Congratulations to Caltech's Class of 2010

Congratulations to the class of 2010 at Caltech! The new Bachelors of Science alums include four of my former undergraduate research students, and in fact these are the last of my former Caltech undergraduate mentees to graduate. (They are Ye Pei, Olga Mandelshtam, Sherry Chen, and Tatjana Wiese.)

Commencement was yesterday, so I should actually have written this blog entry then.

A Picture Worth 1000 Words

Sometimes, a picture truly is worth a thousand words---like this one, for instance.

(Tip of the cap to Deb Eason.)

Last Expo Standing

The Daily Something wonders who will be the last Expo standing. My prediction is Jon Rauch.

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Quantum Chaos in Nature

Doug Stone has a News and Views article about quantum chaos in the June 10, 2010 issue of Nature.

In case you don't have full-article access to Nature, you can find the abstract here (it's the second article).

Nuns and Dementia

This NPR article about the 'Nun Study' of dementia and Alzheimer's disease is extremely cool. The part that's especially fascinating is the discovery of the biographies that the "nuns" (technically not nuns, as stated in the article... not that I would know) wrote when they first entered the order at 18 and the use of the 'complexity' of the text in those articles to see if it correlated with development of the signs of dementia (as measured in their brains after they died). A very strong correlation was observed between increasingly complex writing---see the article for a rough statement of how this was measured (it was basically how densely ideas were packed, on average, into 10-word segments)---and the onset of features in the brain associated with Alzheimer's Disease and dementia.

By the way, I love the 'causation versus correlation' comment at the end of the article. :)

Now I'm very curious to see my writing analyzed in this way... Of course, one can train oneself to write in different ways---e.g., I strongly prefer simple, clear sentences for scientific exposition (clarity >> elegance). We'll see how much dementia I develop... ;)

Agatha Christie was also mentioned extensively in the article, but the Nun Study is cooler.

(Tip of the cap to Rachel Gray.)

Update (6/10/10): I checked: The idea density of my writing is actually pretty damned high. (Also, I took a look at the .ppt presentations of one of these people to get a better idea of how it's calculated, and short nuanced ideas---sub-sentences but not necessarily full sentences---are the type that score the highest, and in fact my writing style goes very strongly and specifically in that direction.) I put in 4 writing samples from recent stuff that I have done (2 examiner reports, one document containing 3 articles I just wrote for a newsletter---in a format reminiscent of my blogging style, and one research statement), and I ranged from 5.03 - 5.48. (The word numbers in the documents ranged roughly from 500 - 2000.) Unsurprisingly, the newsletter articles---the least technical of the four documents by leaps and bounds---scored the lowest. A really neat thing to do---though indubitably this has been done before---would be to take a cohort of children and examine how their writing density changes as they age.

Baseball-Cricket Origins Exhibition in London Museum

This CNN article was written in relation to the premier of an exhibition about the dual origins and baseball and cricket in London's Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) Museum. I am so there (at some point... I have until December)!

You might recall that I blogged about the news that baseball is a "British sport" a couple of years ago.

Intriguing Blog: Strange Maps

The blog Strange Maps looks pretty cool. I'm not planning on adding it to the blog roll, but I did want to point it out. Naturally, many of the maps make me think along network lines. :)

(Tip of the cap to Alexander Morisse.)

"The Brothers Bloom"

I have only one word to describe this movie: Wow.

This film was amazingly good---one of the best that I've seen for a long time.

The Misinformation Effect

Here is a neat blog post, from a blog called You Are Not So Smart, about The Misinformation Effect. Neat stuff!

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Six Degrees of Black Sabbath

Six degrees of Black Sabbath is actually rather old, but I haven't seen this particular web page before. (This web page allows one to construct a path between any two artists, and---as you can see from my link---the path length between Loreena McKennitt and Depeche Mode is surprisingly short.)

Now back to marking exams... (though I'll be rewarding myself tonight with a Crowded House concert!!!)

(Tip of the cap to Mariano Beguerisse Díaz.)

RIP Vladimir Arnold (1937-2010)

I was looking at the website for the American Mathematical Society, and I noticed (to my surprise) a brief obituary for Vladimir Arnold, a very prominent mathematician who died yesterday.

Arnold was one of the mathematical giants of the 20th century, and he was particularly important in the subject of dynamical systems (which is the mathematical subfield of my birth and which is still one of my primary scientific interests). You can take a look at his wikipedia entry for some of his many important mathematical accomplishments. Let me only mention KAM theory (the 'A' is for Arnold), which gives important insights into mixed regular ('integrable') and chaotic dynamics in Hamiltonian systems.

Update (6/05/10): I didn't write much detail in my blog entry, but here's a blog entry that has some more details. The wikipedia entry and the links therein also contain discussions of the relevant mathematics.

Tales from the ArXiv: Unfortunate Author Name Department

Check out this recently-posted paper (which was actually published in 2008):

Title: Peristaltic Transport of a Physiological Fluid in an Asymmetric Porous Channel in the Presence of an External Magnetic Field

Authors: J.C. Misra, S. Maiti, G.C. Shit

Abstract: The paper deals with a theoretical investigation of the peristaltic transport of a physiological fluid in a porous asymmetric channel under the action of a magnetic field. The stream function, pressure gradient and axial velocity are studied by using appropriate analytical and numerical techniques. Effects of different physical parameters such as permeability, phase difference, wave amplitude and magnetic parameter on the velocity, pumping characteristics, streamline pattern and trapping are investigated with particular emphasis. The computational results are presented in graphical form. The results are found to be in perfect agreement with those of a previous study carried out for a non-porous channel in the absence of a magnetic field.


