Fearless baseball postseason predictions

Now that all of the teams in Major League Baseball's postseason tournament have been determined, it is now time to give my fearless postseason predictions.

National League:

NLDS: Cubs over Dodgers in 4 games (I'm sorry to say, but my mind just won't let my heart predict a victory for the Dodgers) and Phillies over Brewers in 5 games

ALDS: Angels over Red Sox in 5 games and Rays over White Sox in 4 games.

NLCS: Phillies over Cubs in 6 games (NLCS MVP: Jimmy Rollins)

ALCS: Angels over Rays in 5 games (ALCS MVP: Torii Hunter)

World Series: Angels over Phillies in 6 games (World Series MVP: Mark Texeira)



However, I wouldn't really trust my predictions given some utter failures in my preseason predictions.

I got two of the NL playoff teams right (Dodgers and Brewers), though I thought the Brewers would actually win the division. My other two (Mets and Diamondbacks) competed until the very end. My NL MVP (David Wright), Cy Young (Johan Santana), and Rookie of the Year (Joey Votto) predictions all produced solid choices who won't actually win. Though my Cy Young choice will probably finish third in the voting (he deserves to finish second) and my ROY choice will finish second. (My MVP choice probably should finish second but will probably be in the lower reaches of the top 10.) My NL team on the rise was the Brewers, so I was solid there. My choice was Giants as team on the decline was reasonable, though some of their young players definitely matured slightly faster than I thought, so they may well be my NL team on the rise for 2009.

In the AL, I got two very obvious teams right for the playoffs: The Angels and Red Sox. My other two were the Yankees (giggle), who I thought would be the Wild Card team, and the Indians. My AL team on the rise was the Rays, so I was spot on with that one. (Hell, they did even better than I thought.) My team on the decline was the Twins, though I considered choosing the Orioles, which were my "honorable" mention here. I failed on that one. Also, my MVP (Travis Hafner) and Cy Young (Erik Bedard) choices were epic failures. Ouch! My ROY prediction of Daric Barton also failed miserably, though at least my honorable mention Evan Longoria will actually win the award.

Anyway, I certainly hope I'm wrong about the NL playoffs. The Cubs are a better team than we are, but let me raise my latte cup in a toast to small sample sizes!

What happens in Nottingham stays in Nottingham

I am spending the night in Nottingham to give a mathematics seminar tomorrow to the theoretical mechanics group at the University of Nottingham.

I hadn't previously been here, but obviously this is one of the UK cities about which I heard a very long time ago.

It looks like there are things to do in the city (and the castle is supposed to be cool), but the university is a bit away from the main action, I'm not feeling well at all, and I need to go through the draft of a student's report, so any exploration is going to be punted until a subsequent visit.

By the way, since I've been here, I haven't seen any sign of either Robin Hood or his fagelas (except for street names, tourist attractions, etc.).

New Math: Stolen Base Edition

One of the (very annoying) White Sox announcers just mentioned how impressive it was for Curtis Granderson to steal 26 bases in 21 attempts last year. I'll say! (He slipped and meant to say 26 out of 27.)

My Night at the Vienna Opera House

As I mentioned earlier, I got a chance to see a Wagner opera at the Vienna Opera House. I'm sure some of your minds went in a certain direction, but in fact the show I saw was The Flying Dutchman. (There wasn't even a valkyrie in sight.)

The outside of the Opera House looks very nice, but the inside looks spectacular. I didn't have my camera with me that night because I wasn't sure if I'd need to leave it somewhere to enter the seating area, though in retrospect given just how many people were taking pictures in various spots before the shoe, I really ought to have known. Luckily I went to the opera with someone else (Dmitry Pelinovsky, a collaborator of mine), so once it's sent to me, I'll be able to post a picture of me inside the Opera House.

We had what are sometimes known as "Bob Uecker" seats, but thankfully that only affects the visuals. The music was good (I was basically in this for the whole experience of going to the Vienna Opera House, which is very much worth doing), although I liked Carmen much better. The show the night before was Romeo and Juliet, which I didn't want to attend because I never really liked that story. It's got way too much pathos, though The Flying Dutchman certainly had it's share of that. We saw a version without any intermission, which apparently is the traditional way of seeing it. (It's sometimes performed in three acts, however.) The lyrics or story weren't particular impressive, but the former at least often tend to be afterthoughts anyway for operas (as far as I can tell).


SPOILER ALERT: As a service to you, gentle readers, let me give you a brief synopsis of the opera:

There's a captain who is trying to sail his ship home but can't quite make it because of a sudden major storm, so he lands on some shore nearby (an uncharted desert isle?), having sustained some damage to his ship, and awaits for the winds and seas to calm before heading home so that he can see his doting daughter and his crewmen can get some action. (Here we are also introduced to his helmsman, who as far as I can tell is only in the opera for later comic effect---though admittedly I'm not quite sure if the particular incident was part of the original performance.) During this and some other scenes, I was waiting to see if I would hear some of the songs I've heard during storms in, say, Bugs Bunny cartoons, as I'm almost positive that several of those come from operas. Unfortunately, I didn't recognize this one from those days of yore. (I also naturally thought of the Song of Storms, but that probably would have hurt the mood.)

Meanwhile, back in his evil lair (errr... ship), the Flying Dutchman (the person) is busy lamenting his fate. He is quite pale and he as well as his entire crew look a bit like zombies. They are definitely undead, though the Flying Dutchman seems to be far more interested in love than braaaaains. His ship is doomed to sail the seas for all eternity unless he can find someone who will love him faithfully until her death, and coincidently, this is the one brief time that occurs every 7 years in which he can actually go on land (or something like that). [I think it was 10 years in the Pirates of the Carribean movies.]

Anyway, the Flying Dutchman (the ship) sails off and ends up at the same place where our captain (remember him?) was. They talk a bit and despite the Dutchman's pallid complexion (and the fact that his ship sustained no damage... nothing suspicious here...), he decides to trade his daughter's hand in marriage for the centuries of wealth the Dutchman has accumulated during his voyage. (The captain does indicate that his daughter's approval is required, but she dotes on him, so he has no doubts that she'll agree.)

Back on land, all the women are busy knitting because only by doing a good job with that will they impress their men when they return from sea. (Coincidentally, all of their significant others are sailers on the same ship. Amazing!) This, by the way, was my favorite song from the opera. It sounded vaguely familiar, actually had some meta in the lyrics, and in general was quite pleasing to the ear. Unfortunately, the captain's daughter Senta is so sad because of the very pale, sad-looking portrait of the Flying Dutchman that she has obsessed over for apparently many years. She feels quite a bit of pity for him, actually. (So, can you figure out the rest of the story yet?) She sings about his pathetic plight, and so none of the women can get any work done. Then her boyfriend (who is a hunter, which is apparently considerably less prestigious than being a sailor) catches her obsessing over that picture of the Dutchman again and tells her about his dream in which pretty much reveals the entire remainder of the story so that we now can predict not only the big picture but also most of the important smaller details (but I digress).

The captain and the Flying Dutchman land and Senta meets them at the docks. Unfortunately for the Dutchman, Senta is slightly plump and has sagging breasts. Nevertheless, he falls madly in love with her at first sight anyway, and feels in his heart that she will be the one to end his curse. (Aside: Why do all these artists confuse love with lust? It's annoying. The Dutchman knows nothing about her personality. She could be psychotic. After all, she's obsessing over his picture instead of happily weaving like the rest of the girls. But I digress.) Despite her promise to the hunter to not fall in love with him, she does so anyway, just as he predicted she would from his dream (though to me it actually looks like pity rather than love). Also, without any hesitation and despite her promise of fidelity, Senta decided to go with the ugly undead guy instead of the young hunter with whom she was already at least somewhat intimate. How fickle. The captain, having left Senta and the Dutchman to be alone for a few minutes, returns and tells the Dutchman that he's had more than enough time to court his daughter. Then Senta's boyfriend goes up to Senta after the others have gone and they exchange some awkward words. The Dutchman walks in on them and laments that she has already betrayed him and now he is doomed forever. (This flagrantly ignores the fact that his poor luck with women from past excursions in the seven-year windows has been discussed explicitly in the opera.) Fortunately, Senta is still faithful to the Dutchman (it hasn't exactly been that long), so in the opera's climactic conclusion, while others are arguing and/or lamenting their fate, she lights a candle and throws it to the ground to create an open flame (this was pretty impressive, actually). She then walks into the open flame and dies a faithful women who loves the Dutchman. Then the opera ends without technically stating if this is sufficient to break the curse---there were earlier implications that Senta would have to actually spend the rest of eternity sailing the seas with the Dutchman.

Anyway, it's best not to sweat the details. The music was good and the Opera House itself was really awesome to see from the inside.

Greg Maddux passes Roger Clemens in wins!

In yesterday's Dodger game, Greg Maddux got his 355th career win, to move him past Roger Clemens on the all-time win list. I don't know if Maddux will play next year---though I certainly hope he does!---and I am extremely pleased that whether or not he does that he has passed Clemens. I simply like Maddux a lot better. Amen.

In other baseball news, there AL Central and NL Wild Card races are still going. Today is the last official day of the baseball season, though there may be short playoffs to decide these races and the White Sox also have a rained-out game to make up.

In still other news, CC Sabathia is tied for the league lead in shutouts in each of the two leagues. That's just bloody awesome! I doubt that's ever happened before, though I haven't checked to make sure.

