# Posts

### July 14, 2014

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As promised, I got back to this book, Implementing reproducible research (after the pigeons had their say). I looked at it this morning while monitoring my students taking their last-chance R exam (definitely last chance as my undergraduate R course is not reconoduced next year). The book is in fact an edited collection of papers […]
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My new preprint: Calling a spade a spade: Mathematics in the new pattern of division of labour. From Introduction: I argue that new patterns of division of labour have dramatically changed the nature and role of mathematical skills needed for the labour force and correspondingly changed the place of mathematics in popular culture and in […]
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Moving (again) For (hopefully) the last time in the next three years, I’m moving! It’s only one city over, but I want to try and keep up a semblance of work productivity while I pack up and hop. So for the next … Continue reading → The post Moving (again) appeared first on The Physics Mill.
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There’s a story that (some) physicists and science reporters seem to like, which is the idea that some clever mathematician or physicist can derive universal laws of social behavior. It’s time to tell you all: Hari Seldon never existed. Here’s what I think of these stories of physicists who discover the laws of society. I […] The post “Building on theories used to describe magnets, scientists have put together a model that captures something very different . . […]
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There’s a CNN video news story explaining how the NYC Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics is working with private start-up Placemeter to count and categorize New Yorkers, often with the help of private citizens who install cameras in their windows. Here’s a screenshot from the Placemeter website: You should watch the video and decide for yourself whether […]
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#sand #battery #chemistry #energy This is the holy grail – a low cost, non-toxic, environmentally friendly way to produce high performance lithium ion battery anodesZachary FavorsSchematic of the heat scavenger-assisted Mg reduction process.Herein, porous nano-silicon has been synthesized via a highly scalable heat scavenger-assisted magnesiothermic reduction of beach sand. This environmentally benign, highly abundant, and low cost SiO2 source allows for production of nano-silicon at the […]
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Jennifer Ouellette è uno dei blogger di Scientific American e ogni settimana propone una serie di link sulle novità riguardanti la fisica. Per la settimana del 12 luglio ci sono molte risorse interessanti, partendo da quelle dedicate al mondiale. Il lungo e ricco post si conclude con un video veramente interessante, così introdotto da Jennifer: In onore dell'imminente serie televisiva The Flash, il filmmaker newyorkese Patrick Willems ha reimmaginato il supereroe velocista […]
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After an uneventful trip from Paris, we landed to the heat and humidity just a day before our ABC course. Much too hot and too humid for my taste, so I am looking forward spending my days in the conference centre. Hopefully, it will get cool enough to go running in the early morning…Filed under: […]
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Mon: “Building on theories used to describe magnets, scientists have put together a model that captures something very different . . .” Tues: Questions about “Too Good to Be True” Wed: “The Europeans and Australians were too eager to believe in renal denervation” Thurs: Ethics and statistics Fri: Differences between econometrics and statistics: From varying […] The post On deck this week appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and […]
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La banda degli invisibili è una banda di divertenti signore e signori anziani, che trascorrono il loro tempo a chiacchierare, bisticciare, leggere il giornale e commentare le notizie alla tv. Ed è proprio ascoltando le notizie che hanno questa idea: rapire Silvio Berlusconi! Ebbene sì, è proprio quello che vogliono fare!Per portare a termine l'operazione iniziano a 'fare palestra', ma in casa, perché con la loro pensione non possono permettersi certo una vera […]
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Michael Betancourt announces: The Stan Development Team is happy to announce the first Stan London Meetup, Wednesday, July 16th, 6-8 PM Bentham House, Seminar Room 4 4-8 Endsleigh Gardens, London, WC1H 0EG Nominally the plan is to begin with a casual introduction to Stan and then break out into discussion based on the interests of […] The post Stan London Meetup 16 July appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.

### July 13, 2014

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Today, I took part in the thesis defence of Amandine Shreck at Telecom-ParisTech. I had commented a while ago on the Langevin algorithm for discontinuous targets she developed with co-authors from that school towards variable selection. The thesis also contains material on the equi-energy sampler that is worth mentioning. The algorithm relates to the Wang-Landau […]
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The event Street Numbers had his first month. Really proud of everyone that participated and happy to say that there will be other 2 months of Street Numbers. Just take photos of the numbers around you: houses, buses, cars, prices in markets, … Continue reading →
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I thought it would be fun to fit a simple model in Stan to estimate the abilities of the teams in the World Cup, then I could post everything here on the blog, the whole story of the analysis from beginning to end, showing the results of spending a couple hours on a data analysis. […] The post Stan goes to the World Cup appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.

### July 12, 2014

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Alas, thrice alas, the bid we made right after the Banff workshop with Scott Schmidler, and Steve Scott for holding the next World ISBA Conference in 2016 in Banff, Canada was unsuccessful. This is a sad and unforeseen item of news as we thought Banff had a heap of enticing features as a dream location […]
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The new rules for D&D 5e (formerly known as D&D Next) are finally here: Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition: Basic Rules D&D 5e introduces a new game mechanic, advantage and disadvantage. Basic d20 Rules Usually, players roll a 20-sided die (d20) to resolve everyting from attempts at diplomacy to hitting someone with a sword. Each […] The post D&D 5e: Probabilities for Advantage and Disadvantage appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.
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Filed under: pictures, Travel Tagged: Charles de Gaulle, Paris suburbs, RER B, Roissy, summer, sunset, train, University of Warwick
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Nel momento in cui affermiamo che un dato numero è primo, ovvero nel momento in cui affermiamo matematicamente che $n$ è un numero primostiamo, in effetti, affermando che $n$ è un numero naturale divisibile solo per se stesso e per l'unità. Questa definizione può però essere ulteriormente ridotta come segue(1): $n$ è un numero naturale e, presi comunque due numeri naturali $h$ e $k$, se $n$ è $h \cdot k$, allora $h$ o $k$ è 1.E' […]

