L’affaire El Naschie
So I know I’m a little late to the party on this, but I couldn’t resist commenting on the strange case of M. el Naschie (I assume that this is just the German transliteration of the name English...
View ArticleMore F_un
Incidentally, I hope you’ve all been reading F_un mathematics. Even if you aren’t all that interested in the field with one element, it’s a beautifully designed site and might give you some ideas about...
View ArticleDance your dissertation
Yes, it’s a real contest. We just missed the 2009 version, but there’s always next year. In the meantime, enjoy this years winner: “The role of vitamin D in beta cell function” After that,...
View ArticleA suggestion: Good refereeing certificates
Some one tell me what’s wrong with this idea: Journal editors should publicly acknowledge their best referees. Obviously, they can’t say which papers the referee worked on, but they could write a note...
View ArticleIs massively collaborative mathematics scalable?
I’ve been watching, though not particularly intently, Tim Gowers’s attempt massively collaborative mathematics. I’m not sure if I’ve looked hard enough to judge, but it certainly looks as though it...
View ArticleWriting a math paper on a wiki
Combining a