Tonight's Plans

The plans for tonight include seeing a performance in the Vienna Opera House. The opera I'll be seeing is by some guy named Wagner... :)

200 strikeouts in a season!

Yesterday, the Diamondbacks' Mark Reynolds struck out for the 200th time this season, becoming the first Major Leaguer to accomplish this "feat." As you can see here, several players have come close during the last few years and the Phillies' Ryan Howard might be joining Reynolds in a couple of days...

In other baseball news (besides the most important one about the Dodgers' clinching), the Brewers won in dramatic fashion to remain in a tie with the Mets for the NL wild card and the Twins finished a sweep of the White Sox to take over first place in the AL Central. I would definitely prefer for both the Twins and Brewers to make the postseason. I would love to have an Angels-Dodgers World Series (a so-called "Freeway Series"), and for the Dodgers to kick some ass!

The Dodgers have won the National League West!

With the Diamondbacks' loss to the Cardinals yesterday, the Dodgers have now clinched the National League West! Go Dodgers!

Of course, now we have the major stumbling block of trying to actually win the first round of playoffs, which we haven't managed to do for quite a while. In fact, we haven't won a single postseason series since 1988, when we won the World Series. In fact, we've only won one postseason game since then, and Jose Lima of all people was the winning pitcher in that game...

Let's see how far we can get this year...

Kickin' it old school: Knight Rider is back

I just saw an advertisement that a new version of the series Knight Rider premiers tonight. My brother was a fanatical follower of that show back in the day, so I watched a few episodes. (My favorites were the battles between KITT and KARR.) I remember hearing a few years back about a movie version. Maybe that's still happening?

Anyway, right now I need to turbo boost into some more work before I do some more exploration later.

RIP New York Yankees (1995-2008)

Well, the Yankees have officially been eliminated and won't be playing in baseball's postseason this year. About fucking time.

(Note: I had the RIP idea on my own, but apparently the folks at ESPN had similar ideas, given the graphics they're using for their headline for an article by Buster Olney.)

Hello from Vienna

Today I was walking some of the coldy-efficient streets of Vienna. There's actually a nice pretenious coffee place right next to my hotel and, as a big added bonus, it actually has iced espresso drinks on the regular menu (unlike the coffee bars in some of the really nice European cities I've visited...also unlike the other coffee bars here, as far as I can tell). I also found two gelato places and---here's a big shock---lots of restaurants that serve schnitzel. (I had a good weinerschnitzel today. My mother made that for me many times as a child, and I definitely have a particular fondness for that dish. Finding good examples of it will be pretty easy for the next few days.) None of the menus have had any English translations so far, so I'll need to figure out which words correspond to which other types of meet.

I walked a few miles, but I didn't get to the city center. I also had an early flight this morning so given the need to get a bus from Oxford to Heathrow, I only got about 4 hours of not-too-restful sleep last night. Hence my explorations today weren't very expansive and much more will have to come later. I have all of Saturday, for example.

Madonna seems to be following me around. She had a concert in Montreal during my visit and has one here tonight. I like some of her music quite a lot, but I'm still cross from her performance at Coachella and I'm tired anyway (as I mentioned). On the bright side, Leonard Cohen is performing here both tomorrow and the day after, and I might very well go see him.

Finally (for now), the damn Y and Z have been swapped for the keyboards here (I don't currently have internet access from my own computer), and this is causing me grief in my typing.

Vienna Calling (aka: What happens in Vienna stays in Vienna)

I seem to be doing just about everything possible (including finishing unpacking from my recent apartment change!) to avoid finishing the .ppt slides for my talk on Wednesday. I really ought to be much better about this, because I leave tomorrow morning for Vienna and if I don't finish the talk today, I'll need to eat into some of my exploration time tomorrow. (Granted, I'll have plenty more exploration time on other days...)

I am attending a workshop at the Wolfgang Pauli Institute called The Gross-Pitaevskii equation and its application for Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices. There are only 9 talks, though I think there were originally going to be around 25 of them. This could make the workshop either really good or really bad. Lots of discussion time has been allocated, and with the small number of people I suspect we'll even be able to calculate some stuff and get going on some projects. That would be really great! However, I can also envision things backfiring by everybody just going their own way and not interacting enough. Let's see how it goes. Even in the worst case, it would also just mean more time to explore Vienna, which isn't such a bad thing either (to say the least).

Anyway, my hope is to have a very exciting trip both academically and culturally. I am particularly excited about exploring the city's fine musical tradition! If I get a chance, I might even try to make my way here to pay my respects.

This will be my first trip to Austria. As for when I get back to Oxford, on Sunday I'll be back (so to speak).

Calculemus!

I recently read a very interesting article called "Calculemus!" in American Scientist. It was written by Bryan Hayes, who maintains the blog bit-player.

In this article, he discusses what he calls "inquisitive computing" and the types of programming environments that best promote it. (At the end of the article, he enumerates the features he considers desirable. I won't discuss them here, but I don't know if there is anything horrible surprising on the list. It might be interesting to discuss that as well, but I'm going to go in a different direction in this entry.)

Some of the example problems Hayes discusses remind me a great deal of the programming nuggets Lemming was mentioning to me a while back. (In fact, I wouldn't be surprised at all if these showed up in the list Lemming was following.)

One of them involves "more sums than differences" (MSTD) sets: Take a set of integers (both signs are possible) and calculate first all possible sums from pairs of integers in that set and second all possible differences from pair of numbers in that set. For which sets of integers does the set of unique sums have more entries than the set of unique differences?

Another involves what are called ABCs: Consider the equation a + b = c, where a, b, and c are all positive integers that have no common divisors (besides 1). Now consider the product abc and find all the prime factors of this product. Get rid of duplicates so that each prime that you find occurs exactly once. The product of these remaining primes, denoted rad(abc), is called the radical of abc. (Dude!) The question is the following: When is c > rad(abc)? Also, how much greater can c be than rad(abc)?

Brief summary o' today

Today, o' course, be International Talk like a Pirate Day. Despite me promise, I didn't conduct any o' today's oral examinations in pirate. Sorry!

I finished helpin' out with t' oral exams for Masters students today. Then t' other Examiners and I needed t' determine their fate, which be not somethin' that I be particularly comfortable doin'. Then we gave them their results in person one-by-one, which o' course includes both good and bad moments. (T' amusin' incident was when we forget t' give somebody information and then needed t' call him aft. Then we called him aft yet again t' give him another piece o' information that we forgot t' give him, though t' second call-aft was done partially because it was funny. I was crackin' up and couldn't keep a straight face at that point; all t' students---includin' t' one in question---seemed t' enjoy this bit too.) After that I was finally able t' go home and change out o' sub fusc (sorry, no pictures---but eventually I'm aye someone will take pictures o' me in that get-up). We had t' leavin' party for t' students a little while later; this may well be t' first and last Masters leavin' party I attend because one o' t' students decided that that would be a good time t' come up t' me and tell me off. This has port a pretty bitter taste in me mouth, so I think next time I will just not be part o' t' troupe sayin' I'm shovin' off t' t' students. (I have a year t' get over this, so don't hold me t' not showin' up.) I think most o' them didn't want t' see me thar anyway, so I might as well oblige them.

Later in t' evenin' I had a party at me place t' celebrate t' fact that t' Yankees be not goin' t' make t' playoffs this year. (T' secondary reason was that it was a house-warmin' party and t' tertiary reason was that I was done markin' dissertations and examinin' students for quite a while. I've become too fatalistic about t' Dodgers these days t' celebrate a National League West division victory until it's a done deal.)

Lyman Bostock

Tuesday September 23rd will mark the 30th anniversary of the murder of Angels outfielder Lyman Bostock. I first found out about this incident many years ago when I read Rod Carew's autobiography. Today, ESPN.com posted a fascinating article by Jeff Pearlman on the subject. It's well worth a read, though obviously the story is far from a happy one.

New apartment

I have moved one floor down to the 0th floor of Penrose (the 'garden set') in Somerville. I have 50% more space now. I started packing yesterday and finished it up in real-time while things were being moved down here. With the help of a couple of porters [bringing the total number to 3 :)], everything got moved today and I have actually unpacked a good bit of stuff.

Among the things I inherited from the previous resident (besides a dirty apartment, which will be remedied soon enough) were two unused pale green candles. I have used these to help create an altar for Summer Fun Cthulhu above the center my living room bookshelves. I don't have a digital camera, but I am having a party on Friday, so I'll get one of the attendees to take a picture so that I can post it. I must say that this is the best altar I have ever created.

Tampa Bay Rays = Muppets?

According to Bugs & Cranks, the Tampa Bay Rays are muppets.

To be honest, I can't see much of a resemblance except for one case which is so awesome that I have to do this post: Check out Matt Garza versus Sam the Eagle. Separated at birth, Man!

(Tip of the hat to Rob Neyer, who posted the link on his blog.)

My vote is in the mail.

I was worried when I didn't get any response from the bureaucrats when I filled out my overseas voting form, but I found my ballot in my mailbox this morning and I have now voted and sent things out.

If the Democrats don't win California (and we're in very big trouble if that happens!), it won't be my fault. (Well, unless the ballot gets lost in the mail or something, but we won't talk about such things.)

Palin Numbers

There is currently an active discussion on SOCnet (a social networks listserv) about Palin numbers. Shudder.

