I was told that the last two posts — on Hitler and serial killers — were too depressing, and that I need to post something more cheery So here is a careful analysis of the physics of My Little Pony.
Monthly Archives: January 2012
Mathematics of a Serial Killer
Someone sent me a link to this story about a mathematical model of a particular serial killer’s behavior. Two things struck me about it:
- How much it sounded like the kind of bizarre model you’d see on Charline on Numb3rs come up with in order to crack the case.
- That Cosma Shalizi would hate the model, since it’s the kind of a casual use of power laws he regularly criticizes. And here’s his analysis of the paper. He points out that, as in many other cases, a lognormal distribution provides a better fit.
Hitler on Topology
At this point, I’m sure everyone has seen at least one of the YouTube videos of Hitler ranting (actually actor Bruno Ganz from the movie Downfall) with fake subtitles. Here’s one showing Hitler’s reaction to discovering that in topology a set can be both closed and open. I think we all know how he felt. (This is the clip with accurate subtitles — I’d never seen it before.)
Best Possible Rejection Letter
Andrew Gelman quotes from the best possible rejection letter from a journal (sent to Charles Babbage):
It is no inconsiderable degree of reluctance that I decline the offer of any Paper from you. I think, however, you will upon reconsideration of the subject be of the opinion that I have no other alternative. The subjects you propose for a series of Mathematical and Metaphysical Essays are so profound, that there is perhaps not a single subscriber to our Journal who could follow them.
I encourage all journals to adopt this as the standard form letter for rejection.
Back, From Outer Space!
And you just walked in to find me here with that sad look upon my face.
The computer that hosted Ars Math (which was at a dedicated web-site hosting company) died a horrible death a couple of months ago. For a while, it looked like several years of posts had been lost. They could be recovered by cutting-and-pasting from the Internet Archive, but I found the idea so depressing that I didn’t do anything about recovering the site. Fortunately, we were able to extract the posts from the database anyway. Someone offered to help out with the WordPress hosting, so we’re back online!
At the moment the last couple of years of comments are missing, but we’re still investigating what happened to them.