tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-219300892024-03-18T22:06:41.403-07:00Discreet MathThoughts on mathematics, both in my life and the greater mathematical world.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger98125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-9278945104464150782008-05-25T10:22:00.000-07:002008-05-25T10:36:18.650-07:00if (next == NULL) read(other_blogs);I‘m officially admitting to myself and the world that this is the final post to Discreet Math. I do, however, have this twitter feed, and this ripular blog that I run with tumblr. Both have rss feeds, as well as built-in "following" functionality if you are a twitterer or a tumblrr. If you start reading my tumblog, please let me know. I'm curious if I'm the only one who sees what I put up Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-86625250668325628412008-01-15T13:20:00.000-08:002008-01-15T13:21:18.268-08:00The effect of emacs on the Ctrl keyUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-66911203359852002972007-12-21T15:35:00.000-08:002007-12-21T15:57:17.884-08:00Kalil Azad's Mathematical MindsetThanks to the increasingly hive-like mind of 43 folders, I landed on this essay about how to think about math on Kalil Azad's excellent BetterExplained. (As we are now in the midst of the era of humees and wudzups, domain names composed of good ol' real words are such a breath of fresh air.)I honestly wonder how I never came across this guy before. I really like his style, keeping each point Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-68408659679218981582007-12-04T21:04:00.001-08:002007-12-04T21:04:55.989-08:00Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-55418131424294588352007-07-27T16:42:00.001-07:002007-07-27T16:44:45.657-07:00In case of power outageIn the EECS building on the Berkeley campus...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-15129571328391660232007-07-23T20:21:00.000-07:002007-07-23T20:37:06.230-07:00Am I fascinated by scale because I'm a Libra?One of the greatest gifts given us by mathematics is a language for scale. It's how we know that 1,000 is different from 1, which is in turn different from 0.1.One of my earlier memories is of attending this captivating exhibit on the limits of scale as understood thirty years ago. Those extremities have not been pushed back much further since then. Amusingly, it was only last year that I Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-51243982651130290392007-07-14T20:33:00.000-07:002007-07-14T20:40:19.885-07:00Continuous and discreteThis photo is more than two years old. You can tell because in spite of the huge grin on my face, the crow's feet near my eyes are still relatively small.Thanks to C. Dewey for finally getting around to making these public.And in case you were wondering: Yes. Yes we do.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-41026845848862242682007-06-02T09:06:00.000-07:002007-06-02T09:14:53.119-07:00Let T be a shirt...I used to think I needed this shirt.Now I realize that I need this one.LOL rights reserved the respective creators, images used with their respective (implicit) permissions.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-15675944155990998642007-05-22T23:03:00.000-07:002007-05-22T23:09:37.214-07:00On the riseAs a counterpoint to his miserable formula from a year ago, R. Stevens gives a metric for quality of life.I'm very happy to have had both input variables move in the right direction recently. More sleep, less time in a car!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-61641825220245730552007-05-21T20:36:00.000-07:002007-05-22T23:10:44.188-07:00DelinquencyFor those distraught by the dearth of mathematically themed writings in this space, may I suggest my shared items in Google Reader, easily accessed either by the first of the above links, or in the sidebar of this page, entitled "And what have I been reading?"My distractions from these posts have not been all work. I've written before about the great strides being made in human-computer Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-790741496889391392007-05-06T14:49:00.000-07:002007-07-27T16:39:35.671-07:00Since when is 'B' a number?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-44676165654494867592007-04-17T09:34:00.000-07:002007-04-17T09:43:16.812-07:00It is finishedMy adviser, A. Schilling, has just finished a paper extending my first result, proving my conjecture on the matter and thereby tying up the last loose end left by my thesis.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-76776193031267201942007-04-05T20:25:00.000-07:002007-04-05T21:25:09.514-07:00E8, AIM, and PRI was very happy to hear the voice of M. Vazirani, who served on my dissertation committee (see the evidence below) on last week's episode of KQED's California Report. It's a great little piece, accessible to all. You can download it, or stream it from the page linked above.In some sense it seems perfectly natural for a radio station whose call letters are a common mathematical initialism (or Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-8268182538237553472007-03-28T21:20:00.000-07:002007-03-28T21:47:09.184-07:00I've received a variety of junk messages ...which is not ideal. I recently found a message labeled as spam with "On nullstellensatz" as its subject. This isn't the only time a math term has turned up in this context–earlier today I was treated to "so mcclain go matroid"–but it is the most sophisticated language I've seen in the Pynchon-esque maelstrom of unsolicited commercial email.If they really want to reach the algebraic Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-54258433970047989012007-03-27T19:42:00.000-07:002007-03-28T21:56:55.215-07:00I'm a bad geekUnlike last year, I did absolutely nothing to celebrate π day this year. I can at least send out a post facto link to the (boing)2-ing of Stanford's L. E. O'Neal.I still prefer my proposed finger-play. It's also the binary representation of 503 (i.e., 111110111), making it especially appropriate for PDX'ers.