Mathematics posts
- February 2, 2012
- 10:35 AM
- 32 views
Numerical evidence for the square root of a Wiener process
by Marco Frasca in The Gauge Connection
Brownian motion is a very kind mathematical object being very keen to numerical simulations. There are a plenty of them for any platform and software so that one is able to check very rapidly the proper working of a given hypothesis. For these aims, I have found very helpful the demonstration site by Wolfram and [...]... Read more »
Marco Frasca. (2012) Quantum mechanics is the square root of a stochastic process. arXiv. arXiv: 1201.5091v2
- January 31, 2012
- 06:04 AM
- 66 views
Quantum mechanics and stochastic processes: Revised paper posted
by Marco Frasca in The Gauge Connection
After having fixed the definition of the extended Itō integral, I have posted a revised version of my paper on arXiv (see here). The idea has been described here. A full account of this story is given here. The interesting aspect from a physical standpoint is the space that is fluctuating both for a Wiener [...]... Read more »
Marco Frasca. (2012) Quantum mechanics is the square root of a stochastic process. arXiv. arXiv: 1201.5091v2
- January 31, 2012
- 03:29 AM
- 85 views
Voodoo Neuroscience Revisited
by Neuroskeptic in Neuroskeptic
Two years ago, neuroscientists were shaken by the appearance of a draft paper showing that half of the published work in a particular field had fallen prey to a major statistical error.Originally called "Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience", it ended up with the less snappy name of Puzzlingly high correlations in fMRI studies of emotion, personality, and social cognition. I prefer the old title.The error in question is now known variously as the "circular analysis problem", "non-independe........ Read more »
Vul, E., & Pashler, H. (2012) Voodoo and circularity errors. NeuroImage. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.01.027
- January 26, 2012
- 12:07 PM
- 9 views
Groups in $\beta \mathbb{N}$
by Peter Krautzberger in Peter Krautzberger
Lecture notes and video to a talk on an old result by Hindman and Pym on groups in the Stone-Cech compactification of the natural numbers.... Read more »
Hindman, N., & Pym, J. (1984) Free groups and semigroups in βN. Semigroup Forum, 30(1), 177-193. DOI: 10.1007/BF02573448
- January 25, 2012
- 05:22 AM
- 111 views
Quantum mechanics and the square root of Brownian motion
by Marco Frasca in The Gauge Connection
There is a very good reason why I was silent in the past days. The reason is that I was involved in one of the most difficult article to write down since I do research (and are more than twenty years now!). This paper arose during a very successful collaboration with two colleagues of mine: [...]... Read more »
Marco Frasca. (2012) Quantum mechanics is the square root of a stochastic process. arXiv. arXiv: 1201.5091v1
Farina, A., Giompapa, S., Graziano, A., Liburdi, A., Ravanelli, M., & Zirilli, F. (2011) Tartaglia-Pascal’s triangle: a historical perspective with applications. Signal, Image and Video Processing. DOI: 10.1007/s11760-011-0228-6
Grabert, H., Hänggi, P., & Talkner, P. (1979) Is quantum mechanics equivalent to a classical stochastic process?. Physical Review A, 19(6), 2440-2445. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.19.2440
- January 24, 2012
- 02:08 AM
- 81 views
temperature aNOMalies
by csoeder in Topologic Oceans
If you are new to climate science, you might be wondering what, exactly, this ‘temperature anomaly’ thing is that you keep hearing about. I know I was a bit confused at first! This post explains the concept, using a real-world example. Cities tend to be warmer than their surrounding countrysides, a fact known as the [...]... Read more »
Jones, P., Lister, D., & Li, Q. (2008) Urbanization effects in large-scale temperature records, with an emphasis on China. Journal of Geophysical Research, 113(D16). DOI: 10.1029/2008JD009916
- January 20, 2012
- 10:00 AM
- 136 views
Ian Stewart’s Mathematics of Life
by Aaron Sterling in Nanoexplanations
This post is based on a book review I recently wrote on The Mathematics of Life, by Ian Stewart. A final version of the review will appear in a future issue of SIGACT News. Please feel free to download a … Continue reading →... Read more »
Ian Stewart. (2011) The Mathematics of Life. Book: ISBN 0465022383. info:/
- January 17, 2012
- 09:35 AM
- 99 views
PCa and PCoA explained
by Bob O'Hara in Deep Thoughts and Silliness
Just before Christmas I was asked to talk to our molecular biologists about multivariate analyses. I was reminded of this on Thursday afternoon, when I saw that I had to talk to them on Friday. "Ah, no problem", I thought....... Read more »
Gower, J.C. (2005) Principal Coordinates Analysis. Encyclopedia of Biostatistics. info:/10.1002/0470011815.b2a13070
Warton, D., Wright, S., & Wang, Y. (2011) Distance-based multivariate analyses confound location and dispersion effects. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. DOI: 10.1111/j.2041-210X.2011.00127.x
- January 16, 2012
- 09:51 AM
- 179 views
Is this journal for real?