Sometimes, one's last name can become unfortunate when multiple cultures are involved...

Tales from the ArXiv: arXiv vs snarXiv

OK, arXiv vs snarXiv is officially the best website ever. Wow, this is awesome!

(Tip of the cap to Anna Lewis. My PhD students send me the best things!)

Update: Wow, this is my 7th post of the day. This might actually be a record...

Can one patent a community detection method?

One can patent a community detection method? What?

Will somebody please explain this to me?

Update: The patent apparently belongs to Huberman and Wu (familiar names, and now I know what community detection method it's based on). You can find the details here. In the 6 years since the patent was filed and when it was rewarded (in January 2010), the method has become completely out of date. Still, WTF?

Standing on the Shoulders of Freaks

Henry Phillips said it best: "We're standing on the shoulders of freaks."

Indeed, this unsurprising statement is being reported in a recent study.

Money quote: reative people, like those with psychotic illnesses, tend to see the world differently to most. It's like looking at a shattered mirror. They see the world in a fractured way.

Well, duh.

And I should also mention the fact that this article hits a bit too close to home...

(Tip of the cap to Meredith Alden.)

The Perfect Game That Wasn't

Wow, a blown call by an umpire cost Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers a perfect game last night. (The umpire admitted after seeing replays that he blew the call.) This would have been the third perfect game of the 2010 season, which is already the first season with 2 perfect games. Well, the record books might indicate that there have been 2 perfect games this year, but unofficially there have now been three. Wow.

Among other things, I bet that this will help hasten the expansion of instant replay in baseball. This story isn't over.

Cake of the Day

This cookie cake is even better than the one I once special-ordered.

This demotivational poster is also pretty damn funny.

Ken Griffey Jr. has retired

Ken Griffey Jr. has announced his retirement, effective immediately. He's going to baseball's Hall of Fame, but he's a shell of his former self and it was past time that he retire. See you in Cooperstown!

Lego Printer

This printer made out of Lego is seriously awesome.

(Tip of the cap to Puck Rombach.)

The Geometry of Music

There is a new article in Time Magazine about Dmitri Tymoczko's the geometry of music, as illustrated by his articles in Science on music theory. (I vaguely remember blogging about that article last year.) If you take a look at his web site, you can look at interesting videos that show links between music and geometry.

I definitely remember hearing about at least one of the Science articles when it came out, but to say that this stuff borrows stuff from string theory is quite a stretch. (It's like say that one thing borrows from something else because one uses calculus for both of them. In this case, one uses geometry for both things.)

Tymoczko is giving a plenary talk at the 2010 SIAM Annual Meeting, and I would definitely have loved to go to that seminar.

(Tip of the cap to SIAM's Facebook team, who posted a link to the Time article.)

Roy Halladay pitches a Perfect Game

Coming off of a bad start (and a couple of games of having thrown lots of pitches, so I avoided having him on my fantasy baseball team yesterday), Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies pitched the 20th perfect game in Major League Baseball history. Dallas Braden of the Athletics pitched a perfect game earlier this month. Most baseball fans know that Halladay is a great pitcher, but I think that he's still underrated when it comes to all-time rankings (formal or informal).

RIP Gary Coleman (1968-2010)

Gary Coleman, who become a famous child star because of his role as Arnold in the television show 'Diff'rent Strokes', has died.

I remember watching that show back in the day, and it had some amusing moments (and of course Arnold's famous catch phrase), though my memory is sketchy at the moment. (There was a pretty amusing episode in which Arnold considers converting to Judaism.)

More recently, Coleman has made the news in other ways (e.g., he ran for Governor of California as part of the ridiculous 2003 election). And his name is one of the ones that gets brought up when one discusses former child stars and where they ended up.

Congratulations to Brian and Victoria!

Brian Limketkai officially got hitched a couple of weeks ago. And apparently a celebratory meal at IHOP was involved. Classy. :)

I look forward to the eventual larger celebration that is being planned.

RIP Walter Rudin (1921-2010)

I didn't notice this earlier amidst Martin Gardner's death, but mathematician Walter Rudin also died a few days ago.

I know him best for his three text books. The easiest one, which gives an introduction to analysis, is affectionately known as "Baby Rudin". The middle one, which is often used in Math 110 at Caltech for much of the material, is called "Big Rudin" or sometimes "Green Rudin". I own this second book as well as Rudin's functional analysis book, which sadly doesn't have an official nickname. I started calling it "Bigger Rudin" as a result. I never met the guy and don't know much about his research, the story of his wife's job situation at University of Wisconsin at Madison gets told reasonably often.

It sure beats minding the gap...

The British railway system sure makes a lot of promises...

Thatcher Effect

Wow, the so-called "Thatcher effect" is pretty bizarre.

Happy Towel Day!

Today is Towel Day. (RIP Douglas Adams.)

RIP José Lima (1972-2010)

Former pitcher José Lima, who spent some time with the Dodgers, died of a heart attack this morning. Holy shit.

RIP Martin Gardner (1914-2010)

Renowned mathematics and science writer (and mathematics puzzler and purveyor of recreational mathematics) Martin Gardner has died.

