Live Action Super Mario Plumbing

I love this.

Box Score of the Day

Today's game between San Diego and Tampa Bay was a bit odd. The team (Tampa Bay) that allowed 15 runs used 2 pitchers, and the team (San Diego) that allowed 1 run used 5 pitchers.

Meanwhile, Chase Utley of the Dodgers returned to his old stomping grounds in Philadelphia as a visiting player for the first time. The fans greeted him very warmly indeed in his first couple of plate appearances, and then he got a curtain call from the Phillies fans for each of his two homers today. Very classy!

Matching Bar Graphs to Percentages

Good try, NBC2. Thank you for playing.

(Tip of the cap to Maria Satterwhite and at least one person who I can't remember.)

Hidden Figures: A Movie to Look Forward To!

Hidden Figures is coming out in January 2017. I am looking forward to watching it!

A Squirrel with a GoPro Camera

A squirrel with a GoPro camera gives a nice view of the trees —— just like in Conker's Bad Fur Day.

(Tip of the cap to Leslie Sheppard.)

What Happens in San Pedro (Costa Rica) Stays in San Pedro (Costa Rica)

I am off the Costa Rica to give some lectures on dynamical systems, networks, and combinations thereof.

(Thanks to my buddy Fabio Sanchez for making this happen!)

Update (8/15/16): I originally described the location as "San José", which is technically correct, but that is the name of the province. The name of the city is San Pedro, which is the capital of Montes de Oca Canto in San José.

Note: This is not the "San Pedro" from one of Madonna's best songs ever.

"Mathematics, Failure, and the World’s Most Famous Walking Event"

Here is my latest post for the Improbable Research blog.

"Everything is Fucked: The Syllabus"

Sanjay Srivastava (University of Oregon) put together a summary of the field of psychology called "Everything is Fucked: The Syllabus".

My favorite quote from his blog entry is the following one: "The format of this seminar is as follows: Each week we will read and discuss 1-2 papers that raise the question of whether something is fucked." Amidst the topics of all of the other weeks, I am highly amused by the title of week 7: "Interlude: Everything is fine, calm the fuck down".

Of course, there is also the serious side to this about the enormous amount of messiness in basically every step in fields like psychology (and of course there are significant complications in scientific practice more generally).

I know I would be interested in taking this course! Would you?

(Tip of the cap to the Improbable Research blog.)

Code for Making XKCD-Style Plots in R

Because it had to be done. And now I need to find a good way to use this in one of my papers.

(Tip of the cap to Michael Ward.)

Prince Fielder's Baseball Career is Over

While Prince Fielder hasn't technically officially retired, he has announced that his playing career is over because medically he will never be able to play again.

As this graphic illustrates, Fielder finishes his career with very similar statistics (including the same number of home runs) as his father Cecil. I guess it's the circle of life. This is pretty cool, and they are the same type of player. I do like how Prince makes Cecil look positively sleek with this pair of pictures.

Also, because of their defensive "value", the two Fielders (despite their monicker) also both have "high" ranks among the players with the lowest Wins Above Replacement (WAR) for all Major League players with 300+ home runs.

Several other notable sluggers are also finishing off their Major League careers. Alex Rodriguez is playing his last game this coming Friday, Mark Teixeira is retiring at the end of the year, and David Ortiz has been doing a retirement victory lap all season. Of these sluggers, only Ortiz is going out on top of his game.

Tales from the ArXiv: Lyapunov Exponents and Dungeons & Dragons Dice

My latest 'favorite' figure caption —— to slightly abuse the term 'favorite', because it means I really like it but need not necessarily be my literal favorite —— from a math paper comes from today's arXiv offering from Amie Wilkinson.

This paper is an expository mathematical look at Lyapunov exponents and why they're interesting. It is based on Wilkinson's 2016 JMM current-events lecture.

By the way, Amie Wilkinson is the example I have broached when I brought up to mathematicians whether somebody who missed the age-40 Fields Medal would have gotten one if life breaks, etc. were taken into account. I think she probably would have gotten one.

2017 American Physical Society "April" Meeting.

Let's be rebels. Why not have the 2017 American Physical Society April Meeting in in January? (Yes, really.)

My Gaming Profile: "High Conflict, Relaxed, and Gregarious"

I filled out a survey for my gaming profile. Some of the recommended games will look familiar to people who know me.

