Archive for March, 2011
It’s Grothenday!
The G-Man turns 83 today. Suggested Grothenday activity; locate the hackiest, most awkward argument in a paper you’re working on, and replace it with an elegant proof that follows effortlessly once the correct definitions are set down. Bonus points if this extends the original statement to the relative case over an arbitrary base scheme.
Filed under: math, offhand | 8 Comments
Tags: algebraic geometry, grothenday, grothendieck
Kloppenburg, Soglin, Cieslewicz
Will a tight mayoral election between Paul Soglin and Dave Cieslewicz help JoAnne Kloppenburg in her bid to unseat David Prosser on the Wisconsin Supreme Court? The theory is that a mayoral election in Madison increases turnout in a precinct likely to be very Kloppenburg-friendly. But I don’t think the effect will be so big. [...]
Filed under: bad statistics, madison, news, politics | 3 Comments
Tags: cieslewicz, elections, kloppenburg, mayor, soglin, supreme court, wisconsin
David Kaiser from MIT will give Physics colloquium next Friday, April 1, about his appealing new book How the Hippies Saved Physics. Did you ever see a dog-eared copy of The Dancing Wu Li Masters at a used book store? It’s about those guys, and how their thoughts turned out to be not totally irrelevant [...]
Filed under: history, madison | 3 Comments
Tags: david kaiser, hippies, physics, talks
Nimrod Hilliard IV, of Madison East HS, this year’s “Mr. Basketball Wisconsin.” If it’s not enough that his name is Nimrod Hilliard IV, the Madison East team is called the Purgolders. Purgolder Nimrod Hilliard IV. Drungo approves.
Filed under: madison, offhand | 7 Comments
Tags: basketball, names
“Am I the turd, or is the governor the turd?” — WI Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, 21 March 2011.
Filed under: offhand, politics | 2 Comments
Tags: debate, kloppenburg, prosser, wisconsin, wiunion
Wisconsin hires for 2011
The Wisconsin math department has hired four terrific new assistant professors this season (rah rah countercyclical hiring!) We will be joined next year by: Melanie Matchett Wood, an arithmetic geometer and an AIM 5-year fellow, who shares my love of counting number fields and of the arithmetic fundamenal group; Philip Matchett Wood, who does probabilistic [...]
Filed under: academia, madison, math | 2 Comments
Tags: hiring, wisconsin
Me and Chris Skinner, 1989.
Filed under: friends, math, nostalgia, offhand | 17 Comments
Tags: westinghouse
Quite striking and strange for a modern mathematician to read the following, from Condorcet’s 1787 lectures to the Lycee: It is to French mathematicians that we owe the theory of probability calculus. This is perhaps worth saying. Other nations, and often even Frenchmen themselves, have reproached us for lacking the gift of invention, granting us [...]
Filed under: history, math | 6 Comments
Tags: condorcet, france, probability
Tomorrow (Monday) morning on Morning Edition at 88.7FM, aired at 6:35 and again at 8:35. Available online at Wisconsin Life.
Filed under: math | 4 Comments
Tags: pi, pi day, radio, wpr
Martinus
I was going to write a post about Baryshnikov’s homotopy-theoretic proof of Arrow’s theorem — and I will! Because it is cool! — but it’s gotten very late, so instead here’s a nerdy joke I heard on Marc Maron’s podcast. Guy walks into a bar, says “Gimme a martinus.” Bartender says, “You mean martini?” Guy [...]
Filed under: comedy, language, offhand | 2 Comments
Tags: declension, jokes, marc maron
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