Update (5/24/10): Here is some more reading material about Martin Gardner (courtesy Scientific American).

(Tip of the cap to Jesús Cuevas Maraver.)

"Every mathematics talk should have at least a little bit of fruit fly sex."

The 20th and 21st of May in the year 2010 saw a conglomeration of network scientists and statisticians in Oxford's Mathematical Institute for the "Oxford/Harvard Workshop on Networks and Statistics" (for which I was the primary organizer). We had three distinguished visitors from Harvard's statistics department: Edo Airoldi discussed dynamic network tomography, Joe Blitzstein discussed estimation in exponential random graph models, and Patrick Wolfe discussed point process models. Speakers from Oxford came from a wide variety of departments and research groups, including the Department of Statistics, the Nuffield Network of Network Researchers, the Oxford Internet Institute, the Neuroscience group, the Department of Physics, the Department of Engineering Science, and (of course) OCIAM. In addition to members of these research groups, participants also included faculty, postdocs, and graduate students from plant sciences, the Systems Biology Doctoral Training Centre, political science, the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance, and even one statistician from Cambridge.

The format was perhaps a bit unusual, with plenty of time left open for discussions that allowed for much more discourse among participants than what typically occurs at workshops. To facilitate this, all speakers were encouraged to discuss open problems and to make a point of stressing not only what they did understand but more importantly what they did not understand and what problems they wanted to see solved. The discussion periods including extensive brainstorming on which problems were most desirable to solve and for which problems the situation was perhaps ripe to try to do it now. For example, sociologist Bernie Hogan stressed the need for mathematicians, statisticians, and physicists to develop good methods to study overlapping communities (so-called "soft partitioning") in networks, and several participants had interesting ideas regarding how one might try to do this.

In his plenary talk, which was held jointly with OCIAM's "Differential Equations and Applications" seminar (this was a talk on applications), Gero Miesenböck introduced us to the emerging field of "optogenetics", which seeks to develop genetic strategies for observing and controlling the function of brain circuits with light. He talk was fascinating, and it even contained fruit fly sex in it. (I think that all mathematics talks should contain at least a little bit of fruit fly sex in it.) It also included some fascinating time series and nonlinear oscillations. Gero stressed his desire for mathematical modelling to accompany his work---his field is currently entirely bereft of it, and it is crucially needed---and we hope to follow up his talk with a Friday morning workshop in the fall.

The Oxford/Harvard Workshop on Networks and Statistics seemed to be a great success, though there is a higher bar for success that I hope that this conference will achieve---namely, I want published papers that ultimately result from interactions and discussions that began at this workshop. Ask me again in 2 years to see if this more genuine measure of success has been achieved.

Ditch Day 2010

Tomorrow was yesterday.

Here is Caltech's coverage of Ditch Day 2010. Enjoy!

Fun Fact

Fun Fact: If you swallow the wrong way, it is possible to end up blowing bacon out of your nose.

In related news, I don't feel very well right now...

Community Detection and Dating?

The Oxford press release about my new community-detection article in Science has now been picked up by a dating advice website. WTF?

Pac-Man turns the big 3-0 (technically, that happens tomorrow)

Tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man (it was first released in Japan on May 22, 2010), and Google celebrated it in proper fashion by putting a mini Pac-Man game on its home page. I approve! (This, by the way, is Google's first interactive 'doodle'.)

And while Pac-Man might not turn 30 until tomorrow, be advised (especially if you're a frosh) that Tomorrow is TODAY! (I'll blog about this a bit later. In the meantime, you can celebrate by watching this.)

(Tip of the cap to Lemming for the Pac-Man stuff and GFreak for the video. I first heard about Ditch Day from Andy Sudol's Facebook post.)

Update (5/22/10): That it truly is Pac-Man's 30th birthday, here is the story behind Google's Pac-Man doodle. (Tip of the hat to Jimmy Lin.)

Author Name of the Day

This demotivational poster compelled me to find a famous psychologist by the name of Edwin Boring.

The Irony of Mensa

I think I might have realized this before, but I only got reminded of it today. There is an adjective in Spanish called "mensa" (the feminine form of menso) that means stupid. (If you say things correctly, it can actually be used in an affectionate manner.)

The reason that this is so bloody awesome is that Mensa is the "International High IQ Society". Nice!

Are tensors more romantic than cows?

I link, you decide.

(Hey, I almost went a full week without a blog entry! I haven't checked, but I think it's been a pretty long time since I had a gap that long.)

Cows are apparently sexier than tensors.

As you know, I am the coauthor on a new paper on community structure in multislice networks, which has just appeared in Science and which I genuinely believe makes a very big advance.

I am also the coauthor of a recently submitted paper entitled A Mathematical Model for the Dynamics and Synchronization of Cows that has been posted on the arXiv, as is normal procedure in mathematics and physics (and, increasingly, other fields). Nevertheless, this paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, and I can't stress this enough.

Guess which paper is getting more attention?

I will readily admit that I have some fun when I get media attention, and that it's pretty damned cool to be see articles in places like Technology Review, Boing Boing, and Marginal Revolution about my work. I'm flattered, and some of what is written is entertaining (and some of the accompanying pictures are entertaining). This has been a fun project with some interesting scientific results (on which I believe we can build with a lot of additional hard work), and we included a couple of jokes in the paper because frankly it makes it nicer to read. Also, I am happy to see a lighthearted tone in some of the places that have discussed our work, but I am a bit disturbed by a couple of things:

(1) Some of the venues that have discussed our work used figures without asking for our permission. That's just not cool. I would gladly give permission, but you really ought to ask.

