We’re number 6 through 15!

28Sep10

The new NRC rankings have now been released.  It’ll be fun to dig through these — I don’t yet see a giant spreadsheet available online, but you can use the search tool at phds.org to see how the rankings look for math departments.  As the title suggests, the rankings have big error bars around them:  [...]

Filed under: academia, lists, math, news   |  21 Comments
Tags: nrc, nrc rankings, rankings, universal human lust for hierarchy

Proofiness

25Sep10

My review of Charles Seife’s Proofiness, a field guide to mathematical trickery in the grand tradition of How to Lie with Statistics, is in today’s Boston Globe.  Very pleased to have the chance to lead with my favorite Eugene Mirman bit.

Filed under: bad statistics, books, math, writing   |  1 Comment
Tags: book reviews, charles seife, eugene mirman, proofiness

Wisconsin 49, Austin Peay 3 — at the half!

25Sep10

Just watched a bit of this with CJ and AB.  A question for people with a more in-depth knowledge of college football than I have.  How does this help the Badgers?  Are they really in any sense “tuning up” for Michigan State or OSU by playing a team who were unable to record a first [...]

Filed under: offhand   |  3 Comments
Tags: austin peay, football, mismatch, uw, wisconsin

Son, I’m glad we had this talk

25Sep10

Big parenting milestone today.  Hope I handled it all right.  CJ asked me for the first time:  “Daddy, what’s a hipster?”

Filed under: cj, offhand   |  8 Comments
Tags: hipsters, the talk

Tips for giving talks

23Sep10

Ravi suggested that I should give a stable bloghome to this short .pdf of tips for giving math talks, which I wrote a few years ago for our graduate student conference in number theory.  It’s aimed at people giving their very first seminar talks.  Readers, please add in comments the advice I forgot to put [...]

Filed under: academia, math   |  10 Comments
Tags: advice, talks

Framing

21Sep10

I wonder what would happen if Democratic candidates ran ads saying “I will make every effort to roll back income taxes to Reagan-era levels.  My opponent thinks your tax burden is just fine the way it is.”

Filed under: economics, offhand, politics   |  1 Comment
Tags: taxes campaigns reagan

Sara Marcus and Danica McKellar

19Sep10

My friend Sara Marcus — whose definitive history of riot grrrl is now available for purchase! –  interviews Wonder Years-star-turned-math-popularizer Danica McKellar in Salon.  Good stuff.  Basic question:  if you sell math to junior-high-school girls by emphasizing the compatibility of math and shopping, are you mostly tearing down the stereotype that girls don’t like math, [...]

Filed under: children, education, friends, magazines, math   |  2 Comments
Tags: danica mckellar, junior high, sara marcus

Reader survey: how many non-drivers in Madison?

13Sep10

Without looking it up:  what percent of households in Madison don’t own a car?  What percent of commuters don’t drive to work?  What percent bike? My guesses were pretty far off. The answers, along with similar data for other cities (drawn from the 2000 census) are here.

Filed under: cars, madison   |  2 Comments
Tags: bike, commuting, reader survey

Cheesesteak eggrolls

07Sep10

I have a big backlog of Madison food stuff to blog about but I’m putting it all aside just to say Big Red’s Steaks is selling cheesesteak eggrolls. Cheesesteak eggrolls. But surely you ask what do you dip it in. You dip it in a little tub of Cheez Whiz. Thought they must have invented [...]

Filed under: food, madison   |  3 Comments
Tags: cheesesteak, eggrolls, hdl, syncretism

A Supposedly Shining Thing

01Sep10

My friend Sean Kelly has a really interesting new book coming out:  All Things Shining:  Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age (with Hubert Dreyfus.) Lest that sound retrograde, note that the circle of “Western Classics” is drawn broadly enough to include David Foster Wallace. The book has a blog, as [...]

Filed under: blog, books, friends, harvard, philosophy, writing   |  3 Comments
Tags: a supposedly fun thing, david foster wallace, dfw, ocean, sean kelly