Four-Sided Polygons: Basically a Rehash of Triangles

I really like today's SMBC about a website in which you can post reviews on anything.

My favorite is one of the reviews of 'four-sided polygons': meh. basically a rehash of triangle.

How The West Was Won

The Dodgers beat the Giants tonight and are now officially National League West champions for 2014!! Tonight we were led once again by Clayton Kershaw, who right now is the best pitcher on the planet.

Go Dodgers!!!!

Spectral Graph Theory: Cover Art

Here is my new cover art for the field of spectral graph theory. (I couldn't wait until Halloween to make this picture.)

The Laboratory Safety Dance

The guy who gave me the key to my office wanted me to undergo a minicourse in lab safety, but thankfully I was able to talk my way out of it. (This is one of the perils of sitting in a biology department.)

Fun Fact: When I was a frosh... I broke so many things in the digital electronics lab that the department changed the policy after me so that future students had to pay for what they broke. I had a collection of the broken items taped to my door in Lloyd House.

‪#‎somebodycall5000‬

Weird Al and Weird Mason

I have pretty much the same hair as Weird Al Yankovic. Just sayin...

"Big Data" is a Religion

As far as I can see, "Big Data" seems more like a religion than anything else.

I like "Good Data" (which is far from the same thing) and "Good Models" (which can, e.g., include parameters fitted from data). I feel like I have a chance to actually understand things that way.

Data analysis definitely has its place and I certainly also have my moments when I do data analysis (see some of my papers), but data is far from everything. In short, I have ambiguous feelings about "Big Data".

Anyway, data analytics is an approach, and I use it sometimes, but there are also many other approaches that one should pursue to try to understand phenomena and solve problems.

By the way, I first posted the picture to which I link above in this blog entry, I ranted a bit about it in this blog entry, and I talked about a Small Data project at ECCS in 2013. (That work I described in that talk has subsequently been published in PNAS.)

The Random Walker Rankings are Back!

The random walker rankings are back for 2014!

Live Action Paper Mario in the Best Western?

The Best Western breakfast room in a small American town provides an interesting cross section of the population.

If this were a Paper Mario game, I would start querying them to check if any of them had seen Luigi.

The Buffalo Beholders and Other Fantasy Football Teams

Here are some very cool fantasy football t-shirts that 'put the fantasy back in fantasy football'. I especially like the Buffalo Beholders, and some of the other ones are also really cool.

(Tip of the cap to Greg Stolerman.)

"I Deserve a Fucking Cookie."

I had a long and tiring flight and then a rather ornery cab driver (and, of course, the website that estimated the taxi fare was off by a factor of about 2.5).

At least the hotel's reception has complimentary cookies at the front desk --- so to quote one of my esteemed Oxford colleagues, "I deserve a fucking cookie."

Humorous Grammar Lessons

Yes, indeed.

(Tip of the cap to Jennifer Nicoll Victor.)

Have I Gotten Stuck in a Mirror Universe?

I think I might have accidentally entered a mirror universe: a store that was a Starbucks just a few days ago has now turned into something else.

Surely that is one of the strongest signs that one has ended up in a mirror world?

(This needs to be used in the beginning of a sci-fi story.)

2014 Ig Nobel Prizes

The 2014 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded last night.

The clear winner among this year's awards is the Economics prize, whose citation is as follows: ISTAT — the Italian government's National Institute of Statistics, for proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants.

I also really like the prizes in Physics, Neuroscience, and Biology. (As concerns the Pyschology Prize, maybe I should point out that I am a night owl...?)

Rescheduling my November 31st Talk

I just realized that I committed to give a talk on November 31st, which was subsequently confirmed by the host institution. I think I'm going to have to reschedule...

(Yup, the day still doesn't exist. I guess that explains why the November 31st slot was still available?)

I think that this was quite an achievement in "awesomeness", even by my lofty standards.

"(Then again, it may not.)"

One of the new papers on the arXiv today has an abstract that ends with the following sentence: "The work may shed light on the possible properties of different ensembles of mixed systems."

Whenever I see a sentence like that to end an abstract, I automatically think about the implicit "(Then again, it may not.)" sentence that naturally follows as the next sentence.

Update (9/19/14): This also applies to sentences that end conclusions.

2014 MacArthur "Genius" Awards

The 2014 MacArthur Fellows (i.e., the so-called "genius awards") have just been announced.

And I am super excited about them this year, because my coauthor Dani Bassett is one of the recipients! It is, unsurprisingly, richly deserved. (At age 32, she is also the youngest of this year's Fellows.) The work in which I was involved is cited among her major contributions --- especially this paper and several follow-ups. Major congratulations to Dani!

A couple of mathematicians are also among this year's winners, and of course that always makes me happy. (Among the mathematicians, it is particularly cool that Yitang Zhang won because of his career path.)

