The Dodgers are Heading to the World Series Again!

The Dodgers have swept the Brewers in the National League Championship Series (NLCS) and are heading back to the World Series to try to repeat as World Champions.

In today's game, Shohei Ohtani pitched six dominant shutout innings and hit 3 home runs. Wow! For this effort, he was named NLCS Most Valuable Player.

With this win, the Dodgers are the first team to win back-to back pennants since the Phillies in 2008–2009. They are trying to become the first back-to-back World Series champions since the Yankees in 1998–2000.

What Happens in Stockholm Stays in Stockholm (2025 Edition)

I am off to Stockholm to give a talk and visit Nordita!

What Happens in Dresden Stays in Dresden (2025 Edition)

I'm heading to Dresden to give a colloquium at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems.

What Happens in Tempe Stays in Tempe (2025 Edition)

I am heading to Arizona State University to visit its mathematics department, give a talk, chat with junior mathematicians, and do other valuable things.

What Happens in Santa Fe Stays in Santa Fe (2025 Edition)

I am off to Santa Fe to visit the Santa Fe Institute!

"Oscillatory and Excitable Dynamics in an Opinion Model with Group Opinions"

The published version of one of my papers just came out today. Here are some details.

Title: Oscillatory and Excitable Dynamics in an Opinion Model with Group Opinions

Authors: Corbit R. Sampson, Juan G. Restrepo, and Mason A. Porter

Abstract:

What Happens in Seattle Stays in Seattle (2025 Edition)

I am heading to Seattle to go to WorldCon 2025 (the World Science-Fiction convention). Here is my panel schedule for the con.

RIP Tom Lehrer (1928–2025)

As started appearing in obituaries in many venues today, the great Tom Lehrer died yesterday.

There have been many published obituaries, and the New York Times one (which is the first one that I saw) has lots of nice snarky comments by Lehrer.

I first encountered Lehrer's music late in my high-school time when I found and started listening to The Dr. Demento Show. The first of Lehrer's songs that I heard was "The Masochism Tango", and it remains a favorite. I fell in love with Lehrer's darkly humorous muse, which naturally is a wonderful fit for my own snarky sense of humor. Some obituaries even described Lehrer tersely as a "satirist and mathematician", and that's definitely a terse description to aspire to.

What Happens in Montreal Stays in Montreal (2025 Edition)

I am heading to Montreal for the first time in several years to attend the 2025 SIAM Annual Meeting, which is being held jointly with the CAIMS Annual Meeting.

What Happens in Berkeley Stays in Berkeley (2025 Edition)

I am heading off to Berkeley for the Smale@95 conference, which is a short event in honor of Steve Smale's 95th birthday. It was very cool to be invited to it!

Clayton Kershaw Records 3000th Career Strikeout!

In today's Dodger game, Clayton Kershaw became the 20th pitcher with at least 3000 career strikeouts. He is the fourth left-handed starter in that club and is the fifth pitcher to record at least 3000 strikeouts for one franchise.

Here is the rank-ordered list of Major League Baseball's sll-time strikeout leaders.

Bradford Doolittle did an interesting exercise to rank the 20 pitchers with at least 3000 strikeouts. (He puts Kershaw at 11th.)

Update (7/03/25): Jay Jaffe has written a nice article about Kershaw's accomplishment and its context.

"Perceived Community Alignment Increases Information Sharing"

One of my papers was published in final form today. Here are some details about it.

Title: Perceived Community Alignment Increases Information Sharing

Authors: Elisa C. Baek, Ryan Hyon, Karina López, Mason A. Porter, and Carolyn Parkinson

Abstract: It has been proposed that information sharing, which is a ubiquitous and consequential behavior, plays a critical role in cultivating and maintaining a sense of shared reality. Across three studies, we test this theory by investigating whether or not people are especially likely to share information that they believe will be interpreted similarly by others in their social circles. Using neuroimaging data collected while people who live in the same residential community viewed brief film clips, we find that more similar neural responses across participants is associated with a greater likelihood to share content. We then test this relationship using two behavioral studies and find (1) that people are particularly likely to share content that they believe others in their social circles will interpret similarly and (2) that perceived similarity with others leads to increased sharing likelihood. In concert, our findings support the idea that people are driven to share information to create and reinforce shared understanding, which is critical to social connection.

