The Logic of Science

Game Theory and the Health Care Debate

Mic Farris — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:27:00 +0000

With the health care debate raging in the House and Senate, some Swampland blog posters at Time.com have linked these tough decisions to the classic game theory problem called the Prisoner’s Dilemma. It’s an interesting read about how complex problems can be boiled to a mathematical understanding…

You can read the thread at the Time.com website here, here and here…

KHAAAAAN!

Mic Farris — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:03:56 +0000

Classic Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan moment…

The Math of the Oscar Voting

Mic Farris — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:39:04 +0000

I ran across these blog posts about how the Motion Picture Academy did their voting for the Oscars, and I thought they were interesting enough to forward along. (By the way, thanks to Nikki Love for bringing these to my attention…)

Unlike most American elections we’re used to, the Oscars used an “instant runoff” procedure to get to the winners this year. You can read about how one economist viewed the new system here, and read more about Oscar’s instant runoff procedure here.

(As an interesting aside, the predictions in the first post for who would win Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress were ALL dead on!…)

I really enjoyed this connection with the instant runoff because back in the day (a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…), I headed the presidential nomination committee for Ross Perot’s Reform Party, which used internet voting and an instant runoff to pick our nominee in 2000. Turned out we only had two candidates, so the instant runoff never happened (also, the party convention split in half and devolved into choas – however, another story for another time…)

Take a read about the math of instant runoffs and see what you think!…

6 Days Until Pi Day!

Mic Farris — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:17:03 +0000

Let the geekiness ensue! March 14 is known in technogeek circles as Pi Day. And yes (I know what you’re thinking – where can I learn MORE about Pi Day?!), there is a whole website dedicated to Pi Day – from piday.org:

Pi, Greek letter (), is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi Day is celebrated by math enthusiasts around the world on March 14th. Pi = 3.1415926535…

Science Through The Looking Glass

Mic Farris — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:35:37 +0000

Alice in Wonderland

With the new “Alice in Wonderland” movie coming out, MSNBC.com takes a look at how science has evolved through the hundred years since Lewis Carroll’s story.

You can read the article here…

One Scientist’s Search for The Meaning of Time

Mic Farris — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 16:44:56 +0000

As a recent article from Wired Science puts it, “one way to get noticed as a scientist is to tackle a really difficult problem.” So, they interviewed Cal Tech physicist Sean Carroll about his talk at the recent meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Science.

Carroll’s latest book “From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time” is an attempt to bring his theory of time and the universe to physicists and non-physicists alike.

You can read the Wired interview here…

Alien of Steel

Mic Farris — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 21:16:31 +0000

When I first saw this, I thought, “Yikes!”

But it’s the artistic creation of RoboSteel, an Ireland-based firm that creates sculptures from scrap metal (their website is www.robosteel.com, where they also make metal scupltures of Star Wars, Predator, and Terminator characters).

The large Alien Queen is only 4,500 Euros (what a bargain!)…

Here’s the article from Wired GadgetLab…

Your Teeny-Tiny Body Clock

Mic Farris — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:03:43 +0000

Ever wonder what controls your body clock? Well, according to scientists, it’s a grain-of-rice sized clump of neurons in the brain.

Here’s the Forbes article that tell us more…

Three Cool Things (and Two Bonuses)

Mic Farris — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:14:34 +0000

I highlighted a really cool article from the latest Wired Magazine on compressive sensing in my previous post. But there are three other cool items that are worth catching your eyes on:

G. “These go to ____.” (from wired.com)

- If you dig movies (I mean, you doesn’t!?), then this is kinda fun to fill in the blanks on some famous movie lines. Here’s the article called Bit Parts (my favorites – G and H).

- Google has the corner on the world’s search market by developing the world’s best search engine. But they’ve won their dominant position by constantly improving their algorithms. Here’s an exclusive article describing their technology and their key advances over the years…

- What’s the smallest number n such that n and 2ⁿ end in the same digit (turns out it’s 14)? Wired points us to NumberGossip.com for interesting facts about every number from 1 to 9,999 (the website only likes to talk about “positive” things)…

- Bonus: Wired has a picture of Harry Hamlin from Clash of the Titans!

The Mandelbrot Set, Developed by Benoit Mandelbrot in 1980 (from bareinboots.com)

- Double Bonus: I never really heard (nor thought about) what the next advance in fractal geometries would be beyond the Mendelbrot set. However, in reading through Wired yesterday, I ran across the term “Mendelbulb“, which stands for the 3D representation of the 2D Mendelbrot set. Here’s a website with amazing 3D pictures (from artist Daniel White) of what the Mendelbulbs look like. Really cool…

F_ll _n th_ Bl_nks

Mic Farris — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:40:54 +0000

From Wired.com

A very cool article on what’s called “compressive sensing” is featured in the latest issue of Wired Magazine. It turns out that our company (Areté Associates) has really been at the forefront of exploiting this technology (I’ve even worked with some great guys to develop a patent based on these approaches…).

Here’s the article on how amazingly impressive the technology is.