Mathematicians In Love

Because someone kind of accidentally bet me I couldn't do it:


You call my love inconsequential
For you it's just a differential
Put to your heart's exponential
So it's never really changed.

How are our lives still tangential?
Is it all negative potential?
Like writing strings of transcendentals
But all inversely arranged.

Turnabout Is Fair Play

One of my academic friends found herself on the shitty end of a terrible reviewer and their terrible review today, a slating of her work based on a fundamental misconception which could quickly have been resolved had the reviewer read the paper itself, rather than presumably burning it unopened and judging the smell of the smoke.

Indeed, their objections manage to be even more stupid than the last review I got, which contained the fabulous line "The authors must ensure they understand that they have not demonstrated clinical relevance.  In their defense, the authors do not claim they have."  That in turn was the most ridiculous thing any reviewer has said to me since I had a 36-page paper packed with horribly fiddly set theory rejected due to "insufficient mathematics."

In short, it's become very clear to me that we need to start reviewing reviewers.

And not with one of those milquetoast "Rate your experience out of five" surveys; we should be allowed to get proper digs in:

"We recommend this reviewer be rejected on the grounds they have neither the wit to grasp our work nor the honesty to admittheir failings.

The journal should feel free to resubmit this reviewer for consideration following extensive changes to their outlook, knowledge base, reading age, and sense of basic professionalism, but we cannot guarantee that this will lead to a change in stance. What if they're still a prick?"

Your move, peer-review process...

Music Of The Spheres

I just learned that geometrist and Field medal-winner William Thurston passed away on Tuesday. I've never really got geometry.  Not the applications, of course, which are clear, varied and important.  Nor even the attraction, I suppose - I remember clearly the first time I learned of the Pythagorean Theorem, and just being blown away by the idea that mathematics could demonstrate such a thing; everything I'd learned up to that point being either intuitively obvious or simple enough to verify.

But I never really understood why anyone would dedicate their career to it.  Of course, probability is just the most mathematically rigorous way possible to fail to predict the future, so it's not like my choice is necessarily any better.  And looking at what Thurston achieved, it's hard to fault his choice.  Anyone who gets so good in a given field that everyone else stays away from it in case he solves the whole shebang before they've gotten a chance to play is worthy of some considerable respect (though I wish "Thurston's Monster Theorem" involved fewer closed hyperbolic 3-manifolds, and more minotaurs).

Plus, on top of everything, his work was interesting enough to inspire Grigori Perelman, the charmingly lunatic Russian geometrist who solved the Poincare Conjecture - which even I'd heard of - leading to him also being awarded the Field Medal, though he refused to accept it.

Another Tremor Beneath The Tower

So, the next installment of my increasingly tardy series of data sets has arrived.  Naturally, it's completely incompatible with what I already had.  Turns out, rather than simply missing the third data set, I was also missing fully one half of each of the first two data sets, and now I'm missing the other half of the third.

And all of this is just the baseline data.  I've no idea in the slightest whether there's actually been any information gathered at the end of all this.  Not that it particularly matters at this point - there's little point in trying to figure out if patients have seen significant changes in their test results if their original results are missing.

To paraphrase Josh Lyman, the fifth year of this two-year study doesn't seem to be going any better than the first four.

The Ivory Tower

I love academia.  So far this week I have:

1. Been asked on a Sunday afternoon to rewrite a section of a paper with a deadline of Monday afternoon;
2. Spent Monday morning writing the changes only to discover the paper was submitted first thing that day, without me being told;
3. Discovered that the woman responsible for cleaning and providing the data has left some mistakes in the data - or at least, in the 33% of the data I currently have - and has then gone on holiday, despite the deadline for having the full set ready for me being the end of this month;
4. Found out the deadlines have been changed in an email I was never sent, and now involve me analysing the full data set in the next two weeks.

And this is all just one project.  I can't begin to tell you how screwed up my research programme is right now...

Serious Business

My latest paper (a short one for the ISIPTA conference that I'm busy fleshing out) is available for anyone who's interested in what I get up to all day.

Postcards From The Front

"Statistics is more religious than religion." - Alessandro Antonucci.

"Stab him with the wax crayons!" - Gero Walter

Greetings from Austria!  The weather here is terrible, but the maths is good and the beer is better.