(2) I'm not surprised by the media attention on something that hasn't been peer-reviewed and indeed have experienced this before, but can we please make a distinction between something that is published and something that is on a preprint server and has not yet undergone peer review? Some (but not all) of the articles that I have seen are ignoring this crucial distinction, and it's a bit annoying to see increasingly inaccurate statements from people who are playing a sort of "whispering game" and making incorrect approximations of what other people wrote (and writing unsubstantiated things as if they were facts). I know that's the nature of things, but it's frustrating, and when I see a post that is not lighthearted but instead tries to use our work to advocate some cause that has absolutely nothing to do with what we studied (which is a biologically-inspired mathematical model, and I feel a very interesting one), I feel just a little bit worse about the world than I did before.


If you are reading this and are a journalist, please note that my coauthors and I wish to wait until after the peer review process runs its course (and the paper is accepted to a scientific journal---ideally the one to which we have already submitted it) before we grant any interviews. We are very excited about our work, but please let's not be premature about things! Now if you want to talk to me about multislice networks, then I would be extremely pleased to talk to you now.

Thank you.

Community Structure in Time-Dependent, Multiscale, and Multiplex Networks

Guess what? I now have a paper in Science. And it's a mathematics article. And it even has tensors in it. You can find the abstract here. Science's editorial policy prevents me from putting the published .pdf file on my website, but I can put the version that was accepted there. Here are some more details about the paper:

Title: Community Structure in Time-Dependent, Multiscale, and Multiplex Networks

Authors: Peter J. Mucha, Thomas Richardson, Kevin Macon, Mason A. Porter, Jukka-Pekka Onnela

Abstract: Network science is an interdisciplinary endeavor, with methods and applications drawn from across the natural, social, and information sciences. A prominent problem in network science is the algorithmic detection of tightly connected groups of nodes known as communities. We developed a generalized framework of network quality functions that allowed us to study the community structure of arbitrary multislice networks, which are combinations of individual networks coupled through links that connect each node in one network slice to itself in other slices. This framework allows studies of community structure in a general setting encompassing networks that evolve over time, have multiple types of links (multiplexity), and have multiple scales.


Notes:

(1) One of my coauthors is named Kevin Macon. How cool is that for a networks paper?

(2) The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill press release can be found here.

(3) I'll post the Oxford press release later (after it's available). Some venues are planning to pick up the story, and I'll pass relevant links along once I have them.

(4) On an entirely separate note, my cow sync paper---which I just posted on the arXiv---has been invading the blogosphere (especially the nerdy corners of it), so I'll write something about that later.

(5) I really need to grade papers right now. Sigh...

Game: "Frigate Bird"

I haven't tried this game yet, but Aaron Clauset has blogged about a game called Frigate Bird that uses Scrabble tiles.

It sounds pretty cool, so maybe I'll try it at my next games night (which is in 10 days).

Dallas is Perfect

Oakland Athletics pitcher Dallas Braden pitched a perfect game against the Tampa Bay Rays today. His perfect game was the 19th one in Major League history.

Infinity

In the final installment of his series of articles in the New York Times, mathematician Steve Strogatz discusses infinity. Unsurprisingly, these articles (as well as many additional ones) will be collected into a book, which is scheduled to be published in 2012.

Slip of the Tongue

On Mother's Day, Major League Baseball has for several years arranged it so that many players use pink bats as part of the whole "Breast Cancer Awareness Day" part of the deal. Unfortunately, one of the Giants' announcers accidently called it "Breast Awareness Day". Oops.

Coming To America

Female Japanese knuckleballer Eri Yoshida has signed a contract with an independent minor league team in the United States. The name of the team is the Chico Outlaws.

This is Yoshida's first stop in the US, and I hope she gets very far in her career, and I hope to somebody get a chance to see her pitch in a game. We'll see how things go, but this is an important foundational step.

Somerville-Jesus Ball

Somerville College is having a ball jointly with Jesus College tonight. (They do this every 2 or 3 years. I guess it's supposed to be every 2 years, but last year's ball got punted to this year.) Apparently, something like 2000 people will show up, and Somerville is the only one of the two colleges that can possibly accommodate something of this size. The College is going into lock-down at 5pm, and my choices are basically to go to the party (which is so not happening!), being stuck in my apartment starting at 5pm and having to deal with the shit going on around me, or being stuck outside from 5pm until something like 4am. Thankfully, my friend Felicia has offered me a couch futon to sleep on tonight, so I have somewhere else to be---and a place where I will actually be able to get work done and sleep, which certainly won't be the case tonight in my apartment in Somerville. And I'll have the spare key, so I'll actually have the freedom to go out and do stuff if I want. (Maybe I'll go see "Hot Tub Time Machine" or something?) Yeah! The couch futon isn't necessarily the most comfortable one in the world, but I don't care, because this is infinitely better than the alternatives of being stuck either in my apartment or in my Dartington House office!

I get by with a little help from my friends...

Update: An awesome moment related to this occurred today. I was in Somerville's SCR having some coffee and a pastry, and more people were around than usual for a Saturday. The wife of a Governing Body member asked several of us collectively if were going to go to the ball, and I immediately answered "Fuck no!" before I could stop myself. I am just a picture of propriety.

