stuff like this?) Actually, there is (unsurprisingly) some very serious and important science involved. The official name of the subject is "two-phase flows." I'd include an abstract or link to the speaker's webpage, but I couldn't find either. So this will have to do... (For what it's worth, the "practical session" is going on now. The standard procedure is to go to the pub after the applied math seminar, but I have an event to attend at 6pm, so I won't be able to hang out with the gang today.)

Quote of the Day

Today's quote comes from the opening lines of States of Matter, David Goodstein's book on statistical physics. He writes:

"Ludwig Boltzman, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics. Perhaps it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously."

Maybe things will be safer for those of us who apply statistical mechanics tools to complex systems? Anyway, this is a word of caution for those who want to join my research group...

Ken Griffey Jr. hits 600th career homerun

Ken Griffey Jr. hit his 600th career homerun today. The fan who seemingly caught the ball did something very slick. (The balls are specially marked, so we'll see if this guy has the actual ball.) Try to catch the video on YouTube if you get a chance.

I haven't mentioned it in this spot before, but the Lords of Baseball have pissed me off with how they've advertised the now-obtained 500th homerun for Manny (about which I didn't end up blogging earlier) and 600th homerun for Griffey. The advertisement for Manny was ok, as it showed some other players getting their 500th homer and advertised watching to see when Manny would do it. The similar advertisement for Griffey's 600th showed Babe Ruth's and Hank Aaron's 600th homers. In their eternal attempt at whitewashing history, Major League Baseball's advertisement never mentioned Mark McGwire Barry Bonds or Sammy Sosa. I fucking hate that. Hey, Dudes: Trying to pretend steroids never happened neither works nor helps!

Update: Of course, I managed to inadvertently mention McGwire instead of Barry Bonds, so maybe I'm wrong about the whitewashing not working!

A Mathematician on Mathematical Research

The famous mathematician G. H. Hardy, who liked to brag that all of his mathematics was useless (even though the notion of a Hardy-Weinberg equilibrum happens to be quite a simple and useful application of mathematics to genetics). For him, the most beautiful mathematics was that which had no application at all. [Of course, he was a Cambridge professor, so we have to consider the source of such comments. :) Go team!]

Here is something Hardy wrote in A Mathematician's Apology about mathematics research, but he could easily have been talking about the vast majority of scientific research (except for some landmark discoveries, etc.) and he had a more general context in mind anyway. He wrote:

"What we do may be small, but it has a certain character of permanence; and to have produced anything of the slightest permanent interest, whether it be a copy of verses or a geometrical theorem, is to have done something utterly beyond the powers of the vast majority of men."


I am not arrogant enough to wake up every day and always agree with this quote, but I am arrogant enough to believe it during specific moments on specific days. The times when I see it in a positive light (feeling like I've produced something lasting and not actually thinking of anything comparative with anyone else) are some of my favorite moments. However, those when I view it from a more negative perspective (which suggests a cynical attitudes of others being lower than me), then it is extremely arrogant and it pretty much just means I need a boot to the head. Quite the dichotomy, eh?

I must admit that there is something about, e.g., going into the Caltech bookstore and seeing my book being sold in it that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling---and at least part of that definitely jives with Hardy's quote.

Tales from the arXiv: Best abstract ever

Here's a new paper that just got posted on the arXiv:



Remarks On A Nicolas Inequality
Authors: B. A. Kupershmidt
(Submitted on 5 Jun 2008 (v1), last revised 5 Jun 2008 (this version, v2))

Abstract: The Nicolas Conjecture appears to be true.



You can find this paper here.

Short and sweet! Now I just need to see a paper in which the title is longer than the abstract...

Quote of the Day

Today, Rob Neyer ended his chat with the following awesome quote: "When all is said and done, there's nothing left to say or do."

I googled it and found that it was supposedly attributed to former NBA player Darryl Dawkins. I'm not convinced that that is the original source of the quote, so if anybody knows the right attribution, please let me know.

(By the way: Wherever you go, there you are.)