(Tip of the cap to Geek & Sundry.)

"Gifted, Passionate Student Really Stretching Limits Of School’s Resources"

And The Onion wins yet again.

Meme: #firstsevenjobs

Here is my contribution to the meme #firstsevenjobs:

1. Tech Editor (newspaper editor at university newspaper)
2. Teacher's assistant in mathematics
3. Postdoc in mathematics
4. Postdoc in physics
5. Faculty member in mathematics department
6. Faculty member in a different mathematics department
7. ?

#sorry :)

(Well, I had a one-semester postdoc at MSRI as well, but that rolls into jobs (3) and (4) and occurred during a semester off of job (3). I could count that one if I need to get up to seven, but I like the idea of leaving the above open, as I already needed to stretch this out rather substantially. I also had a couple of paid undergraduate research projects in mathematics, so I suppose I could put those early in the list.)

Ichiro Suzuki Gets 3000th Major League Hit!

Ichiro Suzuki tripled today for his 3000th career Major League hit. Spectacular!

Ichiro also got more than 1000 career hits in the highest level of professional baseball in Japan.

What an amazing player!

"Eldritch Horror" (Tabletop Game)

I tried the game Eldritch Horror last night. It came out in 2013 and was "inspired by" Arkham Horror, which I bought all the way back in 2005 when it first came out and have enjoyed immensely. (I also own the Dunwich Horror expansion to Arkham Horror.)

Yesterday's game was eventful. My first investigator got turned into a Deep One (and was DEVOURED), and we all — including my second character — died horribly when Azathoth awoke, and the world got DEVOURED. (I love the name of the event — which involved DEVOURING by name — and the front of the card describes flipping it over to resolve the event. And then you flip over the card, and everybody just dies horribly, with the world along with it.) But I feel fine.

And getting Innsmouth Look on the back of the Curse card when I was expecting the karmic reversal of the Curse going away that someone else got previously — oh, right, the backs of the cards might be different... I missed that part — and then turning into a Deep One and being DEVOURED instead of merely taking a lot of sanity damage if I were not near the sea was a rather unexpected turn of events.

In so many ways, the dice were simply not on my side last night.

All in all, it was a rather enjoyable first game of Eldritch Horror.

Note: Eldritch Horror was inspired by Arkham Horror (as stated explicitly on the box), but there are substantive differences. It plays a bit like a streamlined Arkham Horror, and it too is a cooperative game, but the authors also took innovations from some AH expansions and added their own. The authors of Eldritch Horror are also different from those of Arkham Horror, but there are enough similarities that it is necessary to cite AH explicitly as inspiration. Once one gets through setup (which was annoying, though I'm sure I'll become better with practice), it is a more streamlined game overall. There were eight years of experience and feedback to use to help with that. There are some innovations that I think are particularly good, though some of them appeared in some (probably very different) form in various Arkham Horror expansions.

"A Unified Theory of Randomness"

This article is very cool. It talks about some exciting work that follows up that of people like Wendelin Werner, Oded Schramm, Martin Hairer, and others. The younger author of the pair who are doing many of these great things seems like somebody who is going to be considered strongly for a Fields Medal. (The article doesn't mention this, but this does appear to be at that level.)

In fact, several recent Fields Medals have been awarded for work with deep relationships to statistical mechanics (and related topics like kinetic theory and probability theory), and it took quite some time for these to be considered "acceptable" mathematics topics.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Metric System!

Well, at least Antarctica and Myanmar are standing with us. (Groan.) :/

Countries that have officially adopted the metric system
- pic.twitter.com/rw6g3x4Ymd

— Amazing Maps (@Amazing_Maps) August 2, 2016

Seriously?

Seriously?

We have reached Idiocracy. I am simultaneously crying, laughing hysterically (probably to prevent additional crying), and really angry. What a country America is now, and the rest of the world feels pretty barmy at the moment too.

(Tip of the cap to Ernie Barreto for the Washington Post article, parts of which have previously spread widely.

Don't Let People Name Their Own Burgers

Seriously, don't.

Look at the other side of the link, though! It's epic (and really damn funny).

(Tip of the cap to George Takei.)

Jill Sobule's New Song: "America Back"

I saw Jill Sobule sing this song live last December. I love the chorus!

