Jim Remy's B-logerithms and mathemexcitements

computational neuroscience

2009-12-06T20:10:00.001-08:00

i'm aware that i'm not very active here. None-the-less, things have been happening. I had to buy christmas presents for my brother and dad, which resulted in me also buying Mathematical Fallacies and Paradoxes as well as the Bedside book of Algebra, which were both reasonably enjoyable. I will be the Melbourne Unit-Coordinator of the mathematics my uni teaches to primary school teachers, so just having a broader understanding of history is good, as well as some good resources for providing to the students - particularly the Bedside book.

I will take this moment to congratulate myself also on being accepted into the short course on Computational Neuroscience conducted by UQ and Geoff Goodhill - maybe I will learn something about computers, maybe I will be able to relate what I learn to aggregation functions, fuzzy reasoning and decision making, maybe I will meet some interesting people.

QED Cat

2009-09-08T23:29:00.000-07:00

Marty Ross and and Burkard Polster have had the site www.qedcat.com for a while now I guess - but now I have found it. I took Marty's measure theory class in 2008.

I look forward to keeping up to date with what these guys are up to - they had a very nice presentation showing mathematics in a whole lot of films which they are basing a book on.

I am not offended at all by these guys' enthusiasm and ability to make maths interesting and fun for everyone. I have tried numerous times to retell their anecdotes (unsuccessfully) in tutes.

Good stuff.

How do people do things well?

2009-09-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

Hypatia was somewhat disappointing. My friend was reminded of Gut Symmetries - which didn't occur to me but once mentioned I did realise that they each annoyed annoyed me in the same way. There's something not very cool about people forcing themselves into mathematical mysticism so that they seem smart.

It was good to hear the story, gradually told of Hypatia, although some of the historical accuracy i'm sure is questionable.

Oh well, I will continue my search for a good integration of maths and art.

HYPATIA

2009-08-23T19:54:00.000-07:00

The Stork Theatre, which used to be at The Stork, which doesn't exist anymore, and is now at Alliance Francais in St Kilda is putting on a play about Hypatia.

Why is this at AF? Hypatia was not French - living around the turn of the 5th century AD (France wasn't even French at this stage) - however perhaps the French have adopted her, being one of the few countries that, in general, thinks mathematicians are cool.

All I know of Hypatia comes from A History of Mathematics, which tells me that her and her father did a lot of reading and understanding of mathematics... i.e. most of what we know of them is how they helped summarise Euclid or something like this.

At any rate, since she was learned, she was killed by the Christians of the time. I am looking forward to attending this play, although I fear I will be going alone.... sometimes it would be nice to have one or two maths friends.

why would anyone reject a maths paper?

2009-08-20T00:16:00.000-07:00

Alerted to the Rejecta Mathematica Journal (via), I took the time to read a couple of articles. Of interest is the author's right of reply, or justification I guess - for what reasons should someone read a rejected paper.

I have read RM's philosophy, and I think it's fair enough - however, after going through the whole submission/rejection(major revision), rejection(minor revision) etc., I can't help but wonder what it all really means.

When you submit to a journal (and from submission could be inferred a desire to be published therein), you usually have an idea of what sorts of articles are accepted - the format, the standard, the frequently published authors. Perhaps there are some that are more open than this...

At any rate, the article Meaning-Imposers vs Meaning-Derivers certainly has an interesting preamble - the author quite sure that he has been betrayed by conservative billy-goats posing as mathematicians, leading him to the conclusion that perhaps his work was too radical - and more importantly, brilliant - to be published in his life-time.

I don't know, I followed it for a while, it is about a type of descriptive geometry called point-summary, developed by Grassmann. Grassman's work gave rise to linear algebra, beyond 3 dimensions, however what this article seems to be suggesting is that we are interpreting geometry all the wrong way and that points have a weight and a midpoint has more than that etc.

So... I found the excursion interesting, but it seemed like needless abstraction - and there was a lot of italics... I'm sure I must come across this way at times.

In fact, the article reminds me of another mathematics person, who is currently obsessed with convincing people that some decision-under-uncertainty theory is not worth any attention and any of its proponents are worthless.

If I were to leave a mark on the mathematical world, why would I want it to be one of asserting others' worthlessness? Or is that what I've just done?

wiki edit of Fuzzy measure theory

2009-08-18T02:08:00.000-07:00

It should perhaps have created a new page with a discrete section or something, none-the-less, i am starting to understand the format they use, so I will see whether this page stays up there

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_measure_theory

meanwhile there are other articles such as OWA etc which are just waiting to be linked to!

\emptyset

2009-08-17T20:37:00.000-07:00

All things mathematical - as opposed to bookical. There is no wiki page for Aggregation Functions and the Fuzzy measures page is dismal - so I'm going to try and get these up and running as soon as I understand the code and format that is used. Lots of fun - 2 more ways to procrastinate!