Archive for October, 2011
The Curse of Arthur Rhodes
In August, the Texas Rangers released veteran reliever Arthur Rhodes — once, long ago, a fireballing Oriole prospect, and always a favorite of mine. Rhodes signed with the Cardinals, and is now, after 20 years in the majors, in the World Series for the first time, facing the team that dumped him two months ago. [...]
Filed under: baseball, orioles | 1 Comment
Tags: arthur rhodes, st. louis cardinals, texas rangers, world series
Cathy O’Neil is killing it
Some great recent posts from Mathbabe, the funniest and pissed-offiest “math, the universe, and everything” blog on the tubes: Is Big Data Evil? Math in Business — great breakdown of the pros and cons of different career options for young mathematicians I never sit on the subway.
Filed under: commerce, economics, friends, math, politics | Leave a Comment
Tags: blogs, cathy o'neil, mathbabe
One of the exciting aspects of math at Wisconsin is the new emphasis on what I call “applied pure math” — that is, applied math that doesn’t involve PDEs or numerical analysis. If you’re in town and want to see what this looks like, you can come to the first Applied Algebra Days conference, featuring [...]
Filed under: madison, math | 2 Comments
Tags: applied algebra, conferences
Transcript and recording here. This was based on a much longer conversation. I’ll just add that yes, not only do wild card teams not always get blown out, they sometimes win! The larger point stands, though — if the pennant winners are drawn somewhat uniformly from the best four teams in the league, you’re more [...]
Filed under: baseball, slate | 2 Comments
Tags: game 7, mike pesca, npr, radio, world series
CJ is listening to The Wizard of Oz on tape. This morning he asked me: “I understand why the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodsman don’t poop, but why don’t Dorothy, Toto, and the lion poop?” “Why do you think they don’t poop?” “They don’t mention them pooping, but they do mention them eating.” I had [...]
Filed under: books, cj, offhand, writing | 1 Comment
Tags: literary criticism, poop, the wizard of oz
Google+ may not have killed Facebook, but it is developing into a nice place for tearoom style chats about math; less formal than MathOverflow, more characters than FB. This thread Allen Knutson started about circle packing is a case in point. If I’m reading the thread and I say to myself “Matt Kahle should be [...]
Filed under: math, offhand | 5 Comments
Tags: allen knutsen, circle packing, google
Are they a troop of monkeys? Goons? Are they sailors, lost and pissed? Are they life coaches to each other and to us? No one is given to know. They are Man Man.
Filed under: madison, music, shows | Leave a Comment
Tags: man man
Via Crooked Timber, Stephen Pinker has a new book about the relative non-violence of modern times. Interviewed by John Naughton in the Guardian about the new book, Pinker has this to say: JN: One of the most intriguing tables in the book is the one on page 195, which takes the death toll from distant [...]
Filed under: academia, books, education, harvard, politics, psychology | 8 Comments
Tags: innumeracy, public intellectuals, stephen pinker
Why not data science?
Addendum to the previous post: if the goal — surely a worthwhile one — is to promote NSF-DMS funding for data sciences, why not change the name to Division of Mathematical and Data Sciences? My experience at the very interesting “High-dimensional phenomena” workshop at IMA was that good work in this area is being done [...]
Filed under: academia, math | 2 Comments
Tags: data science, NSF, statistics
Apparently the NSF is considering changing the name of the DMS (Division of Mathematical Sciences) to DMSS (Division of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences.) There is some unease — surely at least partially related to the recent decision by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the NSF’s rough British analogue, to restrict their math postdoctoral [...]
Filed under: academia, math | 3 Comments
Tags: NSF, statistics
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