SET!

Here is an expository discussion of a recent mathematical analysis the game Set. The same author also wrote previously about Set.

Pokémon Go and the Traveling Salesperson Problem

I should have posted this article about Pokémon Go and the Traveling Salesperson Problem a couple of weeks ago when I first saw this blurb.

I thought about it again today when I posted the link as comments on posts by a couple of Facebook friends (who are both also former undergrad students of mine from Somerville College).

Network Neuroscience is Open for Business!

The new journal Network Neuroscience is now open for submissions. Submit to us!

Part of my editorial contribution thus far has been to ensure that mathematical modeling is listed explicitly in the masthead as part of the journal's scope.

Here is a bullet point in the published scope: "Mathematical modeling, including work that addresses principles of statistical physics and dynamical systems theory relevant to the structure and function of brain networks"

Religion and Backwards Compatibility

Yup, backwards compatibility is definitely an issue. (Make sure to read the scroll-over text as well.)

Alas, Poor 'E.G.'! I Knew it, 'I.E.'

In the interest of accessibility, UK government websites are now going to remove Latin abbreviations such as 'e.g.', 'i.e.', and 'etc.' from its websites. Good!

Alas, poor 'e.g.'! I knew it, 'i.e.': a construction of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: it hath
borne me on its back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!

Oh, wait: et tu, 'i.e.'?

(And now that I am looking this up, is a double colon like the above really legal? That seems extremely odd to me; and it also makes me want to construct a sentence with infinitely nested colons.)

Politics: Sesame Street Monster Edition

Yup, this is pretty much how it works. (Though, to be fair, this picture suggests a higher intellectual level than in the real thing.)

(Tip of the cap to Maria Satterwhite.)

Minimizing Windows to See a Desktop.

A sign that I am very tired: I didn't remember if my hotel room has a phone on the desk with my computer and I wanted to check if I can reach over and use that when the expected call comes, so in order to check to see what's behind my field of view (my laptop screen), I tried minimizing my browser window.

Augmented reality for the win? I did see one of my desktops as a result...

Britain's First Fast-Walking Lane Opens in Liverpool

Great Britain's first fast-walking lane has opened in Liverpool. I approve! (And I would totally take advantage of this.)

(Tip of the cap to Guillermo Valle Pérez.)

Long Live the Matlab Billiard Simulator!

A couple of undergrads, Caitlin Keady and Sam King (who were in an REU and worked with my fellow former Georgia Tech postdoc Mark Demers for a summer project at Fairfield University), decided to update our old billiard simulator to be compatible with the 2016a release of Matlab. (I used it successfully on the 2016b release of Matlab.) They also added both new examples and new types of plots. You can download their version from the Matlab file exchange website.

Some people have still been using this software even though it's been 12 years since our original release—my former undergrad Steven Lansel did this in one of the first undergrad projects I supervised, and in 2006 on Kris Kazlowski updated the software—and even though things had gotten to the point that they were required to use a several-year-old version of Matlab. But now the billiard simulator is up-to-date again!

We certainly didn't think that people would still be using our software so many years later.

The Art of Music

I'm talking about Chladni patterns, of course.

A New Hypothesis About the Physics of Knuckleballs

A new paper in New Journal of Physics proposes a new hypothesis about the physics of knuckleballs.

(Tip of the cap to Science News.)

"The Long Memory of Order Flow in the Foreign Exchange Spot Market"

One of my papers just came out in final form. Here are the details.

Title: The Long Memory of Order Flow in the Foreign Exchange Spot Market

Authors: Martin D. Gould, Mason A. Porter, and Sam D. Howison

Abstract: We study the long memory of order flow for each of three liquid currency pairs on a large electronic trading platform in the foreign exchange (FX) spot market. Due to the extremely high levels of market activity on the platform, and in contrast to existing empirical studies of other markets, our data enables us to perform statistically stable estimation without needing to aggregate data from different trading days. We find strong evidence of long memory, with a Hurst exponent $H \approx 0.7$, for each of the three currency pairs and on each trading day in our sample. We repeat our calculations using data that spans different trading days, and we find no significant differences in our results. We test and reject the hypothesis that the apparent long memory of order flow is an artifact caused by structural breaks, in favor of the alternative hypothesis of true long memory. We therefore conclude that the long memory of order flow in the FX spot market is a robust empirical property that persists across daily boundaries.