53 Colorized Historical Photographs

Many of these colorized historical photographs are way cool.

(Tip of the cap to David Blau.)

Pictures from Göttingen

Here are some pictures that I took during today's excursion from the conference.

What Happens in Göttingen Stays in Göttingen

I am now traveling to Göttingen for a workshop in ecology and "networks on networks". The program, which was sent to participants yesterday, makes it looks much more like a conference than a workshop.

Academic Rookie Cards

Today's SMBC is a big win! Creating academic rookie cards is an excellent idea, and I love the snarkiness in the associated joke that SMBC told. I approve!

P.S. I am listening to the closing theme of "This Week in Baseball" right now. How appropriate!

Mathematicians and Justice

Oxford currently has a photography festival that is spread over many buildings in the city.

The two themes that we're housing in the Mathematical Institute are "Mathematicians" and "Justice".

The punchline is left as an exercise for the reader.

Grandpa and Grandmaster Flash

Through the magic of autocomplete, many grandmothers have been accidentally tagging rapper Grandmaster Flash on Facebook. I love it!

Like Grandmaster Flash, the Grandmas had no part in the song "White Lines".

Adam Dunn and the Three True Outcomes

Adam Dunn is almost certainly going to retire after the 2014 season is over. He is currently third all time in strikeouts among hitters, and he's only 34 years old. He would only need to play a couple more seasons to set the record.

Jayson Stark wrote about Dunn's career today, and some of the numbers are mind-boggling (like how often fielders weren't particularly needed when he came to the plate). Amazing.

Update (10/01/14): It's now official (and unsurprising): Adam Dunn is retiring. He is on the Oakland Athletics, who just lost to the Royals last night in the AL Wildcard one-game playoff. This season was the first time that Adam Dunn got into the playoffs (after more than 2000 games played, which made him the active "leader" in that category), and he didn't even get to play in the game.

Being Part of the Story of Science

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hmmmm.... I Think Oxford is a Cult

If you think a bit about this comic from SMBC a bit, it does kind of make one ponder the possibility that University of Oxford is a cult. There does seem to be some level of truth to that perspective.

Pendulum Wave: Bowling Ball Edition

Go ahead: Take a look for yourself. It's pretty damn awesome! (I like demos.)

(Tip of the cap to Damien Storey.)

Ten Books

Over the past couple of days, I was seeing a meme over Facebook to name 10 books that have stuck with you for whatever reason. This meme seems more interesting to me than most, and I was tagged today, so I decided to play along.

The rules are as follows: In a text post, list ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take more than a few minutes, and don’t think too hard---they don’t have to be the "right" or "great" works, just ones that have touched you. (And because it says "books" rather than "novels", I decided to include some math and physics books, because that is part of what came to mind. I also included some other possibly "nonstandard" choices, but I could try to come up with a list that is pure fiction if you want. :) )


Here are 10 books (in no particular order), but numbered for convenience:

1. Introduction to Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos, Steven H. Strogatz

2. The Dragonlance Chronicles (original trilogy; you could possibly include Dragonlance Legends as well), Weis and Hickman

3. Dark Elf Trilogy (especially Homeland, which is the first book), R. A. Salvatore (3 books again)

4. Manual of the Planes, Jeff Grubb (1st edition AD & D sourcebook)

5. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and its sequels), Douglas Adams

6. Shōgun, James Clavell

7. Noble House, James Clavell

8. The Scouting Report/The Scouting Notebook series of yearly baseball previews (may they rest in peace), by Stats Inc. in some years (with writers John Dewan and others)

9. Thermal Physics, 2nd ed, Kittel and Kroemer (this was my first statistical mechanics textbook, from Ph 2c at Caltech; I found it really inspiring to start from counting and to derive things like temperature)

10. Rotisserie League Baseball: The Official Rule Book and Draft Day Guide, various yearly editions, Glen Wagonner, Robert Sklar, and others.

"99 Red Balloons" Covered with Red Balloons

Yup, yes it is.

(Tip of the cap to whoever posts for Nena on Facebook.)

New to the Blogroll: Bruggebrain

Through the magic of e-mail signatures, I noticed that my doctoral student Birgit Brüggemeier has a blog. She studies neurogenetics, and is working on an awesome project. You can read about what she studies on her page.

At some point, I should also delete the blogs on the blogroll that are no longer being updated, but for now I'll let you --- dear reader --- scroll just a little bit more. That is what Janis Joplin sang about, right?

Community Detection and Scottish Independence

A few years ago, I read a very interesting paper that is rather topical when it comes to the issue of Scottish independence.

The final sentence of the abstract reads as follows: We also quantify the effects of partitioning, showing for instance that the effects of a possible secession of Wales from Great Britain would be twice as disruptive for the human network than that of Scotland.

