Mathematics and Statistics

Applied Mathematics, Geometry and Topology, Analysis, Mathematical Modeling, Statistical Modeling, Game Theory, Operations, Biostatistics, Epidemiology, GIS, Image Processing

Minimal models for explaining unbounded increase in fitness

Theory, Evolution, and Games Group bloggers Biology and Life Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics, Technology and Engineering
On a prior version of my paper on computational complexity as an ultimate constraint, Hemachander Subramanian made a good comment and question: Nice analysis Artem! If we think of the fitness as a function of genes, interactions between two genes, and interactions between three genes and so on, your analysis using epistasis takes into account only the interactions (second order and more). The presence or absence of the genes themselves (first order) can change the…

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Black Boxes

jeremy Communication, Education and Outreach, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy
Why is the area of a circle given by Ï€r2? I’m not asking why it’s in this specific form. Rather, I want to know why this is true. Can you tell me? Can you convince me? Let’s take something a bit more concrete. I bet you use a lamp every day to light up something in your home. Can you explain how the lamp works? What makes the bulb shine? How does the electricity work…

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The wei wu wei of evolutionary oncology

Theory, Evolution, and Games Group bloggers Biology and Life Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics, Technology and Engineering
The world was disordered, rains would come and the rivers would flood. No one knew when. When it rained, plants would grow, but no one knew which were fit to eat and which were poisonous. Sickness was rife. Life was precarious. The philosopher-king Yu dredged the rivers, cleaned them so they would flow into the sea. Only then were the people of the Middle Kingdom able to grow the five grains to obtain food. Generations…

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The Priority of Education

jeremy Communication, Education and Outreach, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy
Is not learning. Here’s a question. What’s the best outcome that can happen when you take a course? The most common answer (and one I would give myself) is to get 100%. To do everything perfectly, never making a mistake. Most students agree that this would be the ultimate goal. How could anything be better than getting a perfect grade? When you look back on a course, what do you think about? Chances are, the…

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Mathtimidation by analytic solution vs curse of computing by simulation

Theory, Evolution, and Games Group bloggers Biology and Life Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics, Technology and Engineering
Recently, I was chatting with Patrick Ellsworth about the merits of simulation vs analytic solutions in evolutionary game theory. As you might expect from my old posts on the curse of computing, and my enjoyment of classifying games into dynamic regimes, I started with my typical argument against simulations. However, as I searched for a positive argument for analytic solutions of games, I realized that I didn’t have a good one. Instead, I arrived at…

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Climate change and compassion fatigue

Kaitlin Alexander Environmental and Earth Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics
I’m a climate scientist, and I don’t worry about climate change very much. I think about it every day, but I don’t let it in. To me climate change is a fascinating math problem, a symphony unfolding both slowly and quickly before our very eyes. The consequences of this math problem, for myself and my family and our future, I keep locked in a tiny box in my brain. The box rarely gets opened. The…

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A Splash of Colour

jeremy Communication, Education and Outreach, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy
When giving a presentation, it’s difficult to present ideas in science or mathematics without the use of equations. It’s possible, but unless you’re exploring a geometry problem, you’re probably out of luck. If you want to get a message across to your audience that is more substantive than a bunch of emphatic adjectives about science, you need to use equations. Unfortunately, equations in presentations don’t have a habit of looking (How shall we say it?)…

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Methods and morals for mathematical modeling

Theory, Evolution, and Games Group bloggers Biology and Life Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics, Technology and Engineering
About a year ago, Vincent Cannataro emailed me asking about any resources that I might have on the philosophy and etiquette of mathematical modeling and inference. As regular readers of TheEGG know, this topic fascinates me. But as I was writing a reply to Vincent, I realized that I don’t have a single post that could serve as an entry point to my musings on the topic. Instead, I ended up sending him an annotated…

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Outside the Curriculum

jeremy Communication, Education and Outreach, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy
Do you feel like you’re not getting enough out of what you do in class? Does mathematics feel boring, just a bunch of rules that you follow without more or less knowing why? I don’t blame you. This isn’t necessarily your teacher’s fault either. Instead, it’s a mentality that we’ve adopted with respect to your education. Take a bunch of mathematical concepts that are easy to test, and make students like you do lots of…

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Software monocultures, imperialism, and weapons of math destruction

Theory, Evolution, and Games Group bloggers Biology and Life Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics, Technology and Engineering
This past Friday, Facebook reported that they suffered a security breach that affected at least 50 million users. ‘Security breach’ is a bit of newspeak that is meant to hint at active malice and attribute fault outside the company. But as far as I understand it — and I am no expert on this — it was just a series of three bugs in Facebook’s “View As” feature that together allowed people to get the…

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