Subtitles: When You Run Out of Ideas

As you can see from the picture (of one of the books in Somerville College's Senior Common Room), some people have clearly run out of ideas when it comes to book subtitles.

Maybe I should write a book called "Networks: Those Objects with Vertices and Edges"? There does appear to be some evidence that using colons in titles increases citation counts.

Summary of the Last Nine Years

Here is an executive summary of the last (almost) nine years: "American mathematician goes to Oxford. Hilarity ensues."

I moved to Oxford on 1 October 2007. I'll be moving away for my UCLA job on 21 September.

What Happens in Westwood Stays in Westwood

I am off to visit LA for a few days to help set things up a bit at UCLA and to hunt for apartments (as opposed to Pokémon) in Westwood.

Mario Kart Go

I am looking forward to Mario Kart Go. Come get some!

Ten Simple Rules for Writing a Postdoctoral Fellowship

This publication looks potentially useful for many people.

(Tip of the cap to Jacob Scott.)

Beijing Restaurant Displays Prices in the Form of Mathematical Expressions

A Beijing restaurant displays their prices in the form of mathematical expressions.

(Tip of the cap to Carlos Castillo Chavez.)

PhD Comics: An Honest Journal Rejection Letter

Yup, this is how it really works.

What Happens in The Other Place Stays in The Other Place (Again)

I am once again taking a trip to The Other Place, this time for a networks workshop at the Isaac Newton Institute.

Spectacular and Prescient Cartoon from 1906

The cartoon in this article is both spectacular and prescient.

(Tip of the cap to University of Oxford.)

A Very Long Mathematics Proof

The printout of a new mathematics proof has so many symbols that it would take a very long time --- 10 billion years is the estimate given in the article to which I link --- that read all of the characters.

However, it's still not as long as version 1.0 of my Ph.D. thesis. :)

(OK, that's a private joke, but some people will get it.)

(Hat tip to Mathematical_A.)

Somerville Mathematics Undergraduate Brigitte Stenhouse Wins Dissertation Prize!

Somerville mathematics undergraduate student Brigitte Stenhouse (who just graduated this year) won a Gibbs dissertation prize for her thesis on Mary Somerville! This is a best-thesis prize for Oxford's 4th-year mathematics and statistics (and sometimes computer science) students.

Today Somerville College posted a press release about Brigitte's prize along with a short interview of Brigitte, who plans to get a Ph.D. in the history of mathematics but is first working for a year in Somerville's development office. Here is my favorite quote of Brigitte's from the interview: It made me question why we value the mathematics we do, why we learn the mathematics we do in school and university, and why it is all named after Cauchy.

Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion

The ambiguous cylinder illusion is funky.

A Hungry Random Walker

And now we have a hungry random walker model for chemotaxis, with some motivation from the game Pac-Man. Recall that I recently posted an entry about microorganism Pac-Man.

The Random Walker then Heads Towards the Hills

Here is a sign that you know you're tired: You are looking at a description of a random-walk model, and it looks like the text says "the walker then heads towards the hills". (It actually says "tills" rather than hills, as we're modeling shopper trajectories.)

But this gave me a wonderful mental picture of an exhausted random walker leaving a network in disgust and heading off towards the hills. My picture also has a sunset in it.

Microorganism Pac-Man

Microorganism Pac-Man looks very cool!

(Tip of the cap to Jennifer Ouellette.)

British Isles with 41 City-States, Raging Barbarians, and Mega Luxuries

Pictures of Amusing Coincidences

Several of the coincidences among these pictures are highly amusing.

(Tip of the cap to George Takei.)

Overheard in Somerville

My Somerville Colleague Quentin Miller passes along this vignette from today's Open Day...

Overheard as I left college by the front gate ...

Somerville helper to gaggle of students walking north briskly past the college: "Going to the Maths Institute?"

One of the students, without looking up or breaking pace: "Yeah."

Helper, shouting after the students as they bustle away: "56 seconds from your bed to the lecture! Come to this college!"

I never timed it myself, but I will certainly miss more than half of my commute to my office occurring after I enter the mathematics building.

Lots of Discussions, But Which of Them Were Useful?