The methodology in the paper is "community detection" --- a type of clustering --- applied to networks constructed from mobile phone data.

Technology Translation

So.... can anybody translate what a funding agency means when they write "Describe the empowerment of new and high-potential actors towards future technological leadership."

Seriously, WTF. I read that, and my mind just goes "[tech] [tech] [tech] [tech] [tech] [tech] [tech]" like in the script for a sci-fi movie.

I had a ton of problems with just the buzzword version of the word "disruptive", which seems like child's play compared to the sentence above.

Quote of the Day: Referee Request Edition

Well, I haven't used this line in my decline letters (at least not recently) because maybe it isn't the kindest thing in the world to write, but there are certainly times when I want to end my e-mails declining a request like this: Please also make it clearer in the future what method of communication you would like from me for declining review requests.

To give some context, I consider it exceptionally obnoxious when somebody asks me to referee something on a short timescale and assumes that I will accept the reviewing assignment. It's a very poor assumption, and in fact it increases by a rather substantial margin the chance that I will decline the request.

It would be good, by the way, if every such request automatically included the procedure to decline and not just the procedure to submit a referee report.

P.S. Get off my lawn!

Gaussian Curvature and its Practical Consequences

Wired has a very cool article about manifolds and curvature.

I have used ice cream cones (and the act of unrolling them) to help explain curved versus straight geodesics for one of the problems our student had to do in calculus of variations. I then "assigned" my students to do this the next time they went to the local ice cream place.

(Tip of the cap to Jeremy Kun.)

Pop Sonnets

The blog Pop Sonnets presents Shakespearean-sonnet versions of pop songs. It's pretty amusing.

(Tip of the cap to Alan Champneys.)

RIP Joan Rivers (1933–2014)

Joan Rivers, a comedy legend, died today.

I don't remember when I first heard of her, but it was a long time ago, and vastly predates when I saw her in 1987 in Spaceballs, where she played the voice of Dot Matrix (who is, roughly, analogous to C3PO). That's her role that I know the best (by far), and my favorite quote of hers from that movie is the following one: That was my virgin-alarm. It's programmed to go off before you do!

(Tip of the cap to David Blau.)

Polymeric K_{3,3}

Some chemists have now constructed the graph K_{3,3} (and other tiny graphs) out of a polymer, and they seem to want to go after Königsberg next.

In related news, I think the South Side (aka: applied and related) of the Mathematical Institute now should annex the North Crystal, which just so happens to have a K_{3,3} graph as its vertices and edges.

(I'll be truely impressed, however, when somebody successfully constructs the ZKK graph using such polymers.)

Best Pitcher on the Planet

Well, first of all, Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher on the planet right now, and he's really showing this year that he truly is one of the all-time greats.

We saw a bunch of that before, but he's really taken things to a new level. I hadn't realized this until last night's Dodger broadcast, but Vin Scully mentioned that Bryce Harper's homerun against Kershaw during Tuesday's game against the Nationals was not only the first homerun by a left-handed hitter against Kershaw this year but it's also the first RBI of any kind against Kershaw by a lefty this year. Holy shit! I looked at Kershaw's 2014 stats late last night --- and, in particular, his separate stats against righties and lefties --- and indeed this is true. Spectacular! (Note that the game recap to which I linked mentions the fact about Harper's HR but not about the RBI that went with it. The latter is considerably more impressive.)

It's so awesome having Kershaw on my team! Hopefully, he'll get not only the National League Cy Young Award this year but also the Most Valuable Player Award. (Right now, I think Giancarlo Stanton is a slightly better choice for MVP than Kershaw, so we'll see what the rest of the year brings.)

The Basis of a Good Outfield

An article tagline that I would love to see in a newspaper: "Jayson Werth, Bryce Harper, and Denard Span form the basis of a solid Nationals outfield."

Sadly, I doubt most newspapers like linear-algebraic jokes as much as I do. Maybe an independent newspaper?

Tales from the ArXiv: Herbivore Meltdown

I love the main label of the caption of Figure 5 (on page 12) of this new paper. It starts with the bold text "Meltdown of the herbivores." I love it!

Anyway, the next time you go into a forest, be very careful in case of herbivore meltdown. (I have all sorts of wonderful images in my head at the moment.)

And googling "herbivore meltdown" yields the fact that "ecological meltdown" is actually a standard term. It's certainly very image-provoking. I have to say, though, that I also find the term very humorous, even with its very serious implications.

Mathematical GIFs

These mathematical GIFs are sweet.

Invertible Yogurt

The yogurt that I had on Saturday successfully passed the Invertibility Test* (that is, it was invertible), so I knew that it was safe to eat.

* The Invertibility Test (tm) is especially important for milkshakes, as passing this test is the only way to ensure that they are safe to consume. (For other food items, the only way to pass this test is to not be invertible.)