Parliament well hung?

Not that I was paying much attention to the UK elections (because I wasn't), but of course that was a big deal to lots of the people I know around here. A colleague of mine just walked by the door and said the result was interesting, so I decided to look it up---the BBC is apparently predicting a hung parliament.

Last night, I was talking about this a bit with a friend and a colleague (I'm referring to 2 separate people), although I headed off to do my own thing when dinner was winding down and the discussion got a bit more "technical" [not necessarily the best term, but it seems good enough]. They were mentioning about watching it no matter how painful the results were. Naturally, this made me compare it to watching the Dodgers year after year no matter how much they keep breaking my heart, though they didn't see it as the same thing. :) I do understand that, but when one lives in a bubble the way I do, it sure seems that way.

There were two main things I followed with respect to the election: (1) I was pretty glad that my article in a fancy journal got delayed a week to the 14th because otherwise there'd basically be no chance of getting any UK publicity. It's not quite like when the PS 3 was announced right when my PNAS paper came out (I think it was the PS 3 and not some other system...), but it still conflicted with my self-interest; (2) I saw a survey, with results divided primarily by self-identified party affiliation, regarding statistics for people not wanting people like me immigrating into the UK.

Interesting times, I suppose. Now when will they give me the data so that I can write a paper on it... ;)

Oh, and the article includes the awesome sentence beginning "Education secretary Ed Balls hung on in Morley and Outwood..."

Unwritten Rules in Baseball

I just read a fascinating article by Jerry Crasnick about unwritten rules in baseball. In each case, Crasnick gives a scenario, and Goose Gossage (Hall-of-Fame relief pitcher), Jim Palmer (HOF starting pitcher), and Bert Blyleven (will soon be, and should already be, an HOF starting pitcher) gave their opinions and possibly some anecdotes in each case. It was interesting to contrast the reaction of Palmer with those of the other two. Anybody want to guess where I would like along this spectrum? ;)

RIP Ernie Harwell (1918-2010)

Once again, the baseball mike has fallen silent, as legendary Detroit Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell has died. You can read about him on wikipedia.

I had a chance to listen to Harwell a bit later in his career, and his poem "Baseball, A Game For All America" to me is very meaningful (and, of course, I am listening to it now on iTunes). Here is a YouTube clip of that poem.

Origin of the Term "Phase Space"

I just read a fascinating article in the April issue of Physics Today on the origin of the term "phase space". Highly recommended.

Advice for Giving Talks

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

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

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

Enjoy!

Group Theory in the Bedroom

But it's not what you think (and anyway I blatantly stole that title from Brian Hayes)...

Instead, it's just that group theory is the subject of Steve Strogatz's latest article in the New York Times. And group theory in the bedroom plays an important role in that article. (However, group actions were not mentioned.)

Multislicing the War

I'll be telling you more about "multislice networks" soon enough, but in the meantime, in this New York Times article, you can see an example of a multislice network. There is also a priceless of hopelessly naive quote from General Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of the American effort in Afghanistan: When we understand this slide, we’ll have won the war.

Comment: Um, no. But this is excellent fodder for the seminar that I am giving on multislice networks tomorrow!


If you are curious and want to see how my collaborators and I use the term "multislice network", you can look at the paper that we posted on the arXiv. I postpone further details until the published version comes out.

(Tip of the cap to Philip Maini.)

Research Buzzword Cloud

Here is a research buzzword cloud that I constructed using the text from my research synopsis page. Naturally, the non-research words all occur on that page---and usually even for good reason.

I got this idea from Aaron Clauset's blog, and I followed his link to the tool wordle.net.

Super Mario Brothers crossover

As Kotaku reports, there is a new flash game that allows one to play Super Mario Brothers as not only Mario but also characters from other games (e.g., as Link from Zelda or as Simon Belmont from Castlevania). I approve! (It's hard to control the character, but this is still pretty damn awesome.)

(Tip of the cap to Louis Wang.)

Demotivational Poster of the Day: Retort!

I love the retort even more than I love the original poster. I approve!

Mmmm.... Sugar

According to this study, there is a correlation between chocolate consumption and experiencing depression. Well, duh. I'm not exactly shocked by this conclusion.

(And as a remark, I have several times purposely consumed sugar when feeling depressed---but not necessarily chocolate in particular.)

I'm still waiting for quantum music.

In the meantime, there is semiclassical music, a listing that I first encountered in a radio directory in a hotel in Montreal.

Justice Scalia learns about orthogonality.

This excerpt from a recent U.S. Supreme Court deliberations transcript is pretty damn funny.

(Tip of the cap to the 'Found Math' column in MAA Focus. This was in the Feb/March 2010 issue.)

Probability and O.J.

Here is Steve Strogatz's latest column in the New York Times. This one is on probability.

Who says baseball players aren't athletes?

As this video shows, baseball players can be extremely athletic. I approve!

(Tip of the cap to Liam Pomponi, one of my Somerville students.)

Boobquake

Apparently, one person's response to a Iranian cleric's asinine assertion that scantily clad women cause earthquakes is to test the theory, and the movement is gaining a lot of steam. Here is the Facebook page for boobquake, and here is the original post (which Somerville's web filter is blocking, by the way) by Purdue senior Jen McCreight.

(Tip of the cap to my Ph.D. student Puck Rombach.)

Update (4/26/10): Today is the day, and it's Richter's birthday. Win!