Cell Phone Networks and Privacy Issues

Here is a new networks paper that just came out in Nature. It is by one of the usual suspects (Barabasi), an up-and-coming postdoc (Marta Gonzalez), and somebody else (of whom I've never heard). One of my networks buddies at Oxford has done some related work in the past and is in fact involved on the follow-up work to this paper. (One of the new postdocs here was hired for this project as well.) There are some pretty dicey ethical issues involved in this one, and the author with the unfamiliar name has seemingly shot himself in the foot with one of his comments in which he mentioned basically that there are nefarious things one could do with that data so that it's a good thing that it's scientists who are using it and not someone else---that was really not a smart thing to say. (Unsurprisingly, by the way, this paper is getting a ton of press.) Here are the title and abstract:

Title: Understanding individual human mobility patterns

Authors: Marta C. González, César A. Hidalgo, & Albert-László Barabási

Abstract: Despite their importance for urban planning1, traffic forecasting2 and the spread of biological3, 4, 5 and mobile viruses6, our understanding of the basic laws governing human motion remains limited owing to the lack of tools to monitor the time-resolved location of individuals. Here we study the trajectory of 100,000 anonymized mobile phone users whose position is tracked for a six-month period. We find that, in contrast with the random trajectories predicted by the prevailing Lévy flight and random walk models7, human trajectories show a high degree of temporal and spatial regularity, each individual being characterized by a time-independent characteristic travel distance and a significant probability to return to a few highly frequented locations. After correcting for differences in travel distances and the inherent anisotropy of each trajectory, the individual travel patterns collapse into a single spatial probability distribution, indicating that, despite the diversity of their travel history, humans follow simple reproducible patterns. This inherent similarity in travel patterns could impact all phenomena driven by human mobility, from epidemic prevention to emergency response, urban planning and agent-based modelling.


The overall result (about how predictable we are) isn't surprising at all, but what is really nice is more specific quantitative information about such regularity--probability distributions, etc.--that could be really helpful for things like designing vaccination strategies.

I'm not planning to give my thoughts on the ethics of the study in the entry itself (though I'll consider doing so in the comments if an interesting discussion arises (as I hope it will). This is certainly one of those studies that ought to provoke such a discussion.

A Mathematical Hermit

Here's a brief article from Science News about Alexandre Grothendieck, who celebrated his 80th birthday in self-imposed isolation in the Pyrenees.

A lot of Grothendieck's work was in a subject known as "category theory." As my Cornell abstract algebra professor once said, he wanted us to learn what a category is the same way we learned what an animal was: by seeing examples of them. (A student then immediately asked the professor what a category was, and he went completely berserk. It was awesome.)

80s music pun

I saw a listing of upcoming shows at one of the local venues. The one that struck my eye immediately was the show by Glenn Tillbrook & The Fluffers. You might say that I'm tempted to go.

RaysGeek

Courtesy Rob Neyer's blog, here is a link to a blog entry called Welcome to RaysGeek on the blog formerly called "MetsGeek" but now apparently called "RaysGeek" (with the tagline "Because the Mets suck.").

This is very likely a gag, and it's quite a hilarious one!

Chaos's nonlinear science gallery on YouTube

Sometimes one can actually get somewhere with requests to journals.

I was reading an issue of SIAM News a few months back and notice that a video of Doug Arnold (from University of Minnesota) on Moebius transformations had achieved an astounding level of popularity on YouTube. (I had also heard at undergraduate research conferences about various math professors who used YouTube for teaching purposes.)

This is a great way to get more science out to the public, so I e-mailed David Campbell, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Chaos, which publishes the Nonlinear Science Gallery every year. This gallery includes video entries, which would be absolutely perfect for YouTube. I have also known David for a few years, and in fact am writing an expository article on the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam problem with him and a couple of other people, and I figured he would be receptive to the idea. The key hurdle would be the thoughts of the publisher (American Institute of Physics).

David got back to me while I was visiting Caltech last week to give me the news that AIP supported the endeavor, and now I'm writing this entry to announce that Chaos's YouTube page has gone live.