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-8340386693038469682007-03-20T12:57:00.000-07:002007-03-20T16:39:28.725-07:00Build character!A few research institutions and news outlets, as well as some blogs have reported on what is generally being termed the "mapping" of E8. This is about as good a layman's description of this result as can be given, although for those who know a smattering of group theory, it would be better to say that the fruit of these labors is a table relating the conjugacy classes of E8 to each other. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-64585496569177200222007-02-27T17:31:00.000-08:002007-02-27T17:59:03.443-08:00Would it help if I drew a flow chart?Such great things come out of MIT's media lab: one of their visitors has built a water-based computer.This could come in handy in the event of a massive electromagnetic pulse. However, I suspect most people would have other matters on their mind at that point.In all seriousness, this is a wonderful project. Like other mechanical algorithm devices, it allows the fundamental procedures of Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-72333037885736521322007-02-20T22:19:00.000-08:002007-02-20T22:26:55.667-08:00Gang sinesR. Stevens models his forthcoming design, featuring both a transcendental number and an earthly delight:With right thumb and left ring finger extended, he'd be repping the circle with proper digits.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-39628273090594852982007-02-18T17:13:00.000-08:002007-02-18T19:18:15.026-08:00Hyperbolic frolicI had the tremendous pleasure today to attend an exhibit of works by M. C. Escher in my hometown. It was an incredible treat to see so many familiar images, a few of which have adorned my walls, in one place. There were a number of surprises, too: lovingly crafted scenes of Italian buildings and staircases, and a series of early woodcuts with biblical subjects. One of these even had the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-68097709750624320562007-02-12T12:09:00.000-08:002007-02-10T12:50:30.524-08:00Over my headI looked up, stretching my neck, and saw this lovely ornament hanging above my cubicle.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-54908578491897952852007-02-02T21:20:00.000-08:002007-02-02T21:53:20.671-08:00I thought this one goes up to elevenOne of the more intelligent sorts of mathematical questions I've been asked are those on the nature of higher dimensions. Somewhere in our pop history it was decided that since we lived in the third dimension, there should be others, like so many arrondissement. These are usually just three-dimensional spaces where things are wacky, not the fundamentally larger spaces they ought to be. In fact,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-74703818648379575162007-01-31T23:07:00.000-08:002007-01-31T23:21:50.787-08:00Shaken to the (multi) coreCatherine Crawford, chief architect for next-generation systems software at IBM Systems Group's Quasar Design Center, has made a bold statement about the future of software; as is to be expected, some sources make it sound a little more sensationally apocalyptic.This isn't the first time I've brought up the many-core future of the desktop. You may be wondering who will have the expertise to Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-64120187240188993622007-01-24T19:15:00.000-08:002007-01-24T21:10:06.353-08:00Let the CHI flowFor the purposes of this post, that's Computer-Human Interaction, not the Chinese concept of life force.I made my way to PARC again last Thursday to hear a great talk about how the landscape of electronic entertainment is changing thanks to developments in HCI. It really says something about my interests that so many of the topics that T. Blaine covered were already familiar to me. Off the top Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-88349676460702695292007-01-22T10:43:00.000-08:002007-02-08T00:01:33.745-08:00Non-orientable garmentsEvery mathematician worth their salt knows of The Acme Klein Bottle Company, although I'm one of the few I know who has made a purchase there; specifically, a question mark as a wedding gift to the former proprietors of a Seattle restaurant. (Some are more familiar with the proprietor as the narrator of one of the world's first cyber-espionage stories.) The business has diversified since my Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21930089.post-39129227904130419922007-01-19T08:04:00.000-08:002007-01-19T08:21:26.901-08:00SynchronicityThe other day, I took the time to read S. Yegge's latest essay on software, complex systems, and consciousness; the thesis of the work, an idea that Steve has been refining for some time now, is that "the most important principle in all of software design is this: Systems should never reboot." He gives numerous examples of software products that fail to incorporate this principle, and a few thatUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0