My Interview with Princeton University Press blog for Mathematics Awareness Month 2010

I was interviewed by e-mail for the Princeton University Press blog in honor of Mathematics Awareness Month 2010 (on "Mathematics and Sports"). You can find that question and answer session on this page.

Airport security people sure do pay attention

Here is a recent exchange with security (TSA) people at Burbank airport:

Security person: "Are you going to Austin, too?"

Me: "No"

Him: "But you look like a musician."

Me: "I do my best." (other security person laughs)

Him: "Enjoy your time in Texas." (Hopefully, that will only be to change planes! Also note that they never bothered to check that I have a second ticket that takes me from Dallas to London.)


Yes, I can assure you that airport security people in the US really are focused on doing their job. The person right before me was going to Austin, and she was having a conversation with the security people. It didn't take much time, but I'd really rather have these people focusing on what they should be focusing on.

Calling London (The Volcano Song)

Calling London (The Volcano Song)

by Mason A. Porter

(University Lecturer, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford)

[sung to the tune of "London Calling" by The Clash]


Calling London, since there's no hope to fly there
The volcano is spewing, and the ash won't come down
Calling London from the underworld
Let's have a bitch session, all you boys and girls
Calling London, we're all just stuck
All of our flights have been grounded by dust
Calling London, see we ain't got no flights
Though apparently airlines give us 'travelers' rights'


CHORUS

The ice age is coming, the ash is blowing in
Engines stop running and the air is growing thin
A nuclear error, but I have no fear
The volcano is spewing-and Iceland's too near


Calling London through the no-fly zone
Forget it, brother, an' go it alone
Calling London upon the volcano of death
I want my plane to fly-but I won't hold my breath
Calling London-though I just wanna get back
And when we were talking-you cut me no slack
Calling London, since we won't fly that high
Unless we want to say goodbye


CHORUS


Now get this
Calling London, I wasn't there, too
An' you know what I say? At least it's not swine flu!
Calling London at the top of the dial
And I hope soon I'll be traveling miles

I never felt so trapped, so trapped

RIP Jack Hale (1928-2009)

Somehow I managed to miss this, but Jack Hale---one of the pioneers in the theory of dynamical systems---died last December. I didn't know Jack very well, but I met him during my time at Georgia Tech, and he was just a really nice man. He still showed up to the dynamical systems seminar every week. When I visited Georgia Tech in August 2005 (a few months after I left), he showed up on campus an extra day for my physics seminar---basically my talk was the reason he went to campus that day, and he hardly ever walked into the physics building at all. I appreciated his gesture very much.

If you're interested in Hale's mathematics, you can read the obituary and the references therein. I think those articles also mention the fact that Jack, through his leadership as department chair, helped build up Georgia Tech's mathematics department from a service department into a research powerhouse.

Ashtastic Magazine

When opportunity knocks...

As Boing Boing reports, there is now a magazine by and for the volcano-stranded.

I might actually try to contribute something.

(Tip of the cap to Justin.)

Congratulations to Tim and Christina!

Tim and Christina got hitched on Saturday! Congrats!

Here are some pictures.

'Volcano Anger'

One of my Ph.D. students has coined the term 'volcano anger' to describe my state.

Volcano leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

(Man, I am seriously stressed out over this, and it's been making it hard to get myself to eat at times.)

Or maybe: Volcano leads to stress. Stress leads to anger. Stress also leads to not eating.

Mathematical Integration

Steve Strogatz's latest column in the New York Times is on integral calculus.

Cool Baseball Story

Here is a very nice baseball story (which is really a human interest story) about a 58-year-old college baseball player. I highly recommend this article.

A Holy War is Brewing

Apparently, another holy war is brewing.

(Tip of the cap to Zifnab.)

U.K. airspace is now closed.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

It looks like I might be in the U.S. just a little bit longer than I intended.

Anyway, we shall see... Hopefully the ash plume from the volcano in Iceland won't alter my travel plans too much.

Also: Why is it always Iceland? (Damn you, Iceland!)

Update (4/17/10): My 4/18 flight is no longer happening, and I am now going to try a 4/25 flight (that's the earliest I could get) and see if I can arrive on 4/26. Wish me luck. And check out how I have decided to rail against the gods.

Best. Spoiler. Ever.

I can't help it---this demotivational poster is just too funny. Does that make me a bad person?

(This, by the way, is blog post number 2000. I produce a lot of text.)

BO at MIT

Here's the straight line (you provide the joke): "The student council has gotten money allocated to provide free sample sized toothpaste, soap, and deodorant [to combat student body odor] ..."



Also take a look at CNN's video report.

Comment: snicker

(Tip of the cap to Julius Su.)

(Note: This is blog post 1999.)

The Calculus of Change

Here is Steve Strogatz's latest column in the New York Times. In it, he discusses differential calculus (after he discussed differential geometry... go figure). Integral calculus is supposedly coming next week.

(By the way, this is blog post 1998. Soon we're going to party like it's 1999.)

Analogy between Research and The Oregon Trail

I don't actually agree with what I am about to say---in fact, I think that for most researchers it wouldn't be a good idea at all---but at the recent networks conference, a couple of us came up with an analogy between research and The Oregon Trail that I really dig and which has a bit of truth to it: When hunting, we learned that one should ignore the rabbits and go after the buffalo. (Remember that the rabbits provided so little meat that it wasn't worth the time it took to catch them.)