Among the videos is one that I coauthored with Caltech undergrad Tom Mainiero. It's currently the 2nd most watched video among the Chaos collection and perhaps with your help it can become #1. It even has a catchy tune in the background. (Though I am a bit perplexed that YouTube lists an Adolf Hitler speech as a related video.)

Equation of the Day

6 hours of teaching today + 2 weeks of consecutive jet lag + 4 hours of sleep each of the last two nights = a slow, painful death.


(OK, OK... I'm double counting just a bit---but that's why it's a "slow, painful death" on the right-hand side and not just "death".)

New Word of the Day

Sometimes, a new word is coined whose name has clearly come. Today's (ok, last week's) new word is jeterate, which was defined last week by baseball writer and blogger Joe Posnanski as follows:

jeterate (verb) meaning “to praise someone for something of which he or she is entirely unworthy of praise.”

Here are a couple of Posnanski's examples:

Example: “The father could not but jeterate his daughter for coloring on the wall because she looked so cute.”

Example: “The doctor jeterated his patient for not actually gaining any more weight since the visit four days earlier.”


This word, of course, is named after Yankee shortstop (and future Hall of Famer) Derek Jeter, who has been an excellent player for many years and will obtain his first-ballot election to Cooperstown (and deservedly so!) after he retires. The thing is if you listen to Yankee fans, broadcasters, writers, and other fetishists, you get the impression that he can't do anything wrong, is the best thing since sliced bread (this is an odd expression, don't you think?), etc. It just gets on lots of people's nerves---especially, for example, when people praise his defense even when he has been one of the worst-fielding shortstops in the Majors for years! The argument one typically hears after questioning this is typically along the lines of "If you saw him play every day, you'd see that he deserves a Gold Glove for his stellar defense." I quite obviously hate that argument rather passionately. Every single bloody person can make the exact same argument about their shortstop or anything else---it's just impossible to refute and is basically another way of saying "I want to bear Derek Jeter's child and I really don't give a flying fuck how good a shortstop he actually is." It just pisses me off sometimes, so I very much appreciate this new terminology!

In sum, I approve! (Tip of the cap once again to Rob Neyer, who linked to Posnanski on his blog.)

An Insider's View of Baseball Brawls

Courtesy Rob Neyer's blog, here is an insightful opinion piece on baseball's bench-clearing brawls written by former Major Leaguer Doug Glanville.

Glanville, who is one of the most articulate (and presumably intelligent) Major Leagers I have ever seen---ESPN writer Jayson Stark has made a habit of quoting over the years, so I've had a chance to read Glanville's comments a decent amount---has been writing a bunch of guest Op-Ed columns in the New York Times this year.

Idea for new television series

With the occasionally interminable discussions of minutiae and various other important matters that occur in Governing Body meetings (and similar venues), it occurs to me that a "dramedy" about Oxford life called "High Table" would make a potentially extremely amusing television series. Of course, it would have to be cast correctly. For example, the head/principal of the College would have to be played by Judi Dench. And Keanu Reaves would clearly have to be one of the prominent tutors. I'm not sure who else I'll cast in my new tv show, but I'm sure I can come up with some good ideas.

And, yes, I consider this idea to be both "awesome" and awesome. :)

Omar Vizquel sets record for most Major League games at shortstop

Omar Vizquel passed Luis Aparicio today to set the Major League record for most games at shortstop. You can see Vizquel's career statistics on this webpage.

I remember when I bought a ton of packs of 1989 Upper Deck baseball cards that included cards from the extended set. This particular baseball card set wasn't known for being well-collated, and there were in fact significant, noticeable correlations. In one box of 36 packs (which had about 15 cards each, with something like 2-3 cards from the 100-card extended part of the set), I got over 20 rookie cards of Omar Vizquel. I was really annoyed at the time because there were a lot more interesting cards in the set, and here I was getting a shitload of cards of a defensive whiz who couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat. Vizquel's card right now is either the most valuable card of the set (the extended part; it's not even close to true for the entire set, given that the base set contained rookie cards of Ken Griffey Jr., Craig Biggio, and several other luminaries) or close to it. He's certainly had the best career of any of the players whose rookie cards appeared in the extended set. (The set also included cards of people who changed teams.) I never would have called this one back in the day.