by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers
This year 134 suspect new journals have appeared from the abyss, all published by the same clandestine company “Scientific & Academic Publishing, USA“. Scientists have been quick to raise the alarm and ruthless in their response.... Read more »
Morrison, Heather. (2012) Scholarly Communication in Crisis. Freedom for scholarship in the internet age. Simon Fraser University School of Communication. info:/
- January 15, 2012
- 10:53 AM
- 104 views
The beautiful (numbers) game…
by Charles in science left untitled
In 2006 two nations took to the field in Berlin, Germany in front of a worldwide audience of 715 million people. Italy were to play France in the final of the FIFA World Cup. The match itself would later become famous for that “head butt” by France’s Zinédine Zidane. But despite being eclipsed by a [...]... Read more »
Yamamoto, Y., & Yokoyama, K. (2011) Common and Unique Network Dynamics in Football Games. PLoS ONE, 6(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0029638
- January 12, 2012
- 12:24 PM
- 105 views
Catch an "astrotweeter" with "Truthy"
by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers
A research group at the University of Indiana has developed a program called Truthy that allows anyone to track cases of "astroturfing" on twitter. Any search term can be entered into Truthy and the program will scan the Twitter API and build a model of how the search term originated. ... Read more »
Ratkiewicz,J. Conover,M. Meiss,M. Gonçalves,B. Patil,S. Flammini,A. Menczer, F. (2011) Truthy: Mapping the Spread of Astroturf in Microblog Streams. World Wide Web Conference Committee (IW3C2). . info:/
- January 12, 2012
- 08:00 AM
- 99 views
Error bars
by Zen Faulkes in Better Posters
Comparing averages should be one of the easiest kinds of information to show, but they are surprisingly tricky.Most people know that when they show an average, there should be an indication of how much smear there is in the data. It makes a huge difference to your interpretation of the information, particularly when glancing at the figure.For instance, I’m willing to bet most people looking at this...Would say, “Wow, the treatment is making a big difference compared to the control!”I’m l........ Read more »
Cumming G, Fidler F, & Vaux D. (2007) Error bars in experimental biology. The Journal of Cell Biology, 177(1), 7-11. DOI: 10.1083/jcb.200611141
- January 4, 2012
- 12:34 AM
- 212 views
Why men don't listen and women are great at maths
by Andrew Watt in A Hippo on Campus
Ask the average person on the street if men and women are wired differently and you'll more often than not get an affirmatory response. Not overly suprising given the knowledge that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. Am I right? But dive a little deeper and chances are you'll find that the vast majority of people would be relying heavily on deeply ingrained stereotypes, such as the "mythically superior 'multitasking’ abilities" of women or men who just don't listen, rather than any s........ Read more »
Eliot, L. (2011) The Trouble with Sex Differences. Neuron, 72(6), 895-898. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2011.12.001
- January 3, 2012
- 02:43 PM
- 114 views
Chimps Prefer the 2-Point Conversion
by Elizabeth Preston in Inkfish
If non-human great apes were coaching more football games, you could expect to see fewer extra points being kicked. We risk-averse humans usually prefer kicking an easy extra point after a touchdown, rather than attempting a more difficult 2-point conversion. But chimps and other great apes, after considering their odds, usually opt for the greater risk and the bigger reward.