Blackouts and Origins of Team Names

The Biz of Baseball has a nice picture of the retarded and confusing blackout map for Major League Baseball. This shows the regions in the US in which, e.g., I cannot use my MLB.tv subscription to get a given team's games. The picture is cool; the policy is lame.


Mental Floss provides nice synopses of the origins of the team names for all Major League Baseball teams.

Effect of the Count on Umpire Strike Zones

Wow. This is pretty damned cool: The Hardball Times has done some analysis (and produced some very striking figures) that demonstrate that umpires have different strike zones for different counts.

Not that I'm surprised or anything, but it's really nice to see conclusive evidence from the data (so that I can do something other than rely on eyeballing and cynicism).

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Some Movies with Mathematics in Them

Here is a brief compilation of some movies with mathematical references in them. It's far from comprehensive and doesn't include Meet Dave (well, it doesn't have it yet; I wrote to the compiler) and presumably is missing tons of others. However, it's still an interesting list and worth blogging about, and the guy who did the compiling was my Math 2c prof at Caltech back in the day.

(Tip of the cap to the Mathematical Association of America, who posted this link on Facebook and presumably on their web page.)

I love the English language.

Jürgen Kurths said something like "We make a network of networks to try to build a 'supermodel'."

I then immediately responded with "There was a movie about that."

(Then a couple of us spent several minutes explaining the pun to him.)

Sign of the Day

I love the fact that the folks at the University of Michigan felt the need to post this sign.

Update: This demotivational poster is also amusing.

Play Ball!

The 2010 Major League Baseball season has just started! Go Dodgers!

Rectangling the Circle

In Steve Strogatz's latest article in The New York Times, he discusses limits and presents a nice proof that the area of a circle is π*r^2, where r is the radius of the circle. (The proof that I saw in calculus was with an integral, but this one in Strogatz's article is much more clever and insightful.)

What happens in College Park stays in College Park

I have a red-eye flight at 12:45 am to Baltimore (via Minneapolis), from which I will take ground transportation to College Park in order to participate in a workshop on dynamics of and on networks. The workshop goes from Monday to Friday, and it takes place on the University of Maryland campus.

I'm really looking forward to this workshop, as it's small, has a lot of interesting people, and has no parallel sessions so everybody will get to see everybody speak (modulo flight schedules and all that).

My talk---on community structure in multislice networks---is the second talk on Monday morning, and I look forward to all of the ensuing discussions that I'll be having over the week. Naturally, I plan to wear my power-law t-shirt on Monday. :)

Mike Leake to Skip Minor Leagues (at least for now)

As Rob Neyer reports in his blog, Mike Leake has been named the Reds 5th starter. He becomes the first pitcher since Darren Dreifort in 1994 and the first starting pitcher since Jim Abbot in 1989 to make his professional debut in the Major Leagues.

The story with Jim Abbot is, of course, especially nice---given that he was born without a right hand. Abbot was amazing to watch play.

Fearless Forecast: 2010 Baseball Season

Here are the predictions for the 2010 baseball season from various folks who work for ESPN. And here are mine:

American League:

AL East champion: New York Yankees
AL Central champion: Minnesota Twins
AL West champion: Texas Rangers
Wild Card: Boston Red Sox

Champion: New York Yankees (sigh...)

Most Valuable Player: Joe Mauer, Twins
Cy Young Award: Felix Hernandez, Mariners
Rookie of the Year: Brian Matusz, Orioles

Time on the rise: Cleveland Indians
Team on the decline: The The Angels Angels of Anaheim


National League:

NL East champion: Atlanta Braves
NL Central champion: St. Louis Cardinals
NL West champion: Los Angeles Dodgers
Wild Card: Philadelphia Phillies

Champion: Atlanta Braves

Most Valuable Player: Albert Pujols, Cardinals
Cy Young Award: Roy Halladay, Phillies
Rookie of the Year: Jason Heyward, Braves

Time on the rise: Washington Nationals (you heard it here first; jump on the bandwagon while you still can)
Team on the decline: Chicago Cubs


World Series: Braves over Yankees in 7 games


Update (4/03/10): Here is ESPN's collective wisdom about the prospective 2010 award winners in baseball.

Some Baseball-Related April Fools Stories

Rob Neyer has collected them and generally phrased things pretty well on his blog. The reference to Sidd Finch, a fictional baseball player in one of the best April Fools jokes ever, is much appreciated.

Way too many blog entries for me the last couple of days...

Whose idea was this?

As you can see in my latest photoblog entry, I come from a town that has placed a sculpture that is literally a steaming pile of crap in front of city hall. What the fuck?

(This has been there a couple of years, so I am a bit delayed in making this a photoblog entry.)

Tales from the arXiv: April 1st Edition (Part II)

There is at least one more fake arXiv paper.

Title: Orthographic Correlations in Astrophysics

Authors: Joe Zuntz, Thomas G. Zlosnik, Caroline Zunckel, Jonathan T. L. Zwart

Abstract: We analyze correlations between the first letter of the name of an author and the number of citations their papers receive. We look at simple mean counts, numbers of highly-cited papers, and normalized h-indices, by letter. To our surprise, we conclude that orthographically senior authors produce a better body of work than their colleagues, despite some evidence of discrimination against them.

Note: I very much appreciate the author names on this one.