I didn't have the heart to bring up either Schroder numbers (which apparently bear a small bit of similarity in the definition of links) or connections to Monica.

That discussion started becoming political, so it's probably over---though I think I'll be shuddering for a little while.

'Overseen' in Oxford

In this blog entry, I'll incorrectly use the term overseen as a visual analog of overhead. But I like it, so I'm going to do it anyway.

As many of you---perhaps most of you---know, I've spent the majority of my days since Monday September 8th marking Masters dissertations. Today I got down to the last two ("Not more than two...") dissertations and the final one, which I just finished, had a very pleasant surprise. Namely, it included the invention of a new chemical element: criterium.

Words of Warning

Whatever you do, don't fall asleep for 10 minutes in the Shea Stadium bleachers. Wow.

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer, who posted the link on his blog.)

Annoying experience in Super Mario Galaxy

I was playing some Super Mario Galaxy after yet another grueling day of reading Masters dissertations. I decided to start with the 'secret' star on the second level of the Toy Box galaxy, which involves going to a secret planet and turning all the blue question mark panels into yellow exclamation point panels and then picking up the star you're allowed to get once you do so.

I find this particular part of that level annoying because I find the game's camera very annoying in this particular spot. (I find it annoying in some other spots as well, but this one really irks me. In fact, the parts where the game's camera goes a bit nuts make me dizzy in real life when I play them. This is one of the spots in the game that does that.) OK, so I fought the camera and turned all the blocks in a way that would make Q*Bert proud and then I tried to make my way to the star (while fighting the camera again). Certain spiky platforms no longer move after all the blocks are turned. I got greedy and decide to get some star bits and I accidently bumped into the edge of a non-moving spiky platform because of my carelessness. The deflection from this knocked Mario prone in between two of the turned platforms. He tried to get up, but was caught in between so automatically ended up prone again. This turned out to be an infinite loop, as no form of jumping registered. Fuck. I thus needed to leave the level without my coveted star, and now I'll need to redo my efforts for this particular star. Bloody Hell! I'm not doing it now though because I play such games to reduce frustration, not to add to it. I'm just going to go read or something, but this will be pleasure reading rather than another dissertation.

K-Rod breaks Bobby Thigpen's single-season save record

Yesterday, the Angels' Francisco Rodriguez ("K-Rod") recorded his 58th save of 2008, breaking Bobby Thigpen's single-season mark. Bobby Thigpen---who has an awesome last name, by the way---was a decent reliever who had a couple of very good seasons, but given how many significantly better closers there have been (including Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman, Billy Wagner, and Dennis Eckersley, to name just a few), it's nice that a much better reliever now has this record. (Just thing what it would be like if Juan Pierre held the record for most consecutive games with a hit. It's kind of like that, though not quite as bad.) Obviously a lot of luck is involved---being on a good team really helps for this particular record, for example---and the save statistic is rather problematic anyway.

Given this blog entry, the other thing I wanted to mention is the origin of K-Rod's nickname. Alex Rodriguez had the nickname "A-Rod" going back to before he entered professional baseball and because of him, basically every baseball player with the last name of Rodriguez was dubbed "\alpha-Rod", where \alpha denotes the first letter of their first name. However, K-Rod is the one exception to this rule and the only one of those nicknames that is in any way creative. K-Rod came up late in 2002 during the Angels' Word Series run and blew everybody away with lots of strikeouts (which are denoted "K" in box scores), and that's where the K comes from.

Anyway, with all due respect to Bobby Thigpen, I'm pleased that somebody appropriate now holds this record.

Massive Media Roundup

Time for the long-promised set of massive media reviews, which will mostly be short and sweet. I kept the tickets so that I could actually remember what I saw. The order below is simply the order in which I pick up the ticket.

Hellboy II: Great movie! I approve. The German phastasm was amusing. Was the elven princess in Stardust? (Apparently not, but for some reason she seemed similar to me.)

The Wind in the Willows (theatrical version): I saw this at a small theatre and I enjoyed it very much. Now I finally understand where Disneyland's Mr. Toad's Wild Ride attraction comes from... Highly recommended!

Bugsy Malone: In this play, British teenagers (and sometimes younger) attempt to do gangster noir. It was very good overall, but it definitely didn't work at times.

Get Smart: I had been waiting for this film to come out ever since I first heard about it something like 2.5 years ago, given that I really enjoyed watching reruns of the original series as a kid. The casting was excellent! Steve Carrell was the obvious choice to play Maxwell Smart (Agent 86), although nobody will ever duplicate Don Adams in that roll (not even Inspector Gadget, who was based on Agent 86 and was voiced by a Don Adams sound-alike). Anne Hathaway did well as Agent 99, though the dynamics between Agents 86 and 99 in the movie were a bit different than in the show (where 99 was madly in love with 86, who was completely oblivious to the whole thing---at least at first; by the time of the failed return of the series, I believe the characters were married). Duane Johnson and Alan Arkin were also excellent. The film included several catch phrases (which I appreciated) and in general was quite good, even though I prefer the original series (which was a Mel Brooks creation, by the way, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I like it so much). Also, the shoe phone played a prominent role in the film. That was extremely important.

Hello Dolly (musical): Unfortunately, I was not very impressed, though I admit that it did have its moments. However, once I saw Wall-E, I became happy that I saw the musical given that it played an important role in that film. (The clips being shown in the movie were from Hello Dolly.)

Wall-E: Another excellent Pixar film. I'm shocked. It's amazing how they conveyed such emotion in the characters with so little dialog.

Kung Fu Panda: I really liked it! I tried unsuccessfully to get people to see it with me, but se la vie. They thought it would be silly---their loss. (Or maybe it's more precise to say that they assume that "silly" means not worth watching?)

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: I enjoyed it, although I was a bit annoyed that they were hitting harder with the religious overtones in the film than they did in the prequel. The older daughter was a frosh (or "fresher", as it's called here) at Oxford last fall. I forgot which College.

The Pirates of Penzance: This was awesome! I recognized a very high percentage of the songs, which is not surprising given that many of the songs in there show up all over the place. I am the very model of a modern applied mathematician---or something like that. It could have been worse: I've been planning since I saw the musical (for the first time, amazingly enough) to write a parody of a certain song that I plan to call "Condensed Matter". Stay tuned...

The Forbidden Kingdom: I really liked this film as well. I could have done without the token white boy, but it didn't detract too much from what I actually paid to see (so I guess this is sort of like a milder version of AG's opinion on this point).

Oklahoma! (musical): This was a production by Oxford students that I saw at a small stage in Wadham College. I should have blogged about this earlier because then I could have mentioned that I ran into Lloyd alum Joe Jewell '04 (I think that's the right year), who was also in the audience. He will be starting as a grad turkey at Tech in the fall. I think he'll be in aeronautics. Oh, and the musical was really good! There was a recognizable vignette that I didn't realize came from this musical that I had seen parodied in a cartoon (I think in an episode of Bugs Bunny). There was also a very recognizable song ("Oh, what a beautiful morning") that I had no idea came from this musical.

Two Hobbit-Sized Parodies: Harry Potter and the Generic Adventure and Swords & Saucery: The second of these had a Lord of the Rings Theme. These plays were also performed by Oxford students and many audience members knew some or all of the people in the plays, so there was some audience participation at appropriate points. The Harry Potter parody was first. One of my friends played Snape, although I was already planning to go even before I found out about that. The guy who played Valdemort was booed lustily every time he came on "stage" (the performance was in the Wadham Gardens), including when he played a different character (a good guy) in the second parody. That was awesome! There were also lots of private jokes, and I even caught a couple of them. Think of these things as roughly like Lloyd movies, but as live performances. That was the basic ambience, which I liked very much.

Stuff at the Montreal film festival: I'm now wishing I could have gotten tickets for the new Woody Allen film (they sold out, so my debate whether I should go to that one versus having dinner at a normal time ended rather quickly) because I really want to see it and the UK is not presently listed in its IMDB entry as somewhere it's being released. Damnit! Satellites & Meteorites was an excellent Gondrey-esque film was an Irish director, who was there to answer our questions after the film ended. (A short film called The Ranger was shown before the main film. This was meh.) It was a bit rough around the edges and in a couple of situations could have been more subtle, but it is definitely on the short list of my favorite films of the year.) The Japanese film One Million Yen Girl was enjoyable, but it was merely good. Lissi and the Wild Emperor was a very funny German cartoon (with very high animation quality) which would probably get a PG-13 rating in the US. It made fun of Emperor Ferdinand. (For what it's worth, I picked the order randomly except for the ones at this film festival. I did these last on purpose.)

Alright, now I've finally caught up on one of the entries I had been meaning to write for a while.

A secret admirer?

Based on the picture that one of my former postdoc advisors just forwarded to me, I wonder if I have some secret admirer who wishes to remain anonymous (and also wishes that there were more of me)?

Just so you know, my mentors and postdoc advisors (including this one) also do more useful things other than sending me expletive-ridden pictures.

Classic "Awesome" Spam

Courtesy Felicia Gottmann, here is an oldie-but-goodie --- a list of "awesome" (and occasionally awesome) sentences by some future Bulwer-Lyton laureates. (A few of these actually are legitimately good, though most of them are just "awesome." Make sure you get all the way down to #56. I approve!) I can't remember precisely when in my life these sentences (or many of them) arrived in my e-mail box back in the day, but I definitely saw at least many of these sentences at some point many years ago.