One thing I find particularly useful about conferences, and the bi-annual ISIPTA conference in particular, is how well they work as a measure of one's mathematical progress.  My first ISIPTA conference, back in Prague in 2007, was thoroughly baffling.  Durham in 2009 was difficult.  This time around, I feel like I've finally gotten a handle on what's going on.  My head and my notebook are both filled with ideas for future research and potential collaborations, and to my great surprise I'm actually starting to find myself with "opinions" on things.  It's a scary prospect.

I'd also like to take a moment to note a fairly major moment in my mathematical career: taking a silver at the IJAR Young Researcher Awards.  The competition was monumentally tough, and all three of the researchers sharing the silver whose work I've read (Drs. Rebecca Baker and Nathan Huntley, both of whom show up on this blog from time to time, along with Gero Walter) are exceptionally talented (far more than I am).  Given how good they are, I can't imagine how exceptional Bernhard Schmelzer must be (I haven't read anything of his yet) to have taken the gold.  Congratulations all round, and particularly to Bernhard.

(Nathan, alas, was unable to attend the conference, so we've replaced him with Jasper de Bock, so as to keep the amount of hair on display roughly constant.  Jasper received an Honorable Mention, and deservedly so, his mathematics career is just beginnng, but already his work is astonishingly impressive).

Our apologies to David Sungdren, who was missed off the photo above because no-one bothered to tell us he had won a silver award as well.   I don't have any knowledge of his work either; clearly it's time to rectify that.

Mmm...

Someone reminded me of this during our usual mathematical arguments over lunch. 

Replacing pi with a value twice it's size would seem to be a zero-sum proposition: it makes circumference calculations "more natural" at the expense of area calculations, and makes radian considerations easier at the cost of complicating the periodicity of the tangent function.

Even so, I say we go with it for two reasons.

First, it will set a precedent whereby I can double the amount of grant money I can apply for, on the grounds that the increased figure "seems more natural".

Second, it will really piss this guy off.

Postcards From The Front

Since I've been in Kenilworth for 48 hours now, it's probably time I put together some initial thoughts.

It's difficult.  Not being here, just summoning up a description.  It's all so... calm.  Even during the holidays, Durham University was always afflicted by a sense of barely-contained chaos.  It was the same at the school I spend two years teaching at.  No matter what the time of day or year, you could feel it, as though decades of accumulated mania had saturated the place, leaving every wall and door gradually leaking out manic activity.

There's nothing like that here. With the exception of a brief attempt to arrange a meeting (that was then postponed) nothing has interrupted me these last two days.  I simply arrive; read or write what I had intended to that morning, and then go back to the hotel.  The most surprising event of my time here so far was having my introductory chat with my new boss interrupted by the sight of rabbits playing outside the window.  The loudest sounds are those of ill-tempered ducks on the pond nearby.

It won't last, I realise.  We're in a fallow period right now, but the next wave of desperate, statistically illiterate panickers is already cresting.  Indeed, I'm not sure I want it to last - there is only so much staid quiet I can take before I start having to make my own noise.

I have to admit, though, it's making for a nice change.

An Era Ends

Apologies for the slight dip in output; I've been busy.  Today was officially the last day I was in the employ of Durham University.  I arrive in Coventry tomorrow morning to start messing around with Warwick's Medical School; so presumably I'll have some first impressions pretty soon.

Revised Standards

Given how down I was on Megan McArdle's terrible previous article on potential anti-conservative bias, I thought it only fair to note that her follow-up is actually a lot better, to start with at least.

Most of what she writes in the first half of the article is entirely fair.  She's right that bias does not have to be intentional, and she's certainly right that there's little point in arguing "I know I'm not biased because I've looked into my heart".  I'm sure (though I haven't checked) that there were plenty of weak arguments put forward in response to her previous post.

But - and you knew there was one coming - the problem is she is fighting the weak arguments.  The stronger one - that this is a complex issue that needs a rigorous and intelligent approach - is left entirely unconsidered.  She even references this issue with regard to the Republican/conservative conflation, and then just bats it aside as though it's obviously stupid.

