Letters to the Editor
ondelette
Published Letters: 1973 Editor's Choice: 19
-
O/T to Lisa S
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes and no. Biologists are quite adept at demanding removal of jargon, explanation of even the simplest of concepts, and removal of formulas when people from other sciences communicate with them, only to use profuse jargon in return.
I agree that biology is highly specialized, and that mathematicians do interface with biologists (*wave*), but I also agree with jojo++ that it can be infuriating to have the most jargon riddled sciences on the planet complain about jargon. And there are times when the big picture requires enough detail so that the best way to explain it is with formulae. The product symbol isn't a big stretch, or graduate level mathematics, any more than say the basic anatomy of the human heart would be graduate level biology.
-
@bamage OT
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Strange, I can't find it reported anywhere in the big three (NYT, WaPo,LAT). You'd think ending NSA domestic surveillance would be a headline topic.
-
@C2H5OH
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why linearity? Why game theory? Your post is interesting, but I am at a loss to understand the term useful mathematics. I don't know how you draw such a boundary (I'm usually in dynamical systems but stray often).
-
@C2H5OH
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just continuing the OT a little bit longer, there are two parts to mathematics, the (as you put it) linear sequence of steps that form a proof, and the creation of abstractions (problem solving and modelling, roughly). As you mentioned, the second is highly nonlinear.
I had to refresh my knowledge of Godel last week (coincidentally. I hadn't thought about it in years) because of an application that looked like it had problems with the distinction between computing over the integers and over the reals, and the article I needed to understand refered to Godel codes.
It's okay, I really do know what you mean, and I like what you posted. I have just been yanked into everything from sheaves to the Whitney embedding theorem doing my (very)applied work, so I don't know if I always make a distinction about what I will use and what I will not.
E.g. looks like the news story that bamage and I are tracking is spreading so slowly it might as well be word of mouth. There is an interesting problem in the spreading of anecdotes, especially jokes, in that they spread only until almost everyone interested has heard them. I once asked an ergodic theorist about it, AFAIK there is no characterization of it.
But I do hope that the news about Congress curbing the NSA domestic spying travels faster than that ;-)
-
@WT
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Forgot to get back to you on this: The mathematics and other scientific knowledge that goes into making, giving, and interpreting polls and surveys isn't taught in math, or in the physical sciences or engineering. It's properly part of the subject of demography, and is therefore usually taught in the sociology department.
It's amazing how many people believe that it is just statistics and probability, but there is actually a lot more to it, including analysis of categorical data, design of experiments, survey design, some psychology, and social stratification. (I only know this because I'm married to a demographer).
Just thought you'd like to know.
-
Umm, L.W.M. so am I
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The electoral college system is part of a system which ensures that there are no truly federal elections, in the sense that all elections are run by the states, not by the federal government. As such, it is an important check on centralized power.
I'm all for proportional representation in the electoral college, but at the end of the day, I'm not for getting rid of it.
But I don't agree with David Broder on much.
-
shooter your "news" isn't.
[Read the article: A beautiful mosaic of anti-blogger hatred]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Indeed, and considering the reports of gangs running amuck, gunfire, dead bodies littering the Dome, etc. it was the right thing to do. Too bad Governor Blanco decided to keep out the Red Cross and Salvation Army. But the increased suffering at the Dome was good TV though, wasn't it?
Hunh, what? The Red Cross doesn't do gangs, or gunfire, or dead bodies. I'm not surprised I don't remember this.
What I do remember, shooter, is EMS workers volunteering from all over the country, being held up by the feds in Atlanta so they could be used as a backdrop for public press conferences by Bush Administration officials, and having to sneak out and rent cars to go down to New Orleans on their own to do rescue.
Was that also Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's fault?
What about the fact that a lot of the "gangs running amuck" and "bodies piling up a the Dome" was actually bad reporting by a British news team. But it fed right into red state America's script for what should happen.