A Baseball History Lesson

We interrupt this dissertation-reading (yuck!) to bring you a lesson in baseball history. Fellow local baseball fanatic Eduardo Lopez just e-mailed me this BBC article exposing baseball's early UK history. However, I actually found out earlier today, as my friend Felicia Gottmann e-mailed me an audio version of this earlier today. In fact, she seems to be trying to break the hearts of all her local American friends (she sent the e-mail to all of us), given how she phrased her e-mail early this afternoon:

"Heard this on radio4 today and just couldn't resist sending it to you guys ?
since I know how much you're looking forward to having a benign grandfather
and a pitbull with lipstick for your next presidents, I thought this would
cheer you up even more. Enjoy! ;o)"


The main part of my response got to the point pretty quickly:

"You're trying to break my heart, aren't you?

Well it won't work because (i) my team now has a 3.5 game lead and (ii) the
Yankees will be staying home this year (finally)!"


I replied to all just in case some of those other folks are Yankee fans. :)

By the way, here are the main lines of the article:

Local historians in Surrey have confirmed evidence that baseball was played
in the UK more than 20 years before American independence.

Major League Baseball, the governing body of the game in the US, has been
informed of the discovery.


I should also point out that the second sentence I quote above is awesome!

Finally, I am presently dealing with a 'slam dunk' grant proposal that just got bounced (I'm pretty pissed off about this, actually), so I really need the Dodgers to be in first place right now. Ah, priorities...

Life imitates Civilization?

The title of this article is making me think of the game Civilization (and its sequels). Maybe Bush II thinks he's playing a live-action version of this game? (Can we just stick to trying for the cultural victory? Pretty please!)

I can no longer take your vile provocations. Prepare for WAR!

Amazing Waterfall

Jaideep Singh posted a link to the following video of an amazing made-made waterfall on Facebook. The video is a bit long, but this is seriously impressive. I want one. :)

Ben Williamson's first published article

Congratulations to Ben Williamson (a friend of mine from Caltech, for those of you who don't know) on his first published article, which just appeared in Florida Law Review.

In certain ways, one's first published article is the one that is the most special. I know that my first article is nowhere near as good as most of my other articles, but I do remember being giddy when it finally appeared in print. There is a feeling of 'I actually contributed to scientific knowledge' that simply can't be beat when one gets it for the first time. (It still feels good, but the giddier feelings now tend to come only for my best articles.)

I only browsed through Ben's article because law is ridiculously far from my expertise. However, I am pleased to report that Ben's sense of humor shines through even in an academic article such as this one (rather than being the dry affair one normally expects). You can see some of his verve in the article and section titles, but the true masterpiece is the first paragraph of the conclusions. It is (1) really funny and (2) makes his point extremely well. (Also, this paragraph is vintage Ben. I especially love the last footnote.) Awesome!

Spyspace

Here's the straight line (you provide the joke).

As reported in this article:

Later this month, intelligence community analysts will begin using A-Space, an online collaboration environment that officials hope will improve analysts’ abilities to share information, form communities and collaborate.... Like many social-networking sites, each analyst will create an online personal profile, and colleagues can see what others are working on and the A-Space workspaces that they are using.... A-Space analysts will have access to all information at the highest classification level that is accessible through the collaboration environment.

I would really love to apply community-detection techniques to that data set...

(Tip of the cap to Ben Williamson for pointing me to this article.)

WTF of the Day

Professors have nightmares sometimes---thoughts and dreams that infect our souls, curve our spines, and keep our country from winning the war. There are a few of them, but for many of us, one of them is when we walk along a street like Cornmarket in Oxford and see one of our former students playing a guitar while people toss coins into his guitar case. Oh wait... that actually happened today!

The student in question (whose name I won't reveal, though I know he's read my blog occasionally, so I'll wave a brief 'hello') is quite clever. He is part of OCIAM's Masters program in applied mathematics and computational science. Actually, he just turned in his dissertation on Friday and will be formally defending it in an oral exam (a so-called "viva") in a couple of weeks. He sings in an a capella group (which performed at the Edinborough fringe festival, for example), needs to practice his guitar, and figured he might as well earn some money while doing so. That's pretty sharp and amusing, and I wouldn't be telling this story on a public web page anyway if it weren't innocent. I was a bit surprised to see him, and I asked two of the obvious questions: (1) What are you doing? and (2) Does our program really cost that much money? (Apparently it does.)

Now I wonder how many of the other street performers I see on Cornmarket Street are actually Oxford graduate students. Also, my student probably saw several other people he knows. Oxford is a small place and you pretty much always run into people you know when you're walking around. This student spent some time as a high school teacher, and if any of his former students saw him, they would have a field day! (For the sake of optimizing this story, I very much hope this happened.) My student is well on his way to having a fantastically successful career in whatever scientific field (academia or industry) he chooses, but I'm not going to ever let him forget about this incident, which with this blog entry should become part of the MSc's official lore. (On Friday, we actually had a celebration of the program's 30th birthday. I wish I could have told this story two days ago, but alas it only occurred today.)

Did I mention that I like good stories?

Did I run away and join the circus?

I walked outside of Somerville this morning and noticed lots of rides (and various other booths one would associated with a circus or county fair) being set up right outside and as far south as the eye could see. (Note that I wasn't actually entirely surprised, as I saw a notice on the Ashmoleum Museum a few days ago that it would be closed from today until the 9th because of this.) My first reaction was that this would be really annoying because the density of children in this area would probably increase. Bloody Hell! My second reaction came after I looked at some of the themes of the various rides---the only ones with "regional" themes seemed to be US-centric: American football, Disneyland, the Kentucky Derby, etc. I guess this is part of some sort of world tour? I can't see British children being into some of those themes---wouldn't polo have made more sense than the Kentucky Derby?

Annoying movie subtitle

I was at the theatre today to see Hellboy 2 (which I'll review briefly when I go through lots of media in a subsequent post that I swear I will write eventually). While there, I noticed a poster for the new Bond film, which will come out here on October 31st. I'm obviously very interested in seeing it, but its subtitle ("Quantum of Solace") really annoys me and (less relevantly) seems to break from the Bond subtitle formula. Maybe the subtitle of the 2010 Bond film will be "Strangled Perturbations"?

T-shirt of the day

I just received my new J!NX newsletter in which they advertised a new t-shirt that combines two of my obsessions and is so awesome (not to mention "awesome") that I'm simply going to have to buy one: Rock Me, Asmodeus!.

Update:: I guess I'm not going to buy one immediately given that the shipping would cost me more than 50% of the price of the full item. While in the big picture that doesn't matter, it annoys me sufficiently that buying this through J!NX isn't going to happen. I suppose I'll do it when I'm imminently visiting Southern California. Ah well. It's a really nice shirt, though.

A Tribute to Vin Scully

Courtesy Rob Neyer's blog, here is a fantastic tribute to Vin Scully by Richard Hoffer.

Like many other Dodger fanatics, when I think of the Dodgers, I actually start with Vin rather than any of our current or former players or managers. I've been listening to him call baseball games for almost 30 years, and he's the best announcer I've ever heard.

RIP Phil Saffman (1931-2008)

I just saw on the Physics Today obituary notices that Phil Saffman, one of my Caltech professors, died on August 17th. Here is the Los Angeles Times obituary.

As some of you probably know, AMa 95 was essentially created by Phil Saffman. (In fact, I have my copy of the Saffman lecture notes in my office and I still refer to them on occasion when teaching relevant material.) So in this way, he impacted a lot of Caltech undergrads (though given the level of popularity of that class, I suppose many wished he hadn't). I had Saffman for AMa 101 during my junior year (1996-97). This was the last class he taught at Tech, and he specifically decided he wanted to end his classroom lecturing career with that course (which he had previously taught 20 years ago). So he was the first person who showed me things like steepest descents, WKB theory, multiple scales, hypergeometric functions, etc. On the last day of class, he very quietly said he was retiring and had specifically decided to end with that class. (I had been wondering why his TAs and random people---including his daughter---were in the audience.) That remains the one time I have ever seen champaign in a classroom, and I remember we all had a laugh after one of his TAs accidently fell backwards into her chair after taking her first sip. (There were comments about how little alcohol she could handle.)

Anyway, so while I didn't know Saffman that well, I do have some memories of him and definitely was influenced by him to some degree academically through AMa 95 (intro methods in applied math, for non-Techers; this was a one-year course) and AMa 101 (methods in applied math; this was also a one-year course).

Tales from the arXiv: Narcissistic Edition

My collaborators and I finally submitted our paper on Facebook networks last night. I normally post blog entries about my papers after the official journal version comes out, but this one was a royal pain in the ass ('particularly arduous' in more official language) to write, so I'm going to make an exception. Besides, this article is 38 journal-pages of sheer joy and community detection, so how can I not post about it now. (This is the longest article I've ever written, and it's longer than many doctoral theses. As I said, writing it was a pain in the ass, but I'm quite proud of the article and I hope it has a nice impact.)

First, here is the link to the arXiv posting.

Before I give the abstract, let me also shout out to my coauthors Mandi Traud (UNC student), Eric Kelsic (my 2005 Caltech SURF student, which is where this project all started), and Peter Mucha (UNC applied mathematician). Let me also give a shout out to Aaron Clauset and James Fowler, whose thorough commentary on an older version of the manuscript were inordinately valuable and way above and beyond the call of duty. (I can overstate my thanks for your help!) Without further ado...

