Pinoy Twee

25Feb10

I was looking in vain for YouTube footage of Orange Juice playing “Moscow Olympics” and discovered that there’s a band named after the song.  You’d guess such a band would be pretty good, and you’d be right.  But you might not guess they’d be from the Philippines!  I didn’t know before tonight that there’s a [...]

Filed under: music   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: beatles, filipino, grace period, helter skelter, indie, moscow olympics, orange juice, philippines, pop, twee, ukulele, wentletraps

Compressed sensing in Wired

23Feb10

My new Wired piece, about compressed sensing, is now online. For a more technical but still gentle introduction to the subject, see Terry’s blog post. Update: Igor at Nuit Blanche has a great post clarifying what kind of imaging problems are, and aren’t, currently susceptible to CS methods.

Filed under: computers, magazines, math, writing   |  7 Comments
Tags: compressed sensing, emmanuel candes, popularization, wired

The postdocs crawl in, the postdocs crawl out

22Feb10

Though it messes up my nice conservation law, I should certainly also mention the two UW postdocs in number theory who leave us this fall, in both cases for tenure-track assistant professorships:  Amanda Folsom is moving to Rutgers, and Riad Masri to Texas A&M.

Filed under: academia, math   |  1 Comment
Tags: amanda folsom, riad masri

Hired!

21Feb10

I’m happy to report that both of my graduating Ph.D. students have settled on plans for the next few years.  Guillermo Mantilla-Soler will be a postdoc at UBC; Ekin Ozman will spend a year on an EPDI fellowship in Barcelona, Paris, and Bonn, and then will return to the US for a postdoc at UT-Austin. [...]

Filed under: academia, math   |  3 Comments
Tags: bryden cais, david brown, ekin ozman, guillermo mantilla-soler, postdocs

Wisconsin math conquers Britain

11Feb10

This year’s winners of the Churchill Scholarship have been announced — and of the fourteen US undergraduates who will spend 2010-11 at Cambridge studying the sciences, three have studied math at UW!  Daniel Lecoanet is the first UW undergrad to win a Churchill in 30 years; he was my research assistant for two years, carrying [...]

Filed under: college, madison, math, news   |  1 Comment
Tags: cambridge, churchill, daniel lecoanet, george boxer, ken ono, maria monks, reu, uw, winston churchill, wisconsin

Irrational likred

08Feb10

Deane Yang asks in comments:  “What athletes do you especially like?”  That’s actually what I was going to post about today anyway.  A short list, excluding people who play for teams I follow:  Rickey Henderson.  Manny Ramirez.  Barry Bonds.  Jim Thome.  Nomar Garciaparra.  Edgar Martinez.  Randall Cunningham.  Ricky Williams.  Jake Plummer.  Gus Frerotte.  Surya Bonaly.  [...]

Filed under: baseball, lists, offhand   |  2 Comments
Tags: rationality, sports

Irrational hatred and the Super Bowl

07Feb10

I had never seen Peyton Manning play football until the last five minutes of tonight’s Super Bowl.  But I always rooted against him.  Just didn’t like the guy, while not knowing anything about him.  I have the same sour feeling about some other athletes — Tiger Woods, Derek Jeter, Jim McMahon, Nancy Kerrigan, Michael Phelps [...]

Filed under: news, psychology   |  3 Comments
Tags: football, hatred, peyton manning, rationality

Getting that A, by means fair and foul

01Feb10

This week’s Capital Times leads with a story on grade inflation at UW-Madison.  I’m with ex-chancellor John Wiley on this:  “Grade inflation is one of those topics that initially seem clear and simple, but become murkier and more confusing the longer you think about them.”  I more or less stand by what I wrote about [...]

Filed under: college, education, madison, news, politics, teaching   |  3 Comments
Tags: gpa, grade inflation, grades, uw, wisconsin