By "reward," I mean banana.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany tested a group of chimpanzees, bonobo........ Read more »
Haun, D., Nawroth, C., & Call, J. (2011) Great Apes' Risk-Taking Strategies in a Decision Making Task. PLoS ONE, 6(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0028801
- January 1, 2012
- 09:41 AM
- 223 views
Copyright vs Medicine: If this topic isn’t covered in your newspaper this weekend, get a new newspaper
by Neurobonkers in Neurobonkers
According to the New England Journal of Medicine, after thirty years of silence, authors of a standard clinical psychiatric bedside test have issued take down orders of new medical research.... Read more »
Newman, J., & Feldman, R. (2011) Copyright and Open Access at the Bedside. New England Journal of Medicine, 365(26), 2447-2449. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1110652
- December 30, 2011
- 04:57 PM
- 196 views
The Myth of the 27 Club
by thesoftanonymous in the.soft.anonymous
A few months ago, I turned 27. Had I been a famous musician, I may well have dreaded this moment and gone into hibernation for a year, because 27 is the fabled age of the rock star death.
The member list of the ’27 Club’ – those musicians who met an untimely end at the age of 27 – reads like a Who’s Who of influential rock stars: Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, and so the list goes on.
So why do so many musicians seem to crash and burn at the ........ Read more »
Wolkewitz, M., Allignol, A., Graves, N., & Barnett, A. (2011) Is 27 really a dangerous age for famous musicians? Retrospective cohort study. BMJ, 343(d7799). DOI: 10.1136/bmj.d7799
- December 22, 2011
- 05:42 PM
- 131 views
Unruly beasts in the jungle of molecular modeling
by The Curious Wavefunction in The Curious Wavefunction
The Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design is having a smorgasbord of accomplished modelers reflecting upon the state and future of modeling in drug discovery research and I would definitely recommend anyone - and especially experimentalists - interested in the role of modeling to take a look at the articles. Many of the articles are extremely thoughtful and balanced and take a hard look at the lack of rigorous studies and results in the field; if there was ever a need to make journal articl........ Read more »
Clark, R., & Waldman, M. (2011) Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Three barriers to progress in computer-aided molecular design. Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design. DOI: 10.1007/s10822-011-9504-3
- December 21, 2011
- 09:16 PM
- 159 views
The 27 Club: Are Famous 27-Year-Old Musicians at Risk?
by Arielle D. Ross in Salamander Hours
When Amy Winehouse’s death was reported in July of 2011, conspiracy theorists immediately declared that her talent and her age, 27, had doomed her to being yet another member of the “27 club”, a club composed of famous musicians who all … Continue reading →... Read more »
Wolkewitz, M., Allignol, A., Graves, N., & Barnett, A. (2011) Is 27 really a dangerous age for famous musicians? Retrospective cohort study. BMJ, 343(dec20 1). DOI: 10.1136/bmj.d7799
- December 17, 2011
- 11:22 PM
- 194 views
large-scale data exploration, MIC-style
by Tal Yarkoni in citation needed
Real-world data are messy. Relationships between two variables can take on an infinite number of forms, and while one doesn’t see, say, umbrella-shaped data very often, strange things can happen. When scientists talk about correlations or associations between variables, they’re usually referring to one very specific form of relationship–namely, a linear one. The assumption is [...]... Read more »
Reshef DN, Reshef YA, Finucane HK, Grossman SR, McVean G, Turnbaugh PJ, Lander ES, Mitzenmacher M, & Sabeti PC. (2011) Detecting novel associations in large data sets. Science (New York, N.Y.), 334(6062), 1518-24. PMID: 22174245
- December 15, 2011
- 10:42 AM
- 136 views
Take that, Larry Summers!
by Cherish in Faraday's Cage Is Where You Put Schroedinger's Cat
I came across an article on the new research by Kane and Mertz which supposedly disproves the “greater male variability” hypothesis. That is, while averages for both genders are approximately the same, males have more variance in their intelligence. Thus, when intelligence tested, you’ll see more males at both the upper and lower tails of the [...]... Read more »
Jonathan M. Kane and Janet E. Mertz. (2011) Debunking Myths about Gender and Mathematics Performance. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 10. info:/
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