For more about invertible milkshakes, see Legends of Caltech III and also one of its web-only stories.

(Tip of the cap to Frances Schaeffer for taking the picture.)

Raindrops on Spider Webs

I really like the patterning that I saw this morning with a bunch of raindrops on spider webs. I am showing one picture in this entry, but here are a few more.

The Transformers: Now in 1D

Here is a really awesome spoof trailer for a one-dimensional version of The Transformers. Awesome!

My favorite line is the one about from one end of space to the other.

(Tip of the cap to Kevin Hickerson.)

"Objecting Function"

Fun Fact: "Objecting Function" is not the same thing as "Objective Function".

I am waiting for this function to complain about the fact that multiple algorithms use it before it's been defined in the paper. (Well, I am going to complain about that one even if the function doesn't.)

It's a draft, but it's a fun typo nonetheless. I have certainly done more than my share of amusing word substitution. (It's good to have fun with it, and it's also good to catch it before we submit the paper and upload it to the arXiv.)

Update: I fixed another amusing typo in my draft ("asses" -> "assess"), and I am reminded of my favorite typo that I ever saw in a draft. This was a draft written by one of my Georgia Tech students, and it referred to "consecration" of angular momentum. I find this all the funnier because it occurred in Georgia.

Which Yiddish Word Describes Me?

You can check your own personal Yiddish word for yourself. I got "meshugene". [[whistles]]

By the way, I phrased things the way I did in the paragraph above because today is the 25th anniversary of the release of the song Personal Jesus.

The Onion Wins Again: GOP Edition

Yup, The Onion wins again. Hilarious!

The Rise of Nature

Charles Day writes about Rutherford, Bohr, and the rise of the journal Nature.

Damn you, Rutherford. :) What a monster you wrought.

(To be fair, this did make a lot sense in the context of the times, but I continue to be dismayed at what this has evolved into.)

Not in Academia! Never!

Surely we would never do anything like this in academia... Oh wait.

Rainbow Eucalyptus Tree

IFLS reminds me of the rainbow eucalyptus tree, which is the most colorful tree in the world! I would love to see one of these live. In the meantime, go to Google Images for some very pretty pictures.

Headlines and the Name Game

Sometimes, somebody has a last name that makes a headline awesome. No umlaut, but this headline from today's Beverly Hills Weekly is still pretty damn good.

Update: This of course reminds me of a certain scene in a certain Mel Brooks movie. (And while I'm thinking of that movie, don't forget this scene.)

Harmonographs

A harmonograph is a drawing device that is constructed of coupled pendula. Here are some instructions for how to make one based on triple pendula. Oxford's Museum of the History of Science apparently houses this one, although it wasn't there the last time I visited. I also remember seeing something along these lines (or maybe it is even an example of one?) at KITP.

And, of course, this automatically makes me think of the Spirograph drawing set that I had as a kid.

(Tip of the cap to the National Museum of Mathematics.)

Editable SMBC?

I want an editable version of this SMBC to inflict on my buddies in complex systems...

(And I am going to be good and get some work done and then read a bit of a novel instead of opening up graphics software.)

Things People Say

In case you haven't ever checked out my quotes page, you might find some amusing things there.

Like this classy one: "If I do that, do I have to talk to you again?" (Me, on the phone with Expedia customer service, 9/17/10)

More Sobering Statistics

The Onion wins again: apparently, 79% of statistics are now sobering. As Todd Snider likes to sing (in Statistician's Blues), "75% of all statistics are made up right there on the spot."

The tagline for the article from The Onion, which reports on fake results out of MIT, quotes a scientist as saying "We found that there are very few, if any, encouraging statistics left."

Indeed.

A Colorful Stranger Alighted on my Doorstep

And here it is.

What Happens in Limerick Stays in Limerick

I'll be flying to Limerick tonight for a grant meeting tomorrow. In honor of my trip, I present the following:

There once was an Oxford professor.
Who wasn't much of a confessor.
When his rigor was pondered.
He said his mind wandered.
But at least he was a possessor.


(I think the last line could be better, but I didn't exactly spend a long time on this.)

Update: "Assessor" would also work (and give a slightly different flavor) instead of "confessor".

Human, Meet Nonlinear Oscillator. Nonlinear Oscillator, Meet Human.

Yes, really. The title of the paper was a bit odd (because of the stress on "social" interactions via the 'human dynamic clamp'), but this idea looks very cool!

A Very Short Paper Title

Wow, now that is a very short paper title: 'Q', just 'Q' --- which represents 1 divided by the attenuation factor (not modularity and also not Q).

Sociologist Jim Moody once submitted a paper called "Titles" to a journal. He was trying to get a one-word title, but that didn't fly with the journal, so he switched the title to something very long. (I e-mailed Jim to ask him for a link, which I will provide once I have it.)

