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# Posts

### July 30, 2014

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The July, 2014 issue of the Communications of the ACM (CACM) has a paper by a Caltech group on the Community Seismic Network (CSN). This note is about CSN as an example of system in a growing, important nexus: citizen science, inexpensive sensors, and cloud computing. CSN uses inexpensive MEMS accelerometers or accelerometers in phones […]
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The program for the upcoming workshop on quantum gases, fluids and solids (14-17 Aug, IFSC/USP, São Carlos) has just been announced and is available below: http://meetings.cepof.ifsc.usp.br/qgfs I will be talking on the Saturday (11:30-12:00) in a session with Makoto Tsubota (Osaka) and Joy Allen (Newcastle), strong session if I do say so myself! I will be talking about numerical simulations […]
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This looks an interesting article, certainly one to put in the to read pile: http://news.sciencemag.org/math/2014/07/how-bird-flocks-are-liquid-helium
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Because people prefer falsity to truth, illusion to reality. ⁂ Being the drift of my reflections on the plays I saw at Stratford this summer — King Lear, King John, Man of La Mancha, Alice Through the Looking-Glass, Crazy for You, Hay Fever.
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This is the 7th  (continuing from part I  and part II  and part III and part IV and part V and part VI)  in a series of expository posts where we put together in one place the pieces from various places about: how is treated lambda calculus in chemlambda how it works, with special emphasis […]
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Last month the NCTM Research Committee asked its members to help it identify the grand challenges for mathematics education. Grand challenges, said NCTM, (a) are hard yet doable, (b) affect millions of people, (c) need a comprehensive research program, (d) are goal-based with progress we can measure, and (e) capture the public's attention and support. I'm a month too late to contribute to NCTM's survey, and before blogging my thoughts into the wider conversation I thought I should look back at […]
Editor's Pick

### July 29, 2014

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Here is a question I raised at the Puerto-Rico conference during one of the “problem sessions.” Toby Gee seems to remember that I had some half-baked heuristics that predicted both A and B below, but perhaps one of my readers … Continue reading →
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The Teach Yourself Logic Guide was getting rather ridiculously bloated — 138 pages in the previous version. Oops. That was getting distinctly out of hand. I was losing sight of the originally intended purpose of the Guide. Time to re-boot … Continue reading →
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The first time I entered the math library at Lebanon Valley College, I was struck by what I saw on top of the bookcases – a giant slide rule!  Though I had never used one, I remembered my dad telling … Continue reading →
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David Broomhead passed away on July 24th, 2014 after a long illness. David was a Professor of Applied Mathematics in the School of Mathematics at the University of Manchester. I got to know him in 2004 when the Victoria University … Continue reading →

### July 28, 2014

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Alerted by the post Episciences.org progress by Thomas Arildsen, I took a look at the EPI-IAM and I discovered something to be appreciated. Indeed, compare the non-combat stance of Episciences.org The project proposes an alternative to existing economic models, without competing with traditional publishers. with the one of EPI-IAM: The driving force for this project […]
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Se cinquanta milioni di persone affermano una cosa sciocca, essa resta comunque una cosa sciocca.Anatole France
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The NBER is a massive consumer of econometrics, so it needs at least a group or two devoted to producing econometrics. Hence I'm thrilled that the Timmermann-Wright group, "Forecasting and Empirical Methods in Macroeconomics and Finance," continues to thrive. Timmermann-Wright is strongly and appropriately time-series in flavor, focusing on developing econometric methods for macroeconomics, financial economics, and other areas that feature time series prominently.In my view, […]
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This week I’m at the IMA workshop on Modern Applications of Representation Theory.  So far it’s been really cool! One of the graduate students asked me about how one goes about learning the Linux command line, so I thought I would write down a few of the things I think are most useful on a day-to-day […]
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In a prior post (here)I discussed the change problem: given a dollar, how many ways can you make change using pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters (and generalize to n cents). Scouring the web I found either programs for it, the answer   (242), and answers like `is the coefficient of x^100 in ... . What I didn't find is a  formula for n cents. So I derived one using recurrences and wrote this up with some other things about the change problem, and I posted it on arXiv. (I have […]