Quine, W. V. (1964). The Foundations of Mathematics, Scientific American, 211 (3) 112-127. DOI: 10.1038/scientificamerican0964-112

Paul J. Cohen & Reuben Hersh (1967). Non-Cantorian Set Theory, Scientific American, 217 (6) 104-116. DOI: 10.1038/scientificamerican1267-104

Howard DeLong (1971). Unsolved Problems in Arithmetic, Scientific American, 224 (3) 50-60. DOI: 10.1038/scientificamerican0371-50

Kurt Gödel (1931). Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme I, Monatshefte für Mathematik und Physik, 38-38 (1) 173-198. DOI: 10.1007/BF01700692

Zermelo, E. (1904). Beweis, dass jede Menge wohlgeordnet werden kann, Mathematische Annalen, 59 (4) 514-516. DOI: 10.1007/BF01445300

Kurt Gödel (1938). The Consistency of the Axiom of Choice and of the Generalized Continuum-Hypothesis, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 24 (12) 556-557. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.24.12.556

Paul J. Cohen (1963). The independence of the continuum hypothesis, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 50 (6) 1143-1148. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.50.6.1143

Paul J. Cohen (1964). The independence of the continuum hypothesis, II, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 51 (1) 105-110. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.51.1.105

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At MathJax we often get questions about specific examples of content / web design. Most of the time, people will show up on the MathJax User Group (the preferred choice), StackOverflow (semi-officially supported), and through our contact form on mathjax.org …
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Aunt Pythia welcomes you after one week away celebrating her middle son’s and the nation’s birthday. She’s not sure she will be able to incorporate such a topic into the Q&A so she’s jumping on the opportunity to spread the love emanating from this video (hat tip Mike Hill): It comes from this webpage entitled Putting the […]
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I noticed that there was a higher-than-usual density of arxiv preprints among the web pages I'd been bookmarking lately, so I thought maybe I'd share. The first one, especially, is very timely:From the "Brazuca" ball to Octahedral Fullerenes: Their Construction and Classification, Yuan-Jia Fan, Bih-Yaw Jin, arXiv:1406.7058, via. The classical pentagon and hexagon soccer ball pattern (introduced for the 1970 World Cup) later became even more famous as the structure of the buckminsterfullerene […]

### July 11, 2014

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I learned something in R today thanks to Le Monde mathematical puzzle: A two-player game consists in A picking a number n between 1 and 10 and B and A successively choosing and applying one of three transforms to the current value of n n=n+1, n=3n, n=4n, starting with B, until n is larger than […]
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Ya think they’ll never come up with something new, and then this comes along: Dear Dr. Gelman, I am writing to inquire about the availability of obtaining a self-funded visiting scholar position in your institution for one year. I will cover all my expenses during my visit. I have completed a M.A. at Sichuan international […] The post Hey—this is a new kind of spam! appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.
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Here is the shameless self-promotion moment of the day: the interview with me at 3am magazine is online. I mostly talk about the contents of my book Formal Languages in Logic, and so cover a number of topics that may be of interest to M-Phi readers: the history of mathematical and logical notation, 'math infatuation', history of logic in general, and some more. Comments are welcome!
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Yesterday was the end of the first half of the Lede Program, and the students presented their projects, which were really impressive. I am hoping some of them will be willing to put them up on a WordPress site or something like that in order to showcase them and so I can brag about them […]

### July 10, 2014

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Here are our slides for the ABC [very] short course Jean-Michel and I give at ISBA 2014 in Cancún next Monday (if your browser can manage Slideshare…) Although I may switch the pictures from Iceland to Mexico, on Sunday, there will be not much change on those slides we both have previously used in previous […]
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Review up at the Boston Globe: If the feel of sand between your toes gets you thinking about Zeno’s Paradox or Pascal’s Wager, Ellenberg’s book is ideal beach reading. But even if your interests lie elsewhere, you may find it a challenging but welcome companion. at NewCity Lit: To the mathematician, math is a curious […]
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Niala Boodho on the Afternoon Shift will be interviewing Yair and me about our age-period-cohort extravaganza which became widely-known after being featured in this cool interactive graph by Amanda Cox in the New York Times. The actual paper is called The Great Society, Reagan’s revolution, and generations of presidential voting and was somewhat inspired by […] The post Chicago alert: Mister P and Stan to be interviewed on WBEZ today (Fri) 3:15pm appeared first on Statistical […]
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Today is a red-letter day for readers of The Renaissance Mathematicus; I have succeeded in cajoling, seducing, bullying, bribing, inducing, tempting, luring, sweet-talking, coaxing, coercing, enticing, beguiling[1] Harvard University’s very own Dr Melinda Baldwin into writing a guest post on … Continue reading →
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Dean Eckles points me to this cool new tool for experimentation: I [Eckles] just wanted to share that in a collaboration between Facebook and Stanford, we have a new paper out about running online field experiments. One thing this paper does is describe some of the tools we use to design, deploy, and analyze experiments, […] The post Open-source tools for running online field experiments appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.