The shortest title (in terms of number of words) that I have used in a paper is two. That occurs in http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/porterm/papers/multilayer_review-published.pdf this paper. It broke my previous record of 3 words. Now I need to try to write a paper with a one-world title. I don't think I'll ever get down to one letter.

Update: Jim sent me a .pdf of his paper. It turns out that the story I heard about the title being hugely long isn't true. Rather, his paper is called "Trends in Sociology Titles", which is accurate but doesn't have the same effect as going overboard.

Back in the Day: Spring 2001 Penn State/Maryland Dynamical Systems Conference

The recent announcement of the Fields Medals brought me to thinking back at the 2001 Spring Maryland-Penn State dynamical systems conference.

In addition to the schedule --- which included somebody who already had won the Fields medal, who I successfully challenged with one of my questions even though I was just a grad student; somebody else who would win one later; and several other speakers who I met for the first time at that conference and would see many times since over the years --- there were also other people (like Howie Weiss) in the audience with whom I would subsequently interact a lot over the years. This also includes several people from University of Maryland (such as Brian Hunt, who was one of the conference's main organizers), though I am pretty sure that Jim Yorke wasn't around for that conference. (I would meet him many times later.) One of my friends from Caltech also attended the conference, and several audience members who weren't speakers also have moved on to bigger and better mathematical things.

I also vaguely remember that audience-member Misha Brin (who was not yet known as "Sergey's father" at the time) was not particularly fond of the research that I presented in my talk, though I'm not really sure whether that was just his mannerisms or his actual opinion.

Several of the attendees who were still doing rather pure work then are now rather applied in most of their work. (Or have even become famous entrepreneurs in the tech world. :) ) Given what people have done since that conference, it's a rather impressive selection of speakers among the people who hadn't yet "made it" at the time.

Gorgeous Mathematical Sculptures

Eric Standley's mathematical sculptures are absolutely gorgeous.

(Tip of the cap to The National Museum of Mathematics.)

Vacation: Graduate School Style

This issue of PhD Comics about vacations in graduate school is pretty much true.

(Tip of the cap to Carlos Castillo Chavez.)

Nope, None of Them Here

I overheard the following comment in the dining hall at Churchill College, Cambridge by one the kitchen staff: "I hate really smart people who think they're above everybody else."

We don't have any such people at Oxford, of course. :)

Note: There was no comma in what she said (so it wasn't "people, who").

My 'Personal Vision'

I am giving some comments on an EU consultation for how mathematics can help with challenges in big data and high-performance computing. The sign-up section contains a long field called "Personal Vision" where we are apparently supposed to stand on our soapbox and give our grant vision. I just wrote the following:

"I like to study interesting problems."

I hope they consider that to be sufficient.

2014 Fields Medals

The 2014 Fields Medals have now been awarded. The Fields Medals are considered the most prestigious award in mathematics, though the Abel Prize is giving the Fields Medal a run for its money.

The 2014 Fields Medalists are Artur Avila, Manjul Bhargava, Martin Hairer, and Maryam Mirzakhani. Avila won for his work on dynamical systems and renormalization, so there's a victory for the home team. (Dynamical systems is part of the home team because it's one of my research subjects.) Bhargava won for his work on the geometry of numbers. Hairer won for his work on stochastic partial differential equations, and his joint work with Jonathan Mattingly was included in his prize citation. (Now I need to go give Mattingly crap for this --- just because it's fun to give him crap. I could focus on the "too old" part, though of course just about all of us in mathematics would be happy to get a sidebar mention for something like this!) His work is also in an area that has some relation to some of my interests. Mirzakhani got a Fields Medal for her work on dynamics and geometry of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces, and she is the first woman ever to win the Fields Medal. (About damn time. Surely there are others who could have been so recognized previously?) Dynamical systems --- including billiard systems, which I like a great deal --- play a significant role in some of her recognized work as well, so dynamical systems in its various guises and places where it makes an impact --- and it is a rather diverse field indeed --- has done rather well this year. (Statistical mechanics, which is also near and dear to my heart and which is also rather diverse, did exceptionally well in the 2010 Fields Medals, and it also reared its head among the 2006 winners.)

Update (8/14/14): My department head Sam Howison has written an opinion piece in The Guardian on women in mathematics and Maryam Mirzakhani's Fields Medal.

RIP Robin Williams (1951–2014)

Comedy legend Robin Williams was found dead earlier today (the 11th) from an apparent suicide. I'm not sure what my favorite one of his roles is, but he certainly had some memorable ones (such as Mork and in movies like Good Morning Vietnam and Dead Poets Society).

(Tip of the cap to several people via their Facebook posts.)

Update: The CNN article about Williams' death has some additional information.