Vizquel will get some Hall of Fame votes, though I don't think he quite deserves it. He has a chance of getting in, so let's see what happens.

In other news, I am again having trouble sleeping. Damned jet lag. I won't get up at 2:30 pm again tomorrow, however, as I have set my alarm so that I can actually make my morning meeting. My body hasn't been in the correct time zone in close to two weeks. Maybe in a few days?

Two More Brief Tidbits from Caltech

(1) From the "it's a small world" department comes the following fact: I found out at my reunion that the son of 1970s alum I know (who is heavily involved in the Alumni Association) audited my perturbation methods class last fall. Too bad he came to Oxford and didn't get a true Oxford experience in my course... :)

(2) For what it's worth, the two Peet's I've gone to most frequently (the one on South Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills and, especially, the one on Lake Avenue in Pasadena) are each now open two hours later every day. (I think they open earlier as well, but that wouldn't help me as much.) This change happened quite recently (some time in 2008, and I think possibly as recently as a couple of weeks ago), though of course I'm rarely around to take advantage of it. At least it will be nice for the times I visit.

Simile of the Day

Today's simile comes from Dune: "The thought hung like a sine wave in Leto's mind"

Reaction 1: Ummm... what?

After a slight delay, I had Reaction 2: What function would make this simile work?

Several movies (plus a musical and a concert)

Here are some belated comments about several movies that I've seen over the last couple of months:


Lars and the Real Girl: This was quite a charming film, and deals with certain types of social awkwardness quite well. (The lead actor did a good job in this one.)

The Spiderwick Chronicles: This film is decent, but there's been much better stuff in this genre the past several years.

The Other Boleyn Girl: This film was a nice piece of historical fiction. It was good but not great. The character that Natalie Portman played was quite a bitch.

Horton Hears a Who!: I really liked this cartoon! (Highly recommended!) It captures the spirit of Dr. Seuss quite well, and Steve Carrell and Jim Carrey were both extremely well cast. I also got to see a teaser for the third Ice Age film during the trailers. I approve!

Son of Rambow: This film has been advertised as a "British comedy," which is a bit misleading. It does have some comedic moments, but it is better described as a dramedy. It is a great film. I recommend it highly.

Persepolis: This film was excellent and incredibly well done! The animation style was awesome. The thing I like best is that even in the most serious scenes, one can see something ridiculous in a small part in the background. (For example, in one such scene--which I believe focused on the tattered remnants of a city after lots of violence--one can briefly see a dog peeing in the background.) I was consistently laughing at that stuff (sometimes the only person in the theatre doing so). After seeing this film, I'll never be able to think of "Eye of the Tiger" in quite the same way again. The main quibble I have with this flick is that characters from culturally similar (or, really, the same) backgrounds are voiced by people with completely different accents, and that hurt my suspension of disbelief a bit. On a similar note, the casting of Iggy Pop as a voice actor was odd (to put it mildly). What the Hell? That notwithstanding, this is one of my favorite films of the year so far.

Iron Man: I saw this film on Tuesday, and it is also one of my favorite films so far this year. This flick is outstanding. In fact, in my mind this is one of the best comic book films ever! (Note: I am not classifying these films according to how faithful they are to the original sources, but merely according to how much I enjoyed the movie versions.) After seeing the film, I was thinking it might be my favorite comic book film ever, but this morning I remembered V for Vendetta (which is from a comic book, right?) and I'm probably forgetting others. Robert Downey Jr. is awesome, as usual, and I love the witty repartee he has with his character's inventions. (Downey Jr. is one of my favorite actors.)


I also saw a musical and a concert during the past couple of months (with two more musicals coming up in the next couple of weeks):

Buena Vista Social Club: This show was basically a linear combination of Jazz and various types of Latin music. The highlight for me was their souped-up rendition of "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps." Of the Caltech crowd, I think Lemming in particular would have enjoyed this.

