Mathematics and Statistics

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

Defaults

jeremy Communication, Education and Outreach, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy
Think about the actions that make up your day. It can be a bit terrifying to realize how little of it is conscious. A huge chunk of your daily actions are performed on autopilot. You don’t even think about them at all. For example, how many actions does it take in the morning before you do diverge from your daily defaults? My guess is that the number is shockingly high. That’s because our morning routine…

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Carrying

jeremy Communication, Education and Outreach, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy
It’s tempting to think that the key to making amazing work is to focus on one thing forever, never deviating from the path. We see examples of this all the time: the athlete that practiced their particular sport for decades, the writer who improves their craft in a very specific area and becomes known for that type of writing, the artist who captures a certain niche of the market and remains with that work, or…

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Academic And Life Plans

jeremy Communication, Education and Outreach, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy
If you’re a student, you know that your immediate future is more or less planned out for you. Sure, there’s a little bit of freedom in what you do, but most of your life is already set. When you’re in elementary school, the plan is to then go to secondary school. When you’re in secondary school, the plan is often to continue on in higher education. But when you’re in university though, things begin to…

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Kindness Is Inexpensive

jeremy Communication, Education and Outreach, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy
You might be having a bad day, or you are tired and just want to curl on your bed with a good book and escape reality. Perhaps you feel like you were taking advantage of, or slighted in some way by a person who didn’t even acknowledge you. All of these are unfortunate situations. And still, it’s good to keep being kind. Sure, it takes a bit of emotional investment to be kind to others,…

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Principles of biological computation: from circadian clock to evolution

Theory, Evolution, and Games Group bloggers Biology and Life Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics, Technology and Engineering
For the final — third — day of the Santa Fe Institute workshop on “What is Biological Computation?” (11 – 13 September) organized by Albert Kao, Jessica Flack, and David Wolpert, we opened the floor to short impormptu talks from all the participants. The result was 21 presentations organized in 4 sessions. As with my posts on the previous two days of this workshop (Day 1: Elements of biological computation & stochastic thermodynamics of life;…

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Getting to the Essence

jeremy Communication, Education and Outreach, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy
I’ve often thought about why I enjoy mathematics, physics, and then comics. The first two go together quite naturally. We aren’t surprised when someone who likes mathematics also has an interest in physics. The two are practically overlapping. But comics? Comics seem like a whole different story. They’re funny, artistic, and rarely have anything to do with mathematics or physics. It would be reasonable to think that comics are the odd one out. However, I…

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Ice sheet melting: it’s not just about sea level rise

Kaitlin Alexander Environmental and Earth Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics
Originally published at The Science Breaker Climate change is causing the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets to melt, which releases cold, fresh meltwater into the nearby ocean. This meltwater causes sea level rise, but a lesser-known side effect is the disruption of deep ocean currents and climate patterns worldwide. Our modelling study investigated these processes. You’ve probably heard that climate change is melting the polar ice caps – but what does this actually mean? It…

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Understanding Is Hard-Won

jeremy Communication, Education and Outreach, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy
When I first started my undergraduate degree in physics, I would get frustrated when I couldn’t understand a concept. This happened when I worked as an undergraduate research assistant with little previous knowledge about the subject. I suddenly had to start learning about more advanced ideas like tensors and general relativity, which were topics I hadn’t ever studied before. At the same time, I had to learn this largely on my own, since there weren’t…

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The science and engineering of biological computation: from process to software to DNA-based neural networks

Theory, Evolution, and Games Group bloggers Biology and Life Sciences, Mathematics and Statistics, Technology and Engineering
In the earlier days of TheEGG, I used to write extensively about the themes of some of the smaller conferences and workshops that I attended. One of the first such workshops I blogged about in detail was the 2nd workshop on Natural Algorithms and the Sciences in May 2013. That spawned an eight post series that I closed with a vision for a path toward an algorithmic theory of biology. In the six years since,…

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Necessary Background

jeremy Communication, Education and Outreach, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Astronomy
If you go to a basketball game, it may take you a few minutes to understand the rules, but pretty quickly you will figure out what’s happening. Sure, there might be niche rules here and there that leave you baffled, but you can still follow along. Furthermore, you don’t have to be an expert at basketball in order to enjoy watching others play. Unfortunately, this isn’t the view people take of mathematics and science. Often,…

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