What Happens in Cambridge (UK) Stays in Cambridge (UK) [2014 Edition]

I only got back from Caltech yesterday evening, and today I am taking a train to Cambridge for the 2014 SIAM Conference on Nonlinear Waves and Coherent Structures.

I have prepared a very topical slide for my talk. Be prepared. :)

It's a Meme: #HunterPenceSigns

The #HunterPenceSigns meme is pretty damn awesome. Sometimes it's bizarre what becomes a "thing", and this meme is officially a "thing". (Oh, and as you can see from the article to which I linked, Hunter Pence is handling the gentle trolling really well.)

Update (8/07/14): Here are some more Hunter Pence signs.

"Longdaysin"

I just learned (in a talk by Frank Doyle) about an appropriately-named compound called "longdaysin" because of its ability to slow down biological clocks. Even cooler than "ubiquitin". Those wacky biologists...

The Best Thesis Defense is a Good Thesis Offense!

YES!!!!!!!!

(Do you know who said that? Mel, the cook on Alice.)

And, yes, today's xkcd is a huge win.

Baseball Cup Art

Yup, the Baseball cup-art war has just been taken to a brand new level. First it was the Rockies spelling "Rox", then it was the Cubs spelling "Cubs", and now a minor league pitcher has given us a seen from Pac-Man. I approve!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love, Three-Body Problems, and Chaos

Well, mathematicians certainly like to discuss love and its chaotic implications. (Remember, the three-body problem is provably chaotic.)

Post-Seminar Comments

After our applied math seminars, we have coffee and cookies (and other pastries, or "cakes" as they are known in the UK) in the common room.

Earlier this year, after a particularly frustrating seminar, one of my colleagues uttered the memorable line "I'm going to have a fucking cookie. I earned it." (We all earned it. It was awful.)

But the best (and most memorable) post-seminar piece of snark that I have ever heard occurred during my postdoc years at Caltech and came from the mouth of Catalin Turc: "His theory is retarded."

What Happens at Caltech Stays at Caltech

You want an awesome ‪#‎tbt ('Throwback Thursday')‬? OK, I'll give you an awesome #tbt!

Tomorrow, I am flying out to Pasadena to attend a reunion/workshop for the 20th anniversary of the CDS* department at Caltech!

And I have even packed my faded 20-year old Lloyd shirt that I got ... [all together now] ... when I was frosh at Caltech in Fall 1994.

* Control and Dynamical Systems (not TFM)

Origin of Mysterious World Trade Center Ship

I missed this story previously, but the remains of an old ship was unearthed under the collapsed World Trade Center in 2010, and now scientists believe that they know the origin of this ship. It seems to have been built from trees that were felled in Pennsylvania in 1773. Very cool!

Also, I love the description of the scientific article that reported the discovery as "probably the most attention grabbing story ever published in Tree-Ring Research".

Vin Scully to Continue Broadcasting Dodger Games in 2015!!!!

It's become an annual rite during the Major League Baseball season. Vin Scully takes his time to figure out if he'll continue broadcasting Dodger games the next year, and yesterday the Dodgers announced that Vin will continue broadcasting games for them in 2015. Awesome!!!!

(Tip of the cap to whoever posts for 'Vin Scully' and MLB on Facebook.)

XKCD on Chaos: "Can You Do That Weird Laugh?"

The topic for today's XKCD is chaos, which is of course near and dear to my heart. I love the mouseover: "Although the oral exam for the doctorate was just 'can you do that weird laugh?'"

Hmmm... I got my PhD in quantum chaos, and I never got that question on my oral exam to defend my thesis. :(

Achievement Unlocked: Construct Infinite Loop in \Latex

Until just now, I never realized that it was possible to construct an infinite loop in \Latex. But it is, and an infinite loop is indeed an understandable outcome of the following text: \newcommand{\lcm}{\mbox{\lcm}}", which I of course obtained via the magic of 'replace all'. It turns out that my \Latex compiler (TeXShop) apparently has an automatic abort for such situations.

3D Printed Version of the Zachary Karate Club

Thanks to Renaud Lambiotte for creating a 3D-printed version of the Zachary Karate Club and sending it to me as a gift.

Sadly, it didn't survive snail mail, and this algorithm resulted in what is clearly a suboptimal partition.

Tales from the ArXiv: "Deep Community Detection"

This paper, called "Deep Community Detection", makes me want to write a paper called "Shallow Community Detection". It's now officially on my list. One thing that is great about the title is that there is an inherent grammatical ambiguity regarding whether the authors are detecting deep communities (which is what they have in mind) or whether the community detection that they are performing is deep. That is why I like the title.

Also, I love Fig. 8. Once again, the Porter-Mucha-Warmbrand 3-clique makes an appearance in a paper figure. (It occurred in a Physical Review E paper earlier this year, and I got the honor of being an initial condition for that other paper.)