This paper has a gem in its acknowledgements.

(Tip of the hat to Robert Garisto for his tweet, which provided enough fodder for Google.)

"A Gazelle is Just a Giraffe, Plotted Logarithmically."

Today's SMBC is bloody brilliant!

Rick Astley for U.K. Prime Minister?

The reason is obvious, isn't it?

(Tip of the cap to Alan Champneys.)

We All Fall Down

So unlike the actual vote (I don't get one), this petition for a 2nd referendum I am apparently actually allowed to sign. So here it is.

As much as self-inflicted economic suicide (and deciding to do that on account of xenophobia and nationalism, no less) and giving us a run for our money — and currently ahead of us, by the way, which is a rather "impressive" accomplishment! — in the world stupidity-contest amuses me in some perverse way (especially in my darker moments), because that's just how my sense of humor tends to work, that's really not a good idea for any of us and ought to be reserved for fantasy, science-fiction, and the like. (Here is the wikipedia entry for the Brexit referendum, in case you want to look it up.)

Mood music by Ultravox. (Warning: It is very dark, though the song is awesome.)

Thanks to my colleague Fiona Stafford for forwarding me a link to the petition, along with a very useful explanatory e-mail (from somebody who contacted her) that indicated that I am indeed eligible to sign it as a UK resident.

Update: Wow, and then there is delicious irony. (Tip of the cap to Sam Cohen.)

Why Did the Blob of Conscious Matter Cross the Road?

I am, for good reason, feeling rather cynical today.

Today's SMBC strikes the right mood.

My 'Leaving Speech' for Somerville College

This is my short leaving speech in the SCR last night. I forgot to mention a couple of things --- e.g., about thoughts on trying to convince me to do something with the argument of "convention", my inability to pick up social cues in a place that relies on them so much and the hilarity that would subsequently ensue, and especially about how wonderful it has been to work so closely with such talented students in Somerville! --- but I didn't prepare anything either, because I figured I would just say what was on my mind.

Also there were some nice comments from our Senior Tutor first.

(Thanks to Jonathan Marchini for recording this and circulating to Somerville's governing body today.)

Today's Theme Song: "Should I Stay or Should I Go"

The UK had the vote on Brexit today, and there is an obvious theme song (and a clash of opinions too!).

I posted it on Facebook this morning, and Mariano Beguerisse Díaz subsequently tweeted about it. (We had already discussed the apt theme song several weeks ago, so I knew what I wanted to post this morning for quite a while.)

I am including Mariano's tweet in this post.

The official soundtrack of this day, courtesy of The Clash https://t.co/qFrRAxqxt4 Cc @masonporter #Brexit

— Mariano Beguerisse (@marianobegue) June 23, 2016

Update: The UK has voted to leave the European Union.

Statisticians on a Plane

Or maybe not. :)

The Great British Public Toilet Map

In case, you are in the UK and want to find the nearest public toilet, ESRC just retweeted the tweet that I embed below. (I am glad that the ESRC is around to tell me where to find a nearby toilet. This is genuinely good, but I also can't help feeling a certain sense of irony.)

.@GBToiletMap from @RCA helps people find 10000+ UK loos #T4GToiletMap https://t.co/gG7DlvSgd9 #WorldContinenceWeek pic.twitter.com/gG0DbpjoZT

— GB Public Toilet Map (@GBToiletMap) June 20, 2016

Hannah Fry: Mathematician, Science Presenter, and All Around Badass

Hannah Fry, who I describe in this entry's title by adopting her apt description on the top of her website, does some very interesting research in complex systems and is absolutely spectacular at outreach and public engagement. Here is a new Guardian article about it (including recent and upcoming things).

I've invited Hannah over to Oxford a couple of times (an IAM seminar and a workshop I organized) to talk about the more traditional scientific end of her work. We've also had her over once (that I know of) for an outreach talk.

If you haven't encountered Hannah's stuff before (and probably even if you have), you should go and take a look at the Guardian article. She does a lot of very cool stuff.

(Tip of the cap to Jennifer Ouellette for her tweet.)

"How to Publish a Scientific Comment in 1 2 3 Easy Steps"

Physics professor Rick Trebino of Georgia Tech has written a hilarious diatribe called "How to Publish a Scientific Comment in 1 2 3 Easy Steps". There are actually far more steps than this, and I have heard similar stories from collaborators about the ordeal of trying to get a scientific comment published to correct a major mistake in a prominent paper.