What Happens in Bristol Stays in Bristol

A few days ago, I was in Bristol to visit University of Bristol's School of Engineering Mathematics and Technology.

"Competition Between Group Interactions and Nonlinearity in Voter Dynamics on Hypergraphs"

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

Title: Competition Between Group Interactions and Nonlinearity in Voter Dynamics on Hypergraphs

Authors: Jihye Kim, Deok-Sun Lee, Byungjoon Min, Mason A. Porter, Maxi San Miguel, and Kwang-Il Goh

What Happens in "Snowbird" Stays in "Snowbird" (2025 Edition)

I'm off to the 2025 "Snowbird" SIAM dynamical-systems conference. I love this biennial migration to my favorite conference series!

2025 Inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has announced its 2025 inductees.

It's great to see Cyndi Lauper, Warren Zevon, and Joe Cocker take their place in the Hall among the greats!

"A Non-Expert’s Introduction to Data Ethics for Mathematicians"

My chapter in our new book is also out. Here are some details about it.

Title: A Non-Expert’s Introduction to Data Ethics for Mathematicians

Author: Mason A. Porter

Abstract: I give a short introduction to data ethics. I begin with some background information and societal context for data ethics. I then discuss data ethics in mathematical-science education and indicate some available course material. I briefly highlight a few efforts—at my home institution and elsewhere—on data ethics, society, and social good. I then discuss open data in research, research replicability and some other ethical issues in research, the tension between privacy and open data and code, and a few controversial studies and reactions to studies. I also discuss ethical principles, institutional review boards, and a few other considerations in the scientific use of human data. I then briefly survey a variety of research and lay articles that are relevant to data ethics and data privacy. I conclude with a brief summary and some closing remarks.

My focal audience is mathematicians, but I hope that this chapter will also be useful to others. I am not an expert about data ethics, and this chapter provides only a starting point on this wide-ranging topic. I encourage you to examine the resources that I discuss and to reflect carefully on data ethics, its role in mathematics education, and the societal implications of data and data analysis. As data and technology continue to evolve, I hope that such careful reflection will continue throughout your life.

"Mathematical and Computational Methods for Complex Social Systems"

Our edited book is out! You can find it on this website. Here are some details.

Title: Mathematical and Computational Methods for Complex Social Systems

Authors: Heather Z. Brooks, Michelle Feng, Mason A. Porter, and Alexandria Volkening

"Bounded-Confidence Models of Opinion Dynamics with Adaptive Confidence Bounds"

Another of my papers just came out in final form. Here are some details.

Title: Bounded-Confidence Models of Opinion Dynamics with Adaptive Confidence Bounds

Authors: Grace J. Li, Jiajie Luo, and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: People's opinions change with time as they interact with each other. In a bounded-confidence model (BCM) of opinion dynamics, individuals (which are represented by the nodes of a network) have continuous-valued opinions and are influenced by neighboring nodes whose opinions are sufficiently similar to theirs (i.e., are within a confidence bound). In this paper, we formulate and analyze discrete-time BCMs with heterogeneous and adaptive confidence bounds. We introduce two new models: (1) a BCM with synchronous opinion updates that generalizes the Hegselmann–Krause model; and (2) a BCM with asynchronous opinion updates that generalizes the Deffuant–Weisbuch model. We analytically and numerically explore our adaptive-confidence BCMs' limiting behaviors, including the confidence-bound dynamics, the formation of clusters of nodes with similar opinions, and the time evolution of ``effective graphs,"" which are time-dependent subgraphs of networks with edges only between nodes that are receptive to each other. For a variety of networks and a wide range of values of the parameters that control the increase and decrease of confidence bounds, we demonstrate numerically that our adaptive-confidence BCMs result in fewer major opinion clusters and longer convergence times than the baseline (i.e., nonadaptive) BCMs. In our numerical simulations, we also observe that our adaptive-confidence BCMs can have adjacent nodes that converge to the same opinion but are not receptive to each other. This qualitative behavior does not occur in the associated baseline BCMs.

What Happens at the Global Physics Summit Stays at the Global Physics Summit

Later this afternoon, I will be taking a train to Anaheim to go to the Global Physics Summit, where I will be participating in the March-Meeting wing of this summit. I'll only be around for about a day and a half or so, but nevertheless I will be making my triumphant return to the March Meeting (which I last attended in 2016).

Update: I ended up just taking a Lyft directly to my hotel and not bothering with the train.