Article title: Community Structure in Online Collegiate Social Networks

Article abstract: We apply the tools of network analysis to study the roles of university organizations and affiliations in structuring the social networks of students by examining the graphs of Facebook "friendships" at five American universities at a single point in time. In particular, we investigate each single-institution network's community structure, which we obtain by partitioning the graphs using an eigenvector method. We employ both graphical and quantitative tools, including pair-counting methods that we interpret through statistical analysis and permutation tests, to measure the correlations between the network communities and a set of self-identified user characteristics (residence, class year, major, and high school). We additionally investigate single-gender subsets of the university networks and also examine the impact of incomplete demographic information in the data. Our study across five universities allows one to make comparative observations about the online social lives at the different institutions, which can in turn be used to infer differences in offline lives. It also illustrates how to examine different instances of social networks constructed in similar environments, while emphasizing the array of social forces that combine to form simplified "communities" obtainable by the consideration of the friendship links. In an appendix, we review the basic properties and statistics of the employed pair-counting similarity coefficients and recall, in simplified notation, a useful analytical formula for the z-score of the Rand coefficient.

Best baseball slide ever

Courtesy Rob Neyer's blog, here is the best baseball slide ever! Wow!

Quote of the Day

Courtesy Rob Neyer's chat on ESPN today, we have this wonderful line from Mark Twain as today's quote of the day: "Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time, and your government when it deserves it."

Comment: Amen!

Tales from the arXiv: OK, that's just wrong

I had forgotten about this particular mathematical object, but I was poignantly reminded by the following paper that was just posted to the arXiv:

\\
arXiv:0809.0262 (*cross-listing*)
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 15:06:04 GMT (12kb)

Title: Replica overlap and covering time for the Wiener sausages among
Poissonian obstacles
Authors: Ryoki Fukushima
Categories: math.PR math-ph math.MP
Comments: 14 pages
MSC-class: 60K37; 60G17; 82D30
Journal-ref: Journal of Mathematics of Kyoto University 2008, Vol. 48 No. 2,
455-470
\\
We study two objects concerning the Wiener sausage among Poissonian
obstacles. The first is the asymptotics for the \textit{replica overlap}, which
is the intersection of two independent Wiener sausages. We show that it is
asymptotically equal to their union. This result confirms that the localizing
effect of the media is so strong as to completely determine the motional range
of particles. The second is an estimate on the \textit{covering time}. It is
known that the Wiener sausage avoiding Poissonian obstacles up to time $t$ is
confined in some `clearing' ball near the origin and almost fills it. We prove
here that the time needed to fill the confinement ball has the same order as
its volume.
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.0262 , 12kb)


Comment: That's just so wrong! (And I don't mean wrong scientifically; I mean wrong on humanistic grounds.)

Scary Dodger thought

I am reading Peter Gammons' blog on ESPN.com and he points out that "There isn't anyone who doesn't laugh at the Los Angeles Times' T.J. Simers' suggestion that they put up a statue of Jose Lima outside Dodger Stadium in honor of his being the only Dodger pitcher to win a postseason game since the Reagan Administration."

Holy shit, that is scary!

(I obviously remember very poignantly that we only have the one win. What I forgot was that Jose Lima of all people got it! Also, as depressing as it is, I have to admit that Simers' suggestion is pretty damn funny. Ah well, I have to laugh at my team sometimes I suppose even though my heart is breaking all the while.)

Handouts in the Quad

I had just finished lunch and was walking back to my flat through the quad when I passed by a guy who was giving handouts to people who were passing by him.

I didn't think Somerville allowed that in the quad, but anyway I passed by this guy, heard him mumble something and then automatically said 'No thanks' and passed him by. I have many years of experience in just filtering that stuff out and assuming I don't want whatever is in the handout.

Then it occurred to me that I thought the guy is 'quantum field theory problems.' I figured that was my usual overactive imagination until I found a sign in the quad that we're apparently hosting an "HEP" (i.e., high energy physics) summer school. Now I am actually tempted to go and see what problems are being assigned, but then again maybe this is all some elaborate hoax to give me a leaflet about the Jesus degrees-of-freedom we have all been ignoring in our Hamiltonians.

(Also, the handout method doesn't seem like the most efficient way to do this...)

McCain picks Sarah Palin as running mate

I just saw on cnn.com that John McCain has picked Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate for his presidential campaign.

My immediate reactions came in the following order:

(1) First came the cynical reaction: This is a brilliant choice because now Obama loses some of the political-correctness advantage of his attempt to become the first African American in the White House and because of this choice the Republicans are now more likely to win than they were before. Fuck!

(2) Next came the positive reaction: No matter what happens, some history will be made because we'll either get an African American president or a woman vice president. Each of these could---and should---have enormously positive long-term ramifications no matter which party gets into office. Hell, it's already extremely positive (and historical) that they're running for these offices in the first place.

(3) Then came the debate of (1) versus (2): No matter how much I care about point (2)---which actually is quite a bit---I care a lot more about point (1) because I don't want anything to happen that increases the chances of the next president being a Republican, and this includes things like this one with extremely positive long-term ramifications.

(4) Then came a question: Who is Sarah Palin?

Future Ig Nobel laureate?

The following blurb appeared in the issue of mini-AIR I just received by e-mail:

"Bikinis Instigate Generalized Impatience in Intertemporal Choice," Bram Van den Bergh, Siegfried Dewitte and Luk Warlop,
Journal of Consumer Research, June 2008, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 85-97.

I googled the paper because I was curious what they actually did (especially given that I couldn't tell what they meant by "intertemporal choice" and---to be honest---after reading the abstract I still have no idea what that means). The abstract adds to the amusement:

Neuroscientific studies demonstrate that erotic stimuli activate the reward circuitry processing monetary and drug rewards. Theoretically, a general reward system may give rise to non-specific effects: Exposure to ‘hot stimuli’ from one domain may thus affect decisions in a different domain. We show that exposure to sexy cues leads to more impatience in intertemporal choice between monetary rewards. Highlighting the role of a general reward circuitry, we demonstrate that individuals with a sensitive reward system are more susceptible to the effect of sex cues, that the effect generalizes to non-monetary rewards, and that satiation attenuates the effect.

I think this is clearly a strong contender for an Ig Nobel prize. Maybe the peace prize? (Either that or physics.)

Headline: Instant Replay in Baseball

I only have a couple of comments to add to the raging debut, but I nevertheless want to provide an announcement that instant replay officially comes to baseball starting tomorrow. (There's supposedly some sort of test drive in today's Pirates-Cubs game, but I don't know what that actually means.) I believe that it will be limited to fair versus foul calls on homeruns at first, but we can obviously (despite what official baseball people state) expect its use to be expanded in the upcoming years. I think only a few of this weekend's series will include it. Whether or not baseball should have instant replay has been debated on-and-off over the years, but discussions really heated up this year and now it's reality.

My main hope, by the way, is that this doesn't reduce the fantastically amusing arguments between managers and umpires. The people against instant replay often talk about "the human element" of the game (which is a euphemism for making more mistakes), but the thing I would actually miss the most are things like Lloyd McClendon stealing first base. For what it's worth, the argument against instant replay that I do buy is the concern over game length if it's used too often. I think umpires and managers will still go jaw-to-jaw quite a bit even when instant replay is fully established, but I'm just saying that that's what I'd miss if it went away.

Vintage Mason

Most of you have probably witnessed what I consider to be vintage examples of my sarcastic wit. One MTBI student (Carlos Torres) even came up with the term "Mason moment" to describe verbal instances of such incidents in the context of scientific discussions (such as seminar questions and comments), although those were intended to be pointed but not necessarily sarcastic. (Admittedly, some of those comments have occasionally ended up being less mild than I intended.) Several of you probably have also witnessed the depths that my sarcasm can reach more often than you'd like. :) Here is the latest in a continuing series:

A few months back, one of my collaborators passed a paper on to me that was sent to him by his former Cornell advisor (who is on the editorial board of the journal that published the paper), who I also know pretty well. The reason that paper was brought to my collaborator's attention was that it concerned a nonlinear oscillator model of bipolar disorder, about which we wrote a paper in 2003. We never were actually able to publish this paper (though a few people have cited it anyway and at least a couple of psychologists seemed to be interested in it), but we posted the paper on the arXiv preprint server in 2003.

It turns out to be a very good thing that we posted the paper publicly in a manner that includes a time-stamp, because the article that was forwarded to us had a lot of very familiar ideas, analysis, etc. Once we saw this, we contacted the author to let him know about our paper and asked for his thoughts and to add a reference to it if at all possible. (His paper is already published online, but it's "in press" in the sense that it has not yet been assigned volume, issue, or page numbers.) We waited around a month or so and got no response, so we contacted the editor of the journal and gave him the link to our paper (and indicated the time stamp). To his credit, the journal editor immediately saw a problem and e-mailed the author later that day and asked him to comment on the differences between the two manuscripts. Another month (roughly) passed and the author still hadn't responded, so we asked the editor what we should do. Based on consulting with him, it was agreed that we should write a Letter to the Editor. Perhaps the final version will be edited by the folks at the journal, but here is the way it currently reads. Pay special attention to the last two sentences. As I mentioned, it's vintage Mason.