It isn't. Moreover, it's central to the point.  McArdle talks at length about the possibility that conservatives might feel out of place in academia but never makes the logical inference that this means a public display of hands is a stupid way to test the proportion of conservatives.  What exactly will be shown?  That there aren't very many conservatives?  That they are made to feel uncomfortable by their fellows? Or that they feel uncomfortable for other reasons (i.e. they already believe what Haidt claims he's proved).  The issue here isn't whether bias is a complex subject - it clearly is.  It's why McArdle can believe the problem is complex but the diagnosis is simple.

We Have To Have Some Standards...

I had considered spending a few hours tearing this McArdle post apart for a bit of fun, but - fittingly enough - I find I'm too busy being an academic to smack it down in full.  So let's have the short version instead.  Anyone with any claim whatsoever to experience of the American political climate who argues that conservatives are under-represented in US academic institutions because not many academics vote Republican needs to fuck off.  Not just shut up.  Fuck off.  Fuck off from the blogohedron, and from public life entirely.

Seriously. Off you go.  Bye now.  Come back when you realise that if there is any place in the States where being a conservative and choosing to vote Republican are different, it's the places where people have trained themselves to actually understand what the fuck is going on. There are significant numbers of conservative Democrats, and far more conservative Independents.  Mixing the terms up when it suits you is pathetically sloppy.

Also on the subject of understanding what is going on, McArdle might want to consider her own grasp of, y'know, anything:

41% of the troops identify as Republicans (down from 62% just seven years ago), while 32% identify as independent, and presumably, 27% identify as Democrats.

To reiterate: fuck off.  You're supposed to be an economics expert but you've never heard of a "Don't Know" or "No Response" column?  I suppose we should give McArdle some kudos for at least being able to sum to one hundred, at least.

I don't want to imply that this apparent  political disparity isn't an interesting topic to consider.  Nor am I suggesting that there cannot be any kind of bias  occurring somewhere.  I'd like to see some genuine research on this. This isn;t it.  Indeed, were there people who believed that conservatives were unsuited for academic work, this kind of lazy bullshit would certainly lend credence to their position.

Which, of course, is the problem: McArdle is trying to argue that liberal academics look down on the skills of conservatives whilst demonstrating with great clarity just how poor her own skills are.  Her intellectual laziness, sloppy inferences, and track record with refusing to admit mistakes or reconsider errors are exactly the flaws a good academic must avoid at all costs.

Which kind of brings us to the $64 000 question: does Ms McArdle consider herself of academic fibre?  Because if she does - and her "U cant scare me cos all my fameelz academics FUR REELZ"-style of non-argument/defense mechanism implies that she does (and moreover that she considers academic skill to be hereditary) - then her entire position is based on a total failure to understand how academia works, and what makes someone suited or otherwise to pursue it. 

On the other hand, if she is willing to admit she couldn't hack it in any situation where her editors would actually have to pay attention to the quality of her arguments, then whilst that would be nice (and a rare flash of self-awareness), it would immediately raise the question as to what in God's name she's doing as the Atlantic's business and economics editor?.

Unless she can answer that, dear readers, then I think we all know what it is she can do.

(She can fuck off).

Best... Comic... Ever!

Courtesy of my friend Count Libido:

Sheer genius.  I shall have to search this Stoos guy out...

Little Victories

Success! Thanks to deft office politicking and expert wrangling I have persuaded the department to scrap my 9am Tuesday tutorials.  This saves me from having to explain immediate annuities to twenty unwashed sex-crazed 20 year-olds before climbing Cardiac Hill (so named for the chances of coronary problems whilst struggling to the top) to tell seventy more unwashed sex-crazed 20-year olds the best way to calculate my odds of dying in the next year.  Maths problems and hill-climbing?  Throw in a Rubik's Cube and it's an episode of the fucking Krypton Factor.

Anyway.  That's all I have to say today.

Finally!

No posting today; I have celebrating to do!  Assuming things don't go tits up during the final stages (i.e. wrangling over the exact amount of time it will take me to get my arse down to the West Midlands), it would appear that a further three years of lovely, lovely money will soon be mine to enjoy!

For some reason this song seems appropriate, thought I'd hope any contributions I make to medical research are somewhat more constructive than getting drunk on water towers.  Not that that wouldn't be awesome.  (Also, it's that mad Doctor Who guy again: bonus).