### July 27, 2014

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Approximately a year ago I wrote the post A chemical concrete machine for lambda calculus. Quote: How can this be done? Here is sketch, mind you that I propose things which I believe are possible from a chemical perspective, but I don’t have any chemistry knowledge.  If you do, and if you are interested to […]
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Mathematical reflections, not those supposedly practiced in metaphilosophy. Given a function defined for , we have two basic ways to reflect it about : even reflection and odd reflection . Here is the even reflection of the exponential function : The extended function is not differentiable at . The odd reflection, pictured below, is not […]
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Until 2006 (when bigger ones were found elsewhere) this was the home to the tallest known tree in the world. But it's not marked, so you just have to look at them all and guess which one might be the biggest.( More )
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Aka that wide spot in the road on the way to Montgomery Woods( More )

### July 26, 2014

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Stephen Senn Head, Methodology and Statistics Group, Competence Center for Methodology and Statistics (CCMS), Luxembourg Responder despondency: myths of personalized medicine The road to drug development destruction is paved with good intentions. The 2013 FDA report, Paving the Way for Personalized Medicine  has an encouraging and enthusiastic foreword from Commissioner Hamburg and plenty of extremely […]
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by @ulaulaman via @MathUpdate http://t.co/LJX8gSX7xf $\alpha + \beta = \frac{\pi}{2}$ $\sin (\alpha + \beta) = \sin \frac{\pi}{2}$ $\sin \alpha \cdot \cos \beta + \sin \beta \cdot \cos \alpha = 1$ $\frac{a}{c} \cdot \frac{a}{c} + \frac{b}{c} \cdot \frac{b}{c} = 1$ $\frac{a^2}{c^2} + \frac{b^2}{c^2} = 1$ $a^2 + b^2 = c^2$via @MathUpdate
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One of the principles which make the net possible, as stated by Tim Berners-Lee, separation of form from content: The principle that one should represent separately the essence of a document and the style with which it is presented. Applied to decentralized computing, this means no semantics. [One more confirmation of my impression that logic […]
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As Boaz discussed, there is an excellent collection of papers to be presented at the upcoming FOCS in Philadelphia. These would be spread over three of the days of the conference. Before this though, there will be an exciting day of workshops and tutorials. It is your chance to reach hundreds of people from across […]
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Lately I’ve been working almost exclusively on continuous word representations, with the goal of finding vectorial representations of words which expose semantic and/or syntactic relationships between words. As is typical for any interesting machine learning problem, there are a glut of clever models based on various assumptions (sparsity, hierarchical sparsity, low-rankedness, etc.) that yield respectable […]
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At the IIF annual board meeting last month in Rotterdam, I suggested that we provide awards to the top students studying forecasting at university level around the world, to the tune of $100 plus IIF membership for a year. I’m delighted that the idea met with enthusiasm, and that the awards are now available. Even better, my second year forecasting subject has been approved for an award. The IIF have agreed to fund awards for 20 forecasting courses to start with. I believe they have already […] ### July 25, 2014 + I’m staying with my in-laws right now, and they watch America’s Got Talent. As the show went on, I started to get more and more disturbed by the things some of these 11- and 12-year-olds were saying. They were saying … Continue reading → + 혜화역 4번출구 근처에서 머리를 식히며.. 근래에 진행했었던 1차원 Cubic Nonlinear Klein-Gordon System 에 대한 연구를 어제 마무리했다. 일단 완성된 초안을 arXiv에 올려 두었다: arXiv:1407.6658 이번에는 data가$C_0^\infty\$ 급이 아닌 적당한 Weighted Sobolev Space 에 속하는 경우를 다루었다. 이 경우 … Continue reading →Related Posts ?최근 근황 : 석사논문 확장팩 완성최근 근황 : Again […]
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An article I coauthored with Daniel Henderson, Anvar Shukurov, Richard Boys, Graeme Sarson and Andrew Golightly: Regional variations in the European Neolithic dispersal: role of the coastlines has been accepted for publication in Antiquity, a leading archaeology journal.

### July 24, 2014

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I have been the SIGACT NEWS book review editor since 1997. I have tried to get about 10 books reviewed per column. I have succeeded- perhaps too well! I have gotten so many reviews out that I only have six reviews left. I DO have many books that could be reviewed, and that is where YOU come in! List of books available for review: Here Advice for reviewers: Here LaTeX  Template for reviews: Here ALL of my prior columns: Here IF you want to review a book DO NOT leave a comment- just […]
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Tom Leinster’s book Basic Category Theory  arrived today on the new book shelves at the CUP bookshop.  I just love the opening two sentences, which seem about as good a minimal sketch of what category theory is up to as … Continue reading →