Fiddler on the Roof: I've wanted to see this for several years, so I'm glad I finally had the chance to do so. The performance was very good (especially that of the lead actor), but everybody except for the lead had a considerable amount of trouble maintaining their accent (and even the lead slipped once or twice). Somehow, hearing a bunch of different British Isles accents hurts the suspension of disbelief quite a bit for this particular musical, which is usually done by a bunch of people who are supposed to speak English like Woody Allen, Jackie Mason, Fyvush Finkel, etc. (Finkel has actually played several different roles in this musical in the past.)

Adventures in Security X-Rays

Today I saw something "awesome" during the carry-on luggage security at LAX. There was a guy trying to get flowers and balloons into the x-ray machine, and the balloons were causing all sorts of misadventures as they were lifting into the air when he and a security (TSA) person were trying to get them into the x-ray. It was delaying that entire line and taking so long that they needed to open an additional x-ray machine. (Everybody in line was filing towards the second x-ray machine because of the balloon ordeal, so they opened up the third one to usher people through faster. A bit of a pile-up was starting to occur and the TSA folks wanted to nip it in the bud.) I can't say I've seen this one before, but a couple of minutes viewing futile attempts to get the balloons into the x-ray machine was pretty damn amusing.

In other news, the UK customs people once again let me through immediately, even though the US ones gave me some grief. Thanks for the hometown loyalty, guys. (Though I didn't have a repeat of last time when after saying I had a faculty job at Oxford, one customs person asked something along the lines about my not having been able to get a job in the US. Naturally, I answered "No. I couldn't." --- with a complete deadpan, of course. What kind of retarded question is that? It's Oxford! I wouldn't have moved to the UK to have a job at a pissy university.)

In one last bit of news, I preordered the core 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks today. It actually only cost about $10 more in total buying it through the UK rather than picking them up in the US, and I'm willing to live with that premium. (The mark-up is of a different order-of-magnitude when it comes to video games, however.)

Finally, I will eventually be blogging about several movies I've seen in the last couple of months. I'll make it one big entry, and maybe I'll even be able to get myself to write it tomorrow. I've been promising this for a while, so we shall see.

Mike Piazza officially retires

Former Dodger catcher (and future Hall of Famer) Mike Piazza officially retired today. Here are his career stats. Next stop: Cooperstown.

(Approximate) Quote of the Day

Today's quote of the day was uttered at breakfast this morning by an old alum. I'm going to need to be slightly approximate on the phrasing (because I can't remember everything precisely), but the point will come across loud and clear. The line I'm going to give you is the straight line. You provide the joke.

"The only news service I trust now is Fox News because they're the only ones who give it to you straight."

Wow. I'll leave it to your imagination to figure out how the rest of us (both of us) at the table reacted.

Manny Being Manny

Courtesy Rob Neyer's blog, here is a video of Manny Ramirez high-fiving a fan in the middle of a double play. I'm amused.

What happens at Caltech stays at Caltech

I flew to California yesterday, and I am writing this entry from a couple of friends' apartment near the Caltech campus in Pasadena. I am here mainly for my 10-year reunion, though I have been sneaking in some work as well. I am attempting to remain in touch via e-mail and I am also having discussions with local collaborators (tomorrow especially will involve a bunch of research).

The reunion officially starts tomorrow. I will have a continental breakfast and (non-continental) dinner associated with it. On Saturday, I'll be going to an alumni bar-b-que and also giving a presentation on Caltech pranks (along with my Legends III coauthor and two of our contributors). While on campus today, I went to the campus bookstore to buy a copy of my own book. The person behind the desk managed not to notice. :)

One of my goals on this trip was to eat good beef, because that's a bit harder to come by in the UK. We were going to go to Gyu Kaku tonight, but we were late in the game getting our reservations in order, so we're going to Robin's instead. We're also going to be playing some Mario Kart for the Wii tonight, and I may sneak in some Rock Band as well. On Sunday, I'll be running a one-shot D & D game, and on Monday I will transfer over to Beverly Hills to spend some time with family and pre-college friends. On Monday night, I am going to the Dodger game against the Reds. (This will probably be the only baseball game I attend this year. Sigh...) I will fly back on Wednesday and arrive Thursday afternoon. I'll sadly have to almost certainly miss a talk I really wanted to see, but sacrifices had to be made. (I had to miss yesterday's Governing Body meeting, for example, which was such a shame.)