Justification

Another reason to believe that I am not entirely pissing away the money given to me.  Of course, this paper represents the end of my ability to coast on the work I put in for my PhD.  Time to do some more research, I guess.

Hat In Hand

So, my interview went well.  Not well, enough, though, so I am still apparently fated for a life of miserable destitution.

That is, of course, unless you give just five pounds a month to sponsor a mathematician!

Each sponsor will receive the following:

• A monthly newsletter, filled with explanations as to why your sponsored mathematician hasn't produced anything;
• A signed photograph of the mathematician's PhD;
• A pledge to name a conjecture (£5 per month), lemma (£30 p.m.) or theorem (£500 p.m.) after the sponsor in the unlikely event such a thing is ever produced.

Please consider the plight of these deluded social pariahs in these troubled times, and donate to your nearest mathematician sanctuary (sometimes referred to as "departments"). Each one does its very best to allow mathematicians to live as nature intended: surrounded by coffee and endless distractions.

An entirely average example of the kind of mathematician who could become "indebted" to you TODAY!

Remember: give a man a fish, and he'll feed himself for a day.  Give a mathematician a fish, and he'll exchange it for booze and not show up to work for three days. Best stick to letting us pay for the coffee, is what we're saying.

How I Justify My Existence

Hooray! At long last, I have another paper afloat in the Ocean of Journals! This is much better than the earlier one, too; and works as a kind of overview for the lion's share of my thesis work (I have another one describing the remaining eight months of work, but that's still stuck in approval-limbo).

So if anyone has a working knowledge of maths and access to Science Direct, feel free to take a look at the sum total of my efforts from the middle of 2005 to the end of 2008. Otherwise, you can always just scan the abstract and marvel at all the pretty syllables.

Good Things Come In Threes

Have just secured myself an extra five months funding, with a pay rise to boot. Hooray! Now all I have to do is teach a lecture course on a subject about which I know nothing!

To celebrate this rare moment of good fortune, I'm off tonight to see my second favourite band in the universe. So let's have us some videos. The first is for "Private Eye", the second Alkaline Trio song I ever heard, and the exact moment at which I fell in love. Sometimes bands grow on you, and some just gut-punch you in the best way possible.



Also submitted for your approval is their latest video, for the song "This Addiction". I'm offering it partly as a compare and contrast (clearly the coffers are a little less barren than once they were), and partly because it reminds me of The Tribe, that somewhat bonkers but occasionally brilliant New Zealand show from the turn of the millennium, which managed to be a typically ludicrous teenage soap opera melodrama and a neat look at a common childhood fantasy (i.e. no more adults) at the same time. It was the guiltiest of my guilty pleasures, but I still remember it fondly, in that way we all do with experiences too far in the past to clearly recall their faults anymore.

The Month In Minutiae

Problem: A wave of petty (very, very petty) crime sweeping our department.

Cost to department: Delicious biscuits, much-loved spoons, assorted crockery.

Cost to me: One mug.

Response: Equally petty (very, very petty, though hopefully amusing) group e-mail:

If anyone is still weighing up their options regarding New Year resolutions, might I humbly suggest one: not stealing other people's mugs.

At this point my own coffee receptacle has been AWOL for over a month. I can thus only assume that either it is being used as a desk ornament with which to impress visitors from other, mugless societies, or that the mould that has presumably grown within is close to reaching the level of intelligence necessary to mark your homework scripts for you.

In case you're wondering, the item in question bears the English strip upon its side, but that doesn't really matter. Look around your office. Note any mugs. Check those mugs against your memories of buying mugs.

Any not match up? Put them back.

Kthanx

PS: For the record, the volume of the average coffee mug is equal to approximately that of 2.7 coffee cups of the kind already available in the coffee room. Thus, those too tight or too lazy to acquire a mug of their own can achieve the exact same result as stealing my mug by just using 2.7 coffee cups instead. You won't have to swipe anything!

Unless you enjoy theft, obviously, in which case I suggest you try stealing cars or gold ingots. Nobody likes an underachiever.

Result #1: Mug returned

Result #2: Extra mug gained as birthday present.


("If I am not DR. CROSSMAN then I stole this mug")

Conclusion #1: A man's mug is his chalice.

Conclusion #2: My best birthday presents always involve others playing off my total refusal to gain any sense of perspective or proportion whatsoever.