George Harrison Memorial Tree Killed by Actual Beetles

In what may be one of the most ironic things ever, a Memorial Tree for George Harrison died as a result of a beetle infestation. D'oh!

Dueling to the Death to Prove a Theorem

Whoever posts items on Facebook for MATLAB posted this fascinating article on 10 of the maddest scientists who ever lived. My favorite line in this article comes from the blurb about Kevin Warwick:

Research is meant to be risky, transgressive, and unsettling, and Warwick reminds us that there are still scientists out there who would probably duel to the death to prove a theorem.

Here, here!

Domestication and Floppiness

Here is a very cool article that explains a new hypothesis about why so many domesticated animals have floppy ears.

"Multilayer Networks"

Our mega-review article on multilayer networks is finally out! The page proof stage was particularly painful, so it's great that the published version of our article is now available. (In my Facebook post, I wrote "After a long and painful bout with page proofs". Reading my words now, it's like "page proofs" are a disease, thought that allusion is not what I intended when I wrote that text.) We don't have things like page numbers yet, but those will come. (By the way, "our" equals the PLEXMATH team.)

Here are the details about the article.


Title: Multilayer Networks

Authors: Mikko Kivelä, Alex Arenas, Marc Barthelemy, James P. Gleeson, Yamir Moreno, and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: In most natural and engineered systems, a set of entities interact with each other in complicated patterns that can encompass multiple types of relationships, change in time and include other types of complications. Such systems include multiple subsystems and layers of connectivity, and it is important to take such ‘multilayer’ features into account to try to improve our understanding of complex systems. Consequently, it is necessary to generalize 'traditional' network theory by developing (and validating) a framework and associated tools to study multilayer systems in a comprehensive fashion. The origins of such efforts date back several decades and arose in multiple disciplines, and now the study of multilayer networks has become one of the most important directions in network science. In this paper, we discuss the history of multilayer networks (and related concepts) and review the exploding body of work on such networks. To unify the disparate terminology in the large body of recent work, we discuss a general framework for multilayer networks, construct a dictionary of terminology to relate the numerous existing concepts to each other and provide a thorough discussion that compares, contrasts and translates between related notions such as multilayer networks, multiplex networks, interdependent networks, networks of networks and many others. We also survey and discuss existing data sets that can be represented as multilayer networks. We review attempts to generalize single-layer-network diagnostics to multilayer networks. We also discuss the rapidly expanding research on multilayer-network models and notions like community structure, connected components, tensor decompositions and various types of dynamical processes on multilayer networks. We conclude with a summary and an outlook.

Drugs and Alcohol Under the Microscope

Here are some pictures of drugs and pictures of alcohol under a microscope.

I previously blogged about what alcohol looks like under a microscope.

"GER... ARG"

As Dave Relyea has pointed out: For all Buffy fans: The world cup final has a scoreboard, and it reads: "GER... ARG".

I approve!

What Happens in Silwood Park Stays in Silwood Park

This evening, I'll be taking the train (and, apparently, replacement bus service) to Ascot to get myself over to Imperial College's Silwood Park campus for environmental fluctuations, recovery, and resilience of biological networks, which is part of their program on Grand Challenges in the Ecosystem and the Environment (GCEE).

Take a look at a a map of the local area, which covers Silwood, Windsor Park, and Maidenhead. Based on the names of some of the places on this map, it looks like I'm going to be pretty close to a Hellmouth. Also, this map is a great example of how awesome the Brits can be sometimes with their naming conventions. It would be pretty damn awesome, for example, if "Cheapside" has evolved to be a posh, expensive location filled with luxurious mansions. ("Unfortunately, I can't afford to live in Cheapside.")

Update: I have reached the center for population biology that Imperial College has at their Silkwood Park campus, and there are rabbits all over the place here. There is something right with the world.

"A Simple Generative Model of Collective Online Behavior"

Last Monday, PNAS published, in their early edition (so there are no volume or page numbers yet), a new article by my collaborators and me about how to model complex systems in a way that incorporates data directly into a simple model. We also illustrate with this example a nice situation in which several different situations (in particular, different parameter values, where one gets different qualitative mechanisms in different regions of parameter space) give the same qualitative long-time behavior (and very similar quantitative long-time behavior) so that one needs to consider the temporal dynamics explicitly to distinguish between the mechanisms. There are many papers that seem to assume mechanisms based on statistical fitting of long-time (or even equilibrium) behavior, and that is very dangerous. Here are the details about the article.