Note: This story is not for the faint of heart or the easily depressed. (Especially if you might get depressed about the current state of affairs of self-correction in science.)

(Tip of the cap to Alex Vespignani.)

"Why Classic Rock Isn't What It Used To Be"

Fivethirtyeight.com has an interesting analysis of regional variations in classic rock, and how more contemporary songs have snuck into it (in some regions more than others).

One could also do a similar analysis of others "genres" (or "radio formats", if you prefer), such as adult contemporary. I remember being surprised (many years ago now) the first time I heard Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" on an adult contemporary station.

What Happens in Aveiro Stays in Aveiro

Tomorrow I am taking my first ever trip to Portugal. I will be participating in the 2016 "Summer Solstice" International Conference on Discrete Models of Complex Systems.

Tales from the ArXiv: "First-level NUTS of the European Union"

I can't make this stuff up. There is something called "First-level NUTS of the European Union". The acronym NUTS stands for "Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics", and it seems that there are three different levels of European NUTS.

I found out about this from the paper The winter day as a constraint for human activity in Western Europe, which I saw in an ArXiv mailing this morning.

Now where did I put my nut cracker? :)

Mathematics and Art: Some of My Personal Experiences

After spending far longer this evening fighting scanners than I was hoping, here is the article on mathematics and art (especially as concerns my own experiences and relationship with it) that I was asked to write for the 2016 issue of my College’s magazine. Visual arts is the theme of the issue. (I hope this is readable. You may need to zoom. The version on my Facebook post is somewhat larger.)

How Many Peachtrees are There in this City?

Those of us who have lived in Atlanta understand this ad very well.

Quantifying the Smell of Urban Areas

My latest post in the Improbable Research blog is about using data analysis to quantify the smell of urban areas.

Lab Wars

The science-themed game Lab Wars sounds very amusing, though possibly a bit too close to home.

On a similar note, Dreaming Spires is a board game that allows one to take control of an Oxford College's governing body and drive the College into the ground. Oh wait...

A Video of My Seminar on "A Simple Generative Model of Collective Online Behavior"

On Friday 27 May, I gave a talk at the Oxford Internet Institute on "A Simple Generative Model of Collective Online Behavior". The video was posted online today. My talk, which took place at the Oxford Internet Institute, was part of an event for the Computational Social Science Initiative London.

I spoke about this paper, which I like to call our "Small Data" paper.

You may also be interested in videos of some of my other presentations.

Comic Caption: "Funtime Activity: Forcibly converting pure mathematicians into applied mathematicians."

The caption on today's SMBC comic is wonderful: "Funtime Activity: Forcibly converting pure mathematicians into applied mathematicians."

YES!

(Tip of the hat to Bruno Gonçalves.)

Levels of Super Mario Brothers Can be PSPACE-Hard

Erik Demaine of MIT and his collaborators have demonstrated that one can use the raw materials of the game Super Mario Brothers to construct levels that are PSPACE-hard.

The new paper follows up on prior work that includes a subset of the authors that demonstrated that Super Mario Brothers is NP-hard.

Naming a Dimensionless Parameter

The June 2016 issue of Physics Today includes a 'Quick Study' on why it is hard to separate two interleaved books.

The phenomenon involves a dimensionless parameter that is now called the "Hercules Number", a term that I invented in a blog entry for the Improbable Research blog. I wrote the line "Restagno and colleagues also fit the data to a curve of force versus a dimensionless amplification parameter –– following the continuum-mechanics tradition of using cute names for dimensionless parameters, let’s call it the "Hercules number" –– that depends on the number of pages, the page thickness, and the size of the overlap region between the books." (I was motivated in part by the "Repunzel number" that Ray Goldstein and his collaborators named in their study of the physics of ponytails.)

The researchers really liked the term "Hercules Number", so they decided to adopt it and use it in their subsequent papers (which I appreciate).

I continue to try to contribute to physics and mathematics with my wit and snark.

Update (6/14/16): I was asked to write about this for the Improbable Research blog.

The Deadly Underbelly of Bayesianism (and its Relation to Immortality)

Well, according to SMBC Comics, anyway. :) It's pretty funny.