Choice quote from the article: "We also follow usual practice and use a number of different estimators, continuing until we find one that can demonstrate the correct hypothesis to be true."

Another one: "Unlike real doctors, scientists are forgiven their worst work and judged on their best."

(Tip of the cap to Joe Antognini.)

Google is now called "Topeka"

In honor of the city of Topeka, Kansas temporarily naming themselves "Google", Google has decided to rename themselves "Topeka". I approve!

(In other news, Google.uk is offering animal translation capabilities. Now I wonder if past April Fools pranks by Google have differed in different countries. They must have, but it was only the obviously US-centric version of today's prank on google.com that compelled to think about this and look up what google.uk did.)

Update (4/01/10): There is a vowel outage on Gmail, but people writing in Hebrew thankfully aren't affected by it.

Update (4/01/10): Google is expressing its search times in (pseudo)randomly-chosen units for each search.

Tales from the arXiv: April 1st Edition

I saw Zombieland last night (I hadn't cried so much since Titanic), and I have zombies on my mind. So let's talk about zombies.

Like in this new article just posted on the arXiv that was co-authored by George Romero (well, not really):

Title: "How many zombies do you know?" Using indirect survey methods to measure alien attacks and outbreaks of the undead

Author: Andrew Gelman (and possibly George Romero)

Abstract: The zombie menace has so far been studied only qualitatively or through the use of mathematical models without empirical content. We propose to use a new tool in survey research to allow zombies to be studied indirectly without risk to the interviewers.

I love April 1st...

2010 SIAM Fellows

Here are the new fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. There are quite a few familiar names on this list...

RIP Jaime Escalante (1930-2010)

I just noticed that Jaime Escalante died last night. Escalante was a teacher at Garfield High School in Los Angeles, and the movie Stand and Deliver (which I really ought to see at some point) was about him. One of my friends from grad school had him as a teacher---she's quoted in the wikipedia article---and I assume that one math major from Tech who went there had him as well. (I am using the latter phrasing because I don't know for sure.)

Double Dog Dares

I was recently having a discussion with my friend Danny Schwarzblatt, and I was wondering about the origin of the phrase "double dog dare", which didn't make any sense to me. Apparently, it takes bat to the 19th century (at least), and (based on this link) it seems like there might be some negative connotations associated with it that have long since left the phrase. You can find other details at this site. Still, the origin of this phrase is far from definitive, and I'm curious whether any other juicy details are known.

By the way, is the term "etymology" still correct if one is thinking about the origin of a phrase and not just a single word?

Quote of the Day: Passover Seder Edition

Today's quote is awesome: "The Jews were not pussies." (My father, quoting from the bible at Passover Seder)

I've got the power!

Steve Strogatz's latest opinion piece in the New York Times is about powers, exponentials, and logarithms.

Quote of the Day: Tempe Festival of the Arts Edition

I spent 3 hours or so at the Tempe Festival of the Arts today. I saw lots of cool stuff, and I bought a couple of things: a t-shirt with the Chinese symbol for "chaos", a hand-crafted dragon mug (the tail is the handle, for example, and its eyes make the face cute), and a print of a gecko practicing karate. I hope the print survives my trip back to Oxford (and the travelling between now and then) so that I can frame it and hang it in my apartment in Oxford.

I bought the dragon from a guy who had tons of cool dragon-themed and wizard-themed clay items. (I especially liked a couple of the lamps and the piece that had the small dragon familiar holding up the wizard's laptop so that he could use it.) Lots of stuff was reasonably large and expensive, and it unfortunately just wasn't practical for me to buy a more expensive item from him---though I totally would have if it weren't impractical. I think he doesn't ship his larger items, but I'm going to check his website anyway.

Anyway, I was wearing my "flirt harder, I'm a physicist" t-shirt today, and while I was buying my dragon mug, another customer said: "Nice shirt. [pause] Good luck." I'm amused.

Best combination of book title and author name ever!

Today I found the best combination of book title and author name ever: Apparently, an anthropologist named Barbara B. Smuts has written a book called Sex and Friendship in Baboons. Nice!

The book is obviously on a legitimate topic, but combining the title with the author's last name just makes me giggle.

Most insane. CV. Ever.

That honor goes to Gene Stanley. Crazy.

Cornell versus Kentucky

It's amazing that Cornell unexpectedly earned a birth in the "Sweet 16" of men's college basketball. Unsurprisingly, #1 seeded Kentucky beat us. Nevertheless, here is a fun comparison between Cornell and Kentucky. Tonight at dinner, we actually had an all-Cornell table, and we watched the beginning of the game together. The game started with a 10-2 Cornell lead, but then reality quickly set in (and watching the game made it obvious even to me---and I know nothing about basketball---that Cornell was simply outmatched) and we ended up losing 62-45. In one streak, Kentucky got 30 points to Cornell's 6.

The people at dinner included me (obviously), 3 fellow CAMsters (2 of whom overlapped with me), a former Cornell postdoc who overlapped with one of the people who overlapped with me (but not with me), a former Cornell professor who overlapped with us, and a former Cornell grad student from the biometry department. We were all present in one of my 2 seminars today, 3 of the people are faculty at ASU (main campus, which I was visiting), 2 of the people are faculty at ASU West Campus, and 1 person is a visitor from Purdue. And then there's me.

I don't normally care about basketball, but this was pretty cool. I guess that's what it's like to go to a "real" school, although the fact that we were severe underdogs was a big part of the fun for me.