I still have some movies and mathematics articles to write about. I'll plan on trying to catch up on some of that when I get back. I also just had a BEC paper accepted today, so I'll blog on that one when the reprint is out.

Taking one for the team

Courtesy baseball executive Paul DePodesta's new blog, here is an instructional video ("Hardball Made Easy") about taking one for the team. I approve!

I watched the one with Matt Kemp, and it was ok. The one with Zambrano, however, is pure genius. There are a few others as well, though I didn't watch them.

Greg Maddux gets 350th career win

Yesterday, Greg Maddux became the 9th Major League baseball player to get his 350th career win. Here are his career stats (not yet including last night's game, as I write this).

Maddux is something special, so enjoy him while you can! I can't wait for him to pass Clemens on the all-time list!

By the way, in case you haven't noticed, a lot more of the NL position players have been having really good seasons than AL position players. Right now, there are about 20 everyday players in the NL who have an OPS of over .900 and only about 5 or 6 of them in the AL. It's still early and things will balance out some more, but some writers have discussed whether the balance between leagues is starting to tilt again. The AL has been stronger for several seasons now, and it will be interesting to see if we see some signs of a reversal during interleague play.

Some time in the park

I went to a friend's birthday party today. It started out in the evening in the park and then moved on to his place.

The part I want to mention is the park. These days, it's light outside until 9pm or so and spring seems to have finally arrived on a somewhat "permanent" basis (well, permanent on an appropriate time scale --- just think of my applying a philosphical form of multiple scale perturbation theory with this comment). One thing this means is that when I look at the part of the quad outside my window, some group of students is invariably playing croquet there. (This would be one of the accurate parts of the Oxford stereotype. I haven't played croquet since I was about 7 or 8... I need to join them for a game at some point. I want to play.) Another thing this means is that it has put me very much in the mood to play frisbee. It is frisbee weather, after all. Naturally, today was the perfect opportunity to do so, and I indeed got the chance to toss around a frisbee for the first time since I moved here in October. (People back home: I'd really like to play some frisbee while I'm visiting!)

There are a couple of other things worth mentioning:

(1) The park is only 5 minutes from home, and it's really nice! There are tons of great places to play frisbee, it is bordered by a river, etc. I could live without the tons of insects, but that isn't exactly avoidable. I hadn't actually gone there before, but I wandered about for a bit and it's really great. Maybe I'll be able to find people who are interested in weekly frisbee games? That would be awesome!

(2) There were a couple of "awesome" incidents at the park: In one, some random teenager came up to us and asked us for food. This wasn't somebody who was destitute and needed food but rather someone who thought it would be cool to try to get some freebees. We declined his kind offer and apparent need to eat food so that he can grow. In the other, a couple of teenage girls who were seriously drunk and/or stoned kindly offered us the burnt tampon that they were using to smoke stuff with. (The stated reason was that they weren't able to put it out entirely.) What the fuck? We kindly refused this offer as well. I hope they don't get themselves in serious trouble, because if they go up to the wrong person in that kind of state, there's a major danger of that.

Advice for people trapped in libraries

An article in this week's issue of Oxford Student (one of two competing local student newspapers) ended with the following paragraph:

"The library advises any student who finds themself trapped in the Social Sciences Library in future to try to return to the main reception, follow signs to the fire exits or, in very drastic situations, set off the fire alarm."

I have just one question: What should people do if they get caught in the Mathematics library? (Maybe give up hope because they were there in the first place?)


