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.)