Kershaw's Strikeout:Walk Dominance

Clayton Kershaw has been especially dominant so far this year and last night reached 100 strikeouts with only 5 walks, the fewest walks with 100 strikeouts in the modern (i.e., post-1900) era. Wow!

Kershaw's career has been historically dominant so far.

Note: The use of 'modern' is a hedge, simply because Major League Baseball record-keeping was much sketchier before 1900. It's not that we know another player did this, but basically that people don't know and are being cautious about the phrasing.

Top Spelling Queries by U.S. State

This map of the top spelling queries by U.S. state is great. Notice the fixed point in the northeast! (Also notice the entry for Alaska.)

Note: The article title calls them spelling "mistakes", but it appears instead to be spelling queries.

Pedestrian Standoffs and Symmetry Breaking

My latest post for the Improbable Research blog concerns pedestrian standoffs and symmetry breaking.

Meanwhile, in Wales...

I am highly amused by this headline, which I have reproduced for the screenshot below.

And then maybe we'll get a sequel to the movie Black Sheep.

Note: One can also find comments like the following online: "The 'psychotic sheep' story is fake. It's the UK media at its very worst. It is dishonest reporting based on distortion of one stupid farmer's delusional ideas. It never happened." Nevertheless, I find the headline to be very amusing.

"Scattering of Waves by Impurities in Precompressed Granular Chains"

You may have heard of the Ramsaur–Townsend resonance from scattering problems. The simplest version of it (by examing a particle in a square well) is one of the canonical textbook problems in quantum mechanics.

This is one of the important effects illustrating the need for a notion of wave mechanics.

It turns out that one can also get an RT resonance in a macroscopic, classical system.

The discovery of this classical RT effect (in granular crystals) is the subject of a paper by my collaborators and me, out in final form in Physical Review E today. Here are the details of the article.


Title: "Scattering of Waves by Impurities in Precompressed Granular Chains"

Authors: Alejandro J. Martínez, Hiromi Yasuda, Eunho Kim, P. G. Kevrekidis, Mason A. Porter, and Jinkyu Yang

Abstract: We study scattering of waves by impurities in strongly precompressed granular chains. We explore the linear scattering of plane waves and identify a closed-form expression for the reflection and transmission coefficients for the scattering of the waves from both a single impurity and a double impurity. For single-impurity chains, we show that, within the transmission band of the host granular chain, high-frequency waves are strongly attenuated (such that the transmission coefficient vanishes as the wavenumber k → ±π), whereas low-frequency waves are well-transmitted through the impurity. For double-impurity chains, we identify a resonance—enabling full transmission at a particular frequency—in a manner that is analogous to the Ramsauer–Townsend (RT) resonance from quantum physics. We also demonstrate that one can tune the frequency of the RT resonance to any value in the pass band of the host chain. We corroborate our theoretical predictions both numerically and experimentally, and we directly observe almost complete transmission for frequencies close to the RT resonance frequency. Finally, we show how this RT resonance can lead to the existence of reflectionless modes in granular chains (including disordered ones) with multiple double impurities.

Infographics on Shakespearian Deaths

I love these Tufte-ian infographics on deaths in Shakespearean tragedies, especially the one for the bloodbath Titus Andronicus.

As I mentioned previously on my blog, Shakespearean deaths have also been tabulated in pie-chart form.

"Eye of the Tiger": Homework Marking Edition

The first song that played today as I started marking homework assignments was "Eye of the Tiger". I can already imagine the music video!

Sadly, I wasn't done with my marking by the end of the song, as surely would have been the case were this actually a movie montage. Damn.

Inference Club

The Mathematical Institute at University of Oxford now has an "Inference Club".

Which leads me to... First Rule of Inference Club: you ought to be able to figure it out.

R-Rated Version of Real Analysis

The new SMBC shows you what you learn when you take the R-rated version of real analysis.

A Spectacular Rejection Letter for Einstein (but Unfortunately it's Fake)

Albert Einstein once received this spectacular rejection letter. Wow!

(Tip of the cap to Nelson Fernández.)

Update: Thanks to Sam Cohen for suggesting that I look up whether this letter is fake. It is.

I Wonder Who's Going to Play ⊦ in the "Tetris" Movie?