Anyway, sometimes one has to fight the good fight.

Update: The receipt of our Letter to the Editor was acknowledged at 3:54 pm (pacific time) and it was accepted without comment at 3:55 pm. I'm still waiting for my first negative-time paper acceptance. :)

Coupling Between Coffee Places

Today's barrista at my usual coffee place was the former owner of a coffee place I used to be a regular (and occasionally still go to). Actually, I didn't know until today that he didn't still own that other place, where he often served as barrista. He now owns the current usual coffee place. (Actually, the current one was my usual place first, but then they didn't have ice for several months, so I frequented the other place for a while. This one has better coffee.) It's a bit weird to see a person I associated with one place with another one (and I also felt a bit compelled to explain my coffee switch, although I guess that is just my own insecurity or something).

I have seen a couple of things like this before but not too many. All of the ones that come to mind are in Ithaca. (Naturally, it happened in the smallest town in which I've lived.) There were 3 examples (and arguably a 4th, on one occasion) that come to mind. The one I'll mention is one barrista who worked at one of my regular coffee places, then another one, and then back to the original one. Maybe it's weirder for them to see me as a regular at two different places (in addition to it being weird to see me in the first place).

I hope to wake up in a few minutes. I'm trying to gradually work up my mind to edit my Facebook manuscript some more.

A message to librarians

Attention: In mathematics, the fact that a book has a new edition by no means whatsoever should be taken to imply that the old edition should be discarded! (Just because it works that way in some subjects doesn't mean that it works that way in every subject. Some of them haven't exactly changed much in a while...)

The Somerville library ("Library!") was discarding some old mathematics books in the interest of space (which I appreciate is necessary). I took some of these myself because I think that there is a chance that I might have some use for them (even if it's only on a rare occasion) and a few of them I insisted that they put back because the student demand for them already outstrips the supply. (A couple of the books I rescued are ones I don't expect to use at all, but I have historical interest in them for various reasons.) Throwing these away would then exacerbate a problem that already exists. One of the books that I so rescued was this one (technically, the same edition but under a different publisher). Unbelievable...

Maybe they should try crowd control next?

At 10:15 this morning, everyone in my College was sent an e-mail (that was clearly not spam) titled "Please log off immediately
" from our IT support staff. It included the following very terse message (along with the usual greeting, etc):

Please log off until further notice as you are at risk of data loss. This also applies even if you believe that your computer is o.k.

Naturally, this made me feel some sense of panic. I was at the office. I considered delaying an imminent meeting so I could go and make sure my computer wasn't connected to the internet. (I didn't really know what they meant by "log off.") However, I had just backed everything up yesterday, so I figured I'd just recover everything that way in the event that something weird happened. Also I had no clue what the cause might have been or in general anything of what was apparently going on. Were we under attack? Was the world about to end, taking all of our data with it? I had no idea. The content of the message that I quoted constituted the entirety of the message body (aside from the greeting, etc.). Then my student came and we met for an hour, after which I sent the following e-mail at 11:22 to the IT folks in response to their message:

I am not at home and hence unable to log off at such short notice. (I
realize this is apparently beyond your control in this case.)

Could you let us know what's going on?


After my next meeting, I went home at 12:30 and unplugged my ethernet cable and went to lunch. I would then deal with a couple of things at the office and call up the IT folks to see what was going on if I didn't hear from them at that point.

At 2:11 pm, just before I was going to call, I received the following private e-mail from them:

There is no need to worry, there was a problem with the administration staff's
computers earlier today and an email was sent out to everyone rather than just
the admin by mistake.
If upon your return to Somerville there seems to be any problem with your
ability to log on to your computer or with the email, please reboot your
machine as this should clear up any remaining issues.


So I have a question: If the original e-mail was sent out to everyone by mistake (and ask you can see that e-mail was titled and worded in a way that could reasonably be expected to cause panicky reactions in people), why wasn't there an immediate follow-up letting them know that they could safely ignore it because it didn't apply to them?

Thanks a lot, guys. Way to run a tightly-oiled machine.

(Am I being unreasonable here? It seems to me that this could have been handled much better than it was in almost every respect. Maybe I'm just missing something entirely.)

Update: Errr..., I mean a "tight ship" or "well-oiled" machine. I'm not quite sure what it means for something to be tightly-oiled, although I do recognize the term as a compound adjective...

Grrr.... I'm annoyed

In addition to my general grumpiness from being exhausted (I took a red-eye flight from Montreal), I seem to have misplaced about 100 pounds worth of bills that I had with me. They must have fallen out of my wallet at some point. I hope that whoever picked them up is a poor person who can really use them. This could have happened as much as a week ago, but I only just noticed upon my return (as I had been using Canadian currency for the last week). Basically, this is not enough to affect my life in any way, but it is enough to annoy me.

I'm writing this entry because I needed a small rant. It's my own fault because whether it was technically lost or stolen, it was absolutely carelessness on my part. Maybe I should pretend this was caused by a previously-unheard-of form of Canadian taxation?

Se la vie. If this is the worst thing that happens to me in the next (say) year, then I think I'm in pretty good shape. Must...put...this...in...perspective.

What is... JPEG?

Here is a belated post of an expository article from earlier this year that I have been meaning to point. This article, which gives the mathematical basics behind JPEG, is part of the "What is..." series in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

There are a few more of these that have built up about which I will eventually blog, and I'll even zip through my media review backlog at some point. :)

Averaging of Nonlinearity Management with Dissipation

My paper called Averaging of nonlinearity management with dissipation just appeared in Physical Review A. My coauthors are S. Beheshti, K. J. H. Law, and P. G. Kevrekidis (all from U. Mass. Amherst).

This paper is a short but interesting bit of research whose motivation is best described with its abstract:

Motivated by recent experiments in optics and atomic physics, we derive an averaged nonlinear partial differential equation describing the dynamics of the complex field in a nonlinear Schrödinger model in the presence of a periodic nonlinearity and a periodically varying dissipation coefficient. The incorporation of dissipation in our model is motivated by experimental considerations. We test the numerical behavior of the derived averaged equation by comparing it to the original nonautonomous model in a prototypical case scenario and observe good agreement between the two.


Basically, the point is that the theoretical research involving "nonlinearity management" (which typically means using temporal and/or spatial adjustment on one or more of the nonlinear terms in a partial differential equation) uses an entirely conservative setting. However, one one applies one of these strategies experimentally, there is typically an additional dissipation mechanism that gets introduced. (We saw this in our work with experimentalists on nonlinearity management in the setting of nonlinear optics. This short paper was especially motivated by the associated series of experiments, though it's relevant for some Bose-Einstein condensate stuff as well.) Our paper take some theory for the conservative case and works it out for the periodic dissipation case that we saw in our optics experiments as an example of how one would do this more generally.

Indie movies and pretentious coffee bars

The study group with industry ended a bit after 1pm today, which gave me most of today, all of tomorrow, and part of Sunday to explore a bit (or, more precisely, to continue my Montreal escapades from 2003 and 2004). Accordingly, I headed to downtown after we were done to explore the eastern half of St. Catherine's street. (This is the main happening street downtown.) The metro station I went to was the one that turned out to connect to their grand central station and is where the buses from the airport go if one is heading downtown. (This time, I just took a cab because University of Montreal is paying for my travels. Hence, I didn't want to deal with the luggage-dragging---and the having to figure out where I actually needed to go at various stages---that the bus + metro option would have entailed.) This therefore touched me down amidst the familiar hotels from 2003 and 2004.

Upon exploring the eastern part of St. Catherine's (a street which goes on forever and is basically open all night), I ran into the Montreal film festival, which I didn't realize was happening now. (It started last night.) This is excellent, because it allows me to see some indie films long before they come out in theatres. (Some of these probably won't come out in UK or US theatres at all.) I saw a really good Japenese film called something like "The 100 Million Yen Woman." Various types of social awkwardness play pretty important roles in it, so while it was a bit too heavy-handed and predictable at times, it definitely resonated with me somewhat. (There were also some brief comedic moments, like a judge's/police official's voiceover proclaiming how bad it was to throw out a person's "Nintendo DS, as well as his other possessions" (the quote is approximate). I'll bring up the film again in a very belated entertainment review blog entry that will include films, theatre, etc. from the past several months. There are quite a few other films I'm interested in seeing (though only a fraction of those are playing while I'm still in town), so my current plans are to see 1-2 tomorrow. (I have already walked around a decent bit and I don't typically do things like museums unless I'm doing that with someone else. I just don't typically like going to museums on my own.) I was going to see a regular movie tonight, but once I found out that the film festival was going on, I threw out that option. (P.S. As far as I can tell, Philip Seymour Hoffman is not in any of the films being shown at this festival.)

As I have mentioned in the past (though maybe not in this blog), Montreal has tons and tons of very good coffee places. One of the ones near the university is in fact among the most pretentious coffee places I've ever been. (It's name is stupid---"Java U"---but its espresso drinks are fantastic! Ergo, I approve!) It might even be the 2nd most pretentious coffee place I've ever been to, although it is nowhere close to as pretentious as the venue occupying the top spot on the list (Equator Cafe in Pasadena). However, it has much better coffee than Equator (which has good coffee), which is what really counts. I went to another pretentious coffee place as well today---its barristas also seemed to range from dressed-in-black to very goth. I was also going to have crepes today, but it didn't work out. There's a crepes place near the theatre I went to and one or both of the films I'm seeing tomorrow are at that specific theatre as well, so I'll definitely make up for that tomorrow. It would be a crime to have my third trip to Montreal without having had a crepe in any of the three.

