On the road and in your genome with Poisson

This will probably seem simple and obvious to many Finch and Pea patrons, but one of the mind-blowing features of nature, the real world, Plato’s cave, or what have you, is that very different phenomena often give rise to the same pattern, because they share a fundamental quantitative relationship. The world really does run on math. Some of the best examples of this are probability distributions, like the Poisson distribution, which is basically the law of rare events. I like to think of the Poisson distribution as the result of an infinite number of flips of some giant cosmic coin which only rarely, very rarely, lands on the side I’m hoping for.

The classic illustration of a Poisson distribution is the randomly-passing car problem. Continue reading “On the road and in your genome with Poisson”

Happy Phi Day!

Also known as the Golden Ratio and purported to show up in, well, everything that anybody is willing to measure and then generously round the numbers in the correct direction, φ is equal to 1.618039887…

Finding a day for π is a piece of cake. 3.14 is March 14. Easy. Finding a day for φ, rounded off to 1.62, is a wee bit challenging. Continue reading “Happy Phi Day!”

Being a “Scientist”

In 2006, one of our co-workers received a copy of MythBusters: Don’t Try This at Home as a gift. Helpfully, it included “foolproof” steps for “being a scientist”, which I found invaluable while pursuing my PhD. We also had a lot of fun modifying the steps in order to better fit the quirks of particular fields of science and pseudo-science.

Cormac McCarthy mixin’ it up with Sante Fe science

While I have my doubts about how much progress the permanent inhabitants of the Santa Fe Institute actually make, this is my kind of hang-out, progress be damned:

From Newsweek via The Daily Beast

The Santa Fe Institute was founded in 1984 by a group of scientists frustrated with the narrow disciplinary confines of academia. They wanted to tackle big questions that spanned different fields, and they felt the only way these questions could be posed and solved was through the intermingling of scientists of all kinds: physicists, biologists, economists, anthropologists, and many others. Continue reading “Cormac McCarthy mixin’ it up with Sante Fe science”

Science Day is cancelled

Recently received this missive from The Frogger’s school. While it did not actually affect my child, it made me weep for her generation. One might expect a bit better from Cambridge, if not humanity at large:

Dear Parents

There will be no Science Day at XXXX on XXXX and it will now be a normal school day. Regrettably, the event has been cancelled due to lack of numbers from other schools.