Yes, that's right: in a puzzling development, there's going to be a movie based on the game "Tetris". I wonder who will be cast to play ⊦? Also, WTF?

What Happens in Lake Como Stays in Lake Como

Today I'm flying to Italy to participate in the second Lake Como School on Complex Networks. I'll be giving a tutorial on mesoscale structures in networks.

An Awesome 19th-Century Visualization of a Railroad Network

This 19th-century visualization of the New York and Erie Railroad is spectacular. Visually, it accentuates a possible core–periphery structure. (One expects railroad networks to have such a structure, although visualizations on their own can be very misleading, so one would need to check this to be sure.)

(Tip of the cap to Edward Tufte.)

Update: Here is an embedded version of the tweet so that you can see the picture without clicking on the link above.

160-year old geo/network hierarchical organizational diagram of the New York and Erie Railroad. pic.twitter.com/B3rvAXsbxx

— Elijah Meeks (@Elijah_Meeks) May 14, 2016

The Learning Curve in 'R'

Here it is. We need a version of this cartoon that compares 'R' with Matlab, Python, etc. (Also, it's fun to make fun of 'R'.)

(Tip of the cap to Felice Jacka.)

A Colorful Bird

Here is a gorgeous, very colorful bird.

(Tip of the cap to IFLS.)

Civilization VI!!!

Oh, Hell yes!!!!

Just. One. More. Turn.

(Tip of the cap to Louis Wang.)

Tales from the ArXiv: "With Inertia and Frustration"

The title of a new paper on the arXiv this morning is "Bifurcations and singularities for coupled oscillators with inertia and frustration".

I could add the phrase "with inertia and frustration" to the end of the title of just about any of my papers, and it would be accurate.

(OK, both terms have specific technical meaning in this case, but work with me.)

The 10 Unlikeliest Home Runs Ever Hit

In celebration of Bartolo Colón's epic first career homerun (which makes him the older Major League Baseball player ever to his his first career home run), David Schoenfield has compiled a list of the 10 unlikeliest home runs in Baseball history. Awesome! Colón's home-run trot is also awesome.

There are some beauties on this list of unlikely home runs (except the one by Ozzie Smith... that one should be banned).

Colón is also the "last Expo standing" (i.e., the last active Major League player to have played for the Expos). What am amazing career!

RIP Tom Apostol (1923–2016)

Caltech lost a legend today: Tom Apostol has died.

Here I quote from Kevin Hickerson's Facebook post (whence I got the news): Our department lost a great one today. Tom M. Apostol, emeritus professor of Mathematics, is well known among math and science students the world over, including 100% of all Caltech alums, for his mathematically rigorous and technically unmatched textbooks on Calculus, affectionately known as "Tommy I" and "Tommy II" (1923-2016) RIP

I never did take a class with Apostol, as he retired from teaching classes just before I got to Tech. I skipped Math 1, so I only ended up using Tommy II as a textbook.

Update (5/10/16): Caltech has posted an obituary.

Flying with Differential Equations

Apparently, solving differential equations on a flight now can raise suspicion. Grrrrr....

In an attempt to try to turn some lemons into lemonade (and to be snarky), here is a tweet I wrote for DynamicalSystemsSIAM.

Let us know if you want us to suggest any differential equations for you to solve on your next flight. #flyingwithDiffEqus

— DynamicalSystemsSIAM (@DynamicsSIAM) May 7, 2016

(Tip of the cap to Physics Girl for the news story.)

What Researchers Study

And, on this occasion, the bioengineers finally get to appear in the punchline. (I can already imagine their maniacal laughter.)

PLOS ONE and Donald Trump

Apparently, this is a match made in Heaven.

Wow. Just wow.

(Tip of the cap to Ernie Barreto.)

Update (5/7/16): Ashley Landrum has re-analyzed the data from the paper and come to very different conclusions (and torn the paper apart). (Tip of the cap to Sharon Lubkin.)

Networked Systems Ethics

Ben Zevenbergen of the Oxford Internet Institute has released a set of guidelines on networked systems ethics.

Message in a Bottle

Sending an SOS to the world pretty much is replying-all.

(And one could also bring up passive tracers.)

2017 Research Parasite Award

There is now a call for applications for the 2017 Research Parasite Award. I approve!

(Tip of the cap to Alex Vespignani.)