Fun fact: In high school, I was voted most likely to see independent films and drink pretentious coffee drinks while having crepres. (OK, not really---but I would have been if we had that category.)

Greg Maddux is heading back to the Dodgers

After a month or so of rumors, it appears that Greg Maddux has been traded again to the Dodgers. Awesome! Hopefully he'll help us win, and he'll pass Roger Clemens on the career win list in Dodger blue. Maybe we'll even keep him next year this time. (Although Maddux is geriatric and obviously a far cry from the pitcher he used, he's still solid and incredibly fun to watch. I'd love to see him remain on the team next year.)

Clever solutions to problems

I wasn't able to see some videos that one of my students sent me and I haven't had the time (or the desire) to deal with downloading software during the last couple of days---I was too busy revising a manuscript and now I'm out of town---so he cleverly solved the problem by posting his videos on YouTube. Here is one of his degree distribution movies. Although it doesn't have many hits, it does have quite a few more than I expected it to have.

Oh, and greetings from Montreal. I had forgotten how cheap good food can be in North America. :) I think I appreciate that much more than I used to---or at least certain food prices feel less expensive than they used to.

What happens in Montreal stays in Montreal

Tomorrow morning I am heading on a bus to the airport for my flight to the land of maple leaves, Celine Dion, and Tim Horton's. (Tim Horton's is apparently a big deal to many Canadians, but I must admit that I don't really get it. I've been to one and it was quite generic. Maybe some of the local Canadian folks want to educate me on this one?) In particular, I'm going to Montreal, which has various levels of association with all three (especially Celine Dion). Another big Montreal thing is smoked meat, which one can find ubiquitously in many restaurant menus there.

The reason for my travel is a fully-funded invite---that originally went to a more senior Oxonian, but he was busy and asked if I'd go---to a study group with industry. I went to one of these in Edinborough in April and it was fun but very exhausting. (I didn't end up walking around through Edinborough and seeing it properly, which is quite a shame given how cool a city it seems to be---and is, according to those who have truly experienced it. Hence, I will need to go back there and have a proper look around instead of just wandering the infinite corridors of Herior-Watt University.) At the Edinborough study group, I worked on a problem on item recommendation systems, which the industry presenters formulated as a probability problem but which our group recast as a bipartite network problem. (Funny, one wouldn't expect me to do that. :) ) The list of problems in Montreal includes one that is very TSP-like, and that's the one that seems the most interesting to me based on the short descriptions that have been published online. (The way it works is that on the first day, the industry folks present the problems---which are typically ambiguous and otherwise ill-formed---and the academics spend the rest of the week trying to get as far as they can with them, which for many problems can amount to just figuring out what the problem actually is.)

Anyway, I am very excited to have the chance to go to Montreal again. It's on the short short list of my favorite cities in the entire world (and, in this case, I am able to make that claim without any emotional bias due to the people or institutions in that city---well, except possibly for Youppi!), and I should have at least some time to go around and do cool things. (One big difference from Edinborough was that Heriot-Watt was away from the city center and in this case I should be able to just walk to where things are happening. If nothing else, the metro system in Montreal is really good, so I can haul ass over to St. Catherine's Street easily enough. There's an RPG store there that I might visit and I also want to pick up N+. Nope, I'm not going to be able to pick up N+ because it's been delayed another two weeks, so it's now slated to come out the day after I return to the UK. Bloody Hell. I was going to pick it up in Pasadena in January. I'll also be partaking in Montreal's many excellent cafes and restaurants. So I'm looking forward to going!) The last time I was there (March 2004), I tested Newton's laws of by running into a glass wall (they work) and had a butterfly give birth on my jacket while I was wearing it. (I have a picture to prove this. I think several of you have seen it before. There was also a Housequote related to this incident, but it was Jing Xu rather than me who uttered it.) The one time before that was in June 2003, and I can confirm that the weather in Montreal is much nicer during the summer than it is in March. :)

Oh, and in preparation for my upcoming exhausting study group with industry, I spent most of today (about 12 hours) revising a 40+ journal-page manuscript from top to bottom. I can overstate how painful this was! Now my collaborator has it and the hope is to submit it after his next pass. (It's conceivable that he'll ask me to go over specific parts again, but I hope he'll agree that we can submit it and post it on the arxiv. We'll then make more changes later when we deal with the referee reports and have had time to recover from the present ordeal.) One of my network science colleagues (and a fellow community-detector, no less) for whom I have a great deal of respect really liked it, which makes me feel very good about the paper.

Overheard (errr... written) while Manuscript Drafting (aka, Quotes of the Day)

Here is the first quote:

"The history of statistics is replete with measures of association and correlation. Just because a measure has plausibility at face value, ranges from 1 down to 0, and has a known sampling distribution under an extreme null hypothesis of total randomness is no guarantee of its usefulness or interpretability." (David L. Wallace, 1983)

Comment: Amen, Brother!


Here is the second:

"In summary, this paper is fucking long. Therefore, it ought to be published in a mathematics journal because nobody reads those anyway."

Comment: I wrote that one in a recent draft of a paper I am about to submit for publication that is now over 40 journal pages long. Sigh. I should have written "way too fucking long" instead.


There is actually a recent e-mail exchange that I'd also like to post, but I'll have to send that one privately.

Billboard of the Day

Jaideep Singh posted an awesome billboard on his Facebook page.

I understand the point of the billboard, but they managed to do this in a way that is truly "awesome". Maybe Caltech should adopt the billboard's catchphrase as its new slogan?

Mathematics Job Wiki

Following in the fine tradition of the condensed matter/atomic physics job rumor mill (and similar web pages in other physics subfields), there is now a wiki devoted to the mathematics job rumor mill. Not that it matters for me anymore, but I do like to gossip about this stuff (as Lemming knows quite well). :)

Say it ain't so!

Apparently, there is now a remake of the piece of shit known as Beverly Hills 90210.

The reason the old show annoyed me is that it propagated annoying stereotypes about my high school. It never even occurred to me that there would be a remake. Damnit!

And for what it's worth, there is only one Beverly High and it's in the 90212 area code! (Let's ignore the fact that my parents' home is in the 90210 area code.) Sheesh.

Recap from Rome

I'm blogging on this a bit belatedly, as is my habit. (I was going to be prompt, but then the whole laptop incident occurred.)

I've already posted the pictures my friend took. I still don't have a digital camera (I'll get one eventually... I'm being very bad about this) and I haven't developed my pictures yet, though the ones I showed you covered most of the visual stuff I wanted to pass along anyway.

My memory of things is a bit hazy at this point, but such is life.

General: While in Rome, I unsurprisingly had lots of good pasta and gelato. Mmmm... gelato. There was a really good gelato place near the hotel (which was somewhat in the boonies, as I mentioned). It had good, thick whipped cream and one of the people working there one time gave me double with the official portion was.

Italian driving: Basically, you have to just cross the street and hope they don't run you over. Right of way doesn't exist. If you stand on the sidewalk waiting for them to stop so you can cross safely (even if the traffic lights favor you, in the corners where there actually are traffic lights), you'll be waiting there a very long time. This was quite a nerve-wracking experience, and for an Angelino like me, walking in front of a car while it's moving counters multiple decades of muscle memory, intuition, and survival instincts. I definitely didn't like the de facto driving habits in Rome.

Attempts to get iced lattes/capuccinos: As I had been warned, this didn't work particularly well. I ultimately figured out how to get cold coffee drinks, but getting them truly iced (and hence ones that would actually stay really cold more than a trivial amount of time) didn't work very well. My shining moment of "awesomeness" came at lunch on one of the last days. A couple of days before I had accidently gotten an iced espresso and unlike in the US, one can't just add the milk oneself at a counter if one screws up that way. (At that place, one had to order in a different spot than one picked up the drink, and I didn't want to wait in line again, so I added some sugar and sucked it up.) However, I had learned from that experience that the Italian word for cold is "freddo" so I was thinking that I was getting somewhere. The next time I tried, I wanted to make sure my cold espresso drink wasn't actually an espresso, so I very confidently ordered a "latte freddo" and the waiter just as confidently gave me the cold milk I had ordered. Oops. I was so used to saying "latte" as a shortcut for "cafe latte" (as that is what's done in both the US and UK) that it didn't occur to me that without the "cafe" in Italy I would be taken literally. Bloody Hell! After that I just ordered capuccinos to be safe, but even on one menu that described the damn thing as "iced" it never got more than cold (and then not for long). Thankfully, gelato provided a nice way to get something that was truly cold and refreshing.

Day 1: This was my tourist day in Rome. My friend and I went to the Colosseum, where I managed to get very slightly bloody (there was a very sharp piece of plastic in an unfortunate spot). Sadly, I didn't have any of the 4th edition abilities that gave me bonuses in that situation. At least it was poetic. After this we walked to the city center and explored a lot. I learned my lesson from Zurich in summer 07 (and heeded the warning of how hot and humid Rome is in the summer) and made sure that I stayed hydrated. (I had a rough time in Zurich because of that.) Occasionally, this meant really overpaying for cold drinks, but sometimes you do what you have to do. I took either all (or perhaps nearly all) of my pictures on this day, and I covered lots of ground. When I travel to an interesting place, one of my pleasures is to just walk around a lot and see what's up. I like to get a flavor for the city and soak things in. Usually I get lost along the way, but at least I can also do some exploring as I try to find myself again. During this exploration, the sites included "Via Propaganda" (with the McDonald's sign, as I showed you pictorially) and a zombie mime. (What's the sign for "braaaaaaains...?")