OK, so I technically shouldn't make fun of things in light of the serious situation (people got trapped inside the library during a suspected gas leak that thankfully turned out not to be an actual leak), but there are parts of that specific phrasing that strike me as a bit absurd (especially when used as the ending paragraph of an article rather than directly as the public service announcement that this presumably started off as) and consequently amuse me (independent of the gravity of the situation described in the article). And, yes, I am the type of person who would laugh at my own funeral.

Fun with Equation Names

I looked at a very interesting paper today (that I need to read carefully) that refers to a paper called the "modified MKdV" equation, which is called the MMKdV equation for short. Let's unpack this name:

The KdV equation stands for the Korteweg-de Vries equation. In other words, it's named after two people.

The MKdV equation stands for the "modified KdV" equation, which means that the MMKdV is in fact the "modified modified KdV" equation, which I would prefer to called the (modified)^2 KdV equation, although I'd really prefer a different adjective entirely be applied to KdV.

It's not close to as bad as "The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" (which means "The The Angels Angels of Anaheim" or (The)^2 (Angels)^2 of Anaheim), but it's not exactly great. I have started to get a little bit of personal experience in how equation names arise. Namely, I wrote a paper and found myself in a paper constantly citing the book of a guy who formulated an equation that showed up in what we were doing, so my collaborators and I decided to name the bloody thing after the guy just so we wouldn't have to awkwardly cite the equation from his book so many damned times. He can thank us later.

Julio Franco factoids

After considering and deciding not to blog about Julio Franco's official retirement from baseball at the ripe old age of 49, I just read this very cool article with some cool factoids and decided to post a link to it here. You can find his statistics here.

I think my favorite factoid from the article is the following: In 1982, Franco was traded by the Phillies with Jay Baller, Manny Trillo, George Vukovich and Jerry Willard to the Indians for Von Hayes. The last player in that deal to retire (other than Franco) was Jerry Willard … 14 years ago.

By the way, I remember for years there were rumors that Franco is actually older than his listed age. These were never officially put to rest, though eventually his listed age got high enough that nobody bothered to mention this anymore.

Finally, Franco is ripped. If you've ever seen him up-close, it's kind of ridiculous. His arms look like solid muscle.

No more splinters!

I just got back from giving a talk at Southampton today (it was my first talk on quantum chaos in about 5.5 years). As promised by the maintenance people at Somerville, the wooden planks in the "hallway" (more like a very small corridor) within my apartment were covered with another surface today (the type of surface I have in my kitchen and bathroom). I had been getting tons of splinters from walking barefoot at home (wearing socks never actually helped because they would catch on the wood). Occasionally, enough of these would occur in a sufficiently short period of time that I would have some trouble walking, so I am quite pleased that this has now been rectified. (This could have been done earlier, but I was my typical stubborn self when it came to actually bringing this problem to the attention of others.) I think this will also have the benefit of reducing the number of bugs that make their way in here, but the main thing was to get rid of the splinter problem. Excellent!

Tales from the arXiv: Ising model edition

Here is an abstract for a paper that just got posted to the arXiv:

\\
arXiv:0805.0225
Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 13:00:53 GMT (55kb)

Title: 500-th solution of 2D Ising model
Authors: S.N. Vergeles
Categories: cond-mat.stat-mech
Comments: 14 pages, 4 figures
\\
One more solution of 2D Ising model is found
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.0225 , 55kb)


Comment: Do I detect some sarcasm in the title of this paper? I approve!

New strategy for seminar speakers

Here's one I hadn't seen before until today.

I have often seen seminar speakers say that they encourage everyone to interrupt them during the talk with questions, etc. Today, however, one speaker (who is local and who knows me) good-naturedly started a talk with an alternative version of this statement that everybody except for me was encouraged to interrupt him with questions, etc. Everybody in the audience who knew me was naturally extremely amused by this. The moratorium was later lifted in the middle of the talk (at an appropriate point in which he discussed stuff I know pretty well), at which point I felt obligated to make some useful comment.

Oh, and the official reason that I was not allowed to ask questions was that there was apparently a risk that I wouldn't stop talking if I started.

In any event, this is one way to preempt potential bad behavior on my part. I'm also pretty sure I'm not going to be allowed to forget this...