Title: A Simple Generative Model of Collective Online Behavior

Authors: James P. Gleesona, Davide Cellai, Jukka-Pekka Onnela, Mason A. Porter, and Felix Reed-Tsochas

Abstract: Human activities increasingly take place in online environments, providing novel opportunities for relating individual behaviors to population-level outcomes. In this paper, we introduce a simple generative model for the collective behavior of millions of social networking site users who are deciding between different software applications. Our model incorporates two distinct mechanisms: one is associated with recent decisions of users, and the other reflects the cumulative popularity of each application. Importantly, although various combinations of the two mechanisms yield long-time behavior that is consistent with data, the only models that reproduce the observed temporal dynamics are those that strongly emphasize the recent popularity of applications over their cumulative popularity. This demonstrates--even when using purely observational data without experimental design--that temporal data-driven modeling can effectively distinguish between competing microscopic mechanisms, allowing us to uncover previously unidentified aspects of collective online behavior.

Significance Paragraph (which is now a part of PNAS papers): One of the most common strategies in studying complex systems is to investigate and interpret whether any "hidden order" is present by fitting observed statistical regularities via data analysis and then reproducing such regularities with long-time or equilibrium dynamics fromsome generative model. Unfortunately, many different models can possess indistinguishable long-time dynamics, so the above recipe is often insufficient to discern the relative quality of competing models. In this paper, we use the example of collective online behavior to illustrate that, by contrast, time-dependent modeling can be very effective at disentangling competing generative models of a complex system.


This paper has gotten a little bit of press coverage. You can find links to press coverage for this article (and other articles of mine) on the press part of my web page.

"Peer Review Ring" Busted

A "peer review ring" (kind of like a prostitution ring, except with more scientists) at Journal of Vibration and Control has been busted. The situation is described in this article, and you can find more information about this peer-review scandal in this article.

The now-former Editor in Chief of JVC is Ali Nayfeh, who has written some very nice books on nonlinear vibrations. (I have one of his books. There is some really good stuff in there.) He has apparently "retired" as EiC, though my expectation is that it is a combination of genuine retirement and embarrassment that this scandal took place on his watch.

The choice quote comes from Retraction Watch, who started their report in the busting of the peer-review ring with "This one deserves a 'wow.'"

(Tip of the cap to Jennifer Nicoll Victor.)

3D Fractal Sculptures

These fractal sculptures look awesome!

Tending Towards Infinity

At the conference I am attending, I just saw a t-shirt with the text "Old mathematicians don't die, they just tend to infinity." I approve!

Well, the grammar could be better --- there should be a semicolon instead of a comma --- but I still love the shirt.

Monday Cricketblogging

Here are some pictures of me playing cricket last Friday. Also notice that I am consuming ice cream in the team photo (and that the number 137 was requested with complete forethought and malice).

What Happens in Madrid Stays in Madrid

I have arrived in Madrid for the 10th AIMS Conference on Differential Equations, Dynamical Systems, and Applications.

The internet at this hotel is painfully slow. :(

Let's Call The Whole Thing Off

You say "universality"
I say "bullshit"
Let's call the whole thing off.

This is inspired by this song, obviously.

Rogue Demon Hunters (For Real)

Yes, really.

For a Good Time, Call (Desmond) Jennings

Joe Maddon has decided to tip his cap to Tommy Tutone for the Ray's lineup tonight. I approve!

Well, technically, there are a few additional digits in the lineup and I don't remember '0' being used for the DH position before --- but points to Joe Maddon for doing this on purpose! That's the type of thing I would do. :)

Remember, the magic digits are 867-5309. And if you ever call that phone number --- no matter what timezone you're in --- make sure to ask for "Jenny".

(Tip of the cap to whoever posts for MLB on Facebook, though I didn't realize from their post that Joe Maddon did this on purpose. I am linking to a different article than the one from their post.)

Revenge of the Carnivorous Flying Squirrel

The carnivorous flying squirrel is real (and not just a private D & D joke between one of my friends and me). I think I rolled more critical hits in the infamous CFSA incident, which was from my first time as a dungeon master, then I have any time since.

I have seen the CFS, which appeared in Monster Manual II in the first edition of AD & D, in discussions of the lamest D & D creatures. Here is a Pathfinder version of this critter.

Tales from the ArXiv: Predicting Talk Attendance at Conferences

This paper discusses the predictability of talk attendance at conferences.

I think it depends: Is the conference in Snowbird or Maui? :)

The one time we had a SIAM dynamical systems conference in Maui, the attendance as a function of time was, in one word, "impressive". I did make an important connection that I am pretty sure led to my postdoc job at Georgia Tech. The lesson here is clear: attend conferences in Maui.

A Spectral Navigation Algorithm

Clearly, some users of London's transportation system are using a spectral algorithm for navigation.

(Tip of the cap to Sang Hoon Lee.)

Pictures from the Networks MRC

Here are some pictures from the inaugural workshop of the Mathematics Research Community on Network Science.

Recall: I was at Snowbird in an even year!