The conference: It was productive and interesting, as expected. I actually went to the activity group's business meeting this time. I had considered going on some previous occasions, but I always had something else to do---either a meeting with a collaborator, dinner with friends, or whatever. (I didn't consider going when I first went to conferences, but after I had established myself a bit and become a regular, it started making sense to go to that stuff.) Anyway, one of the ideas I proposed was a resounding success, though it will need to go through the regular hoops to become official. Namely, there is going to be a nonlinear waves dissertation prize. Hopefully I won't end up on the committee that actually has to read these, but I believe in the cause sufficiently that I needed to risk that to try to make it happen.

Interesting factoid: This blog entry is 1337. I'm just awesome that way, and I'm not sure when the next interesting number is coming along.

Open source science

Courtesy Dave Richard, here is a New York Times article about open source science.

(By the way, yesterday we had a small Lloydies in Oxford day with Dave, Tom Maccarone, and me.)

Amusing t-shirt

In honor of gnomes being removed from the set of PC classes in 4th edition D & D, J!NX is now selling this amusing t-shirt. The idea is sweet and I was prepared to order one immediately after I saw the blurb in the J!NX e-mail, but unfortunately I don't actually like the graphics that much. I might still get one eventually because the idea is just that cool, but for now I'll wait.

The Amazing Brad Ziegler

I meant to blog about this a while ago, but I have a few minutes now, so let me belated mention the amazing rookie season of Oakland reliever Brad Ziegler.

As I write this, one thing you'll notice among Ziegler's statistics is that he hasn't yet allowed a run (earned or otherwise) in his 35-inning Major League career.

As discussed in his wikipedia entry, Ziegler now holds the Major League record for most scoreless innings at the beginning of a career. The previous record had been set in 1907.

While this hasn't been the most prominent story in baseball this year, in my humble opinion, this is one of the best and most interesting ones.

Tales from the arXiv: Categories are just like animals

Here is a new abstract that just showed up on the arXiv:

arXiv:0808.1032
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2008 14:15:28 GMT (2695kb)

Title: Introducing categories to the practicing physicist
Authors: Bob Coecke
Categories: quant-ph math-ph math.CT math.MP
Comments: 30 pages and 19 pictures
Journal-ref: What is category theory? Advanced Studies in Mathematics and
Logic, volume 30, pages 45-74, Polimetrica Publishing, 2006
\\
We argue that category theory should become a part of the daily practice of
the physicist, and more specific, the quantum physicist and/or informatician.
The reason for this is not that category theory is a better way of doing
mathematics, but that monoidal categories constitute the actual algebra of
practicing physics. We will not provide rigorous definitions or anything
resembling a coherent mathematical theory, but we will take the reader for a
journey introducing concepts which are part of category theory in a manner that
the physicist will recognize them.
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.1032 , 2695kb)


The reason I am including this entry is that it reminds me of a certain incident in the graduate abstract algebra course I took at Cornell. The professor was introducing the idea of 'category' and decided he wanted to do it without a precise definition. None of us were really following him, so we asked him kindly if he'd give him a definition and he said something along the lines of 'You're going to learn what a category is the way you learned what an animal is: by seeing examples of them.' He then gave another one or two non-illuminating (at least without the definition) examples to us, at which point a brave student (not me) asked him "What is a category?" The professor went slightly ballistic at that question given the prior exchange.

To this day, all I remember about categories is that they're important in abstract algebra and that they're apparently like animals. (I suppose if I tried reading the above article, I could fix that, but I don't really care enough to do so.) That was one of my more memorable classroom experiences.

Doc Ock is now Prof Ock

Congratulations to OCIAM's illustrious Research Director formerly known as Doc Ock! As of about a week ago, he is now officially Prof. Ock.

To be honest, the only reason* I am writing this blog entry is that I wanted to post a link to this picture, which bears an uncanny resemblance to what Ock looks like in real life.

* OK, it's not the only reason. The other reason is that by writing this blog entry, I am avoiding revising a certain grant proposal just a little bit longer.

Anyway, enjoy!

Pictures from Netsci 2008

The NetSci conference organizers have just posted some pictures.

There are 106 of them, so let me draw a few particular ones to your attention.

In pictures 4 and (especially!) 5, you can tell just how closely I was paying attention to things by the final talk of the conference. (I think that picture 5 may well help contribute to my burgeoning legend...) This was a panel session that could have been useful--the moderator was asking good questions--but the panelists just showed hokey prepared slides instead of saying anything useful. I left before that session ended because it was a waste of time. If you can, try to find me in picture 82. (I am all the way on your left, somewhere the camera didn't reach.) Can you identify the mafioso in picture 81? (Seriously, who the fuck is this guy? I was never able to figure it out during the entire conference.) Also, picture 60 shows the trivial solution.

I need to figure out who took pictures 4 and 5. Vengeance will be mine!

Ooh, they're including Squeeze...

The fact that "Cool for Cats" is included among these songs is really, really tempting. (OK, sorry for that pun.) I definitely want to play that song (and a few of the others on the list, though I don't care about most of them). There's apparently going to be a Wii version, though I'm a bit afraid of the shipping costs that would be involved (and the potential customs headaches because I suspect that this stuff would get noticed, unlike just shipping a game with conventional controllers). But anyway, I'm really looking forward to rocking out to "Cool for Cats" (and "Eye of the Tiger", "Alex Chilton", and a couple of other songs). I wonder if people singing "Cool for Cats" will try to duplicate the Cockney accent that the artists specifically used for it... (I won't exactly be demanding it, because I certainly won't be singing.)

RIP Skip Caray (1939-2008)

I just saw this article that Braves broadcaster Skip Caray has died. While his father Harry Caray was famous for his informal broadcasting style (especially his singing of 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game'), Skip was known for his sarcastic wit in the broadcast booth. He was an excellent announcer---one of the best. He had been having lots of health problems (diabetes, etc.) and was on a reduced broadcast schedule this year.

Up and Running (mostly)

My computer is up and running, and I have installed most of the essential software that I need. ("It's my industrial-strength hair-dryer, and I can't live without it!") I have also recopied my back-up data onto my computer as well as the stuff that I had saved in my Oxford math account only during my time without a functioning laptop. There is some issue with Oxford's Matlab license (the key file I was sent doesn't have the right code), but I'll just have to deal with that after I get an e-mail response on Monday. (I was using a Caltech license before my computer crashed and burned.) Aside from Matlab, I think I'm pretty much good to go. (I am about to try Mathematica, and then I will be done with setting things up for the day and mostly done overall.) Then I can hopefully catch up on some of my work... (The last couple of days I was productive anyway because I was in my office revising papers that I had handy and just wasn't trying to fight computers.)

I am quite pleased with my experience with the Southampton Apple Store. Getting there was annoying, but I dropped off my computer on Thursday and I got the call at 1:30 pm today that it was ready with its new harddrive. Having to take a 1.5 hour trip each way on two occasions was annoying, but the service was great/prompt and I wasn't charged anything for it (though the train trip cost a bit). Note also that I explained to them the various diagnostics I had done (with help) on my computer and they didn't make me watch them do all the same things again. Between dropping off my computer and picking it up, the total amount of time I spent in the Apple Store was maybe 20 minutes and most of that was waiting for 10 minutes while somebody else was being helped (as I had come early; I was taken before my official appointment---this was one reason I purposely went bright and early in the morning; I also wanted to make a meeting and get work done in general). I rant a lot about bad service, so I also want to point out situations like this when I got excellent customer service.

Oh, and I have a new harddrive name: Hourglass.

This is in honor of a certain wizard, who came to mind particularly because a book about him for which I have been waiting for a year has been delayed from last month (when it was supposed to come out) until July 2009. So much for having a more positive alignment, but at least I'm now down to Neutral Evil (or just Evil, if you prefer the alignment systems in either 4th edition D & D or first edition Dragonlance Adventures AD & D).

By the way, the double meaning in the harddrive name (in terms of its life clock already ticking) is completely intentional. I happen to be feeling rather fatalistic. The reference to the song by Squeeze, however, is entirely unintentional.

Until the next traumatic blog post about one of my computers... (which I hope is a long time away!)

Pictures of Rome

Here are some pictures of my travels in Rome that Martin Centurion (with whom I was hanging out) took on his digital camera.

The first picture in the batch, taken at the Colosseum, is one of my favorites---as is the 'Via di Propaganda' with the McDonald's sign next to it.

Enjoy!

(I'll give some text on my Roman travels later. Posting pictures takes less time, so I'll stick with these for now.)

Update on invasion of privacy

Courtesy Justin, here is some information on some very scary US Customs policies.

Comment: Way to go, guys! Friends, I think we're in the process of witnessing the slow, painful fall of an empire. (In fact, I can very easily picture President Bush in the White House playing a fiddle.)

Sigh... I guess I ought to get my laptop back first before I worry about it being seized unfairly at the border. Though apparently, it's anything that can be seized for no reason whatsoever. Maybe I ought to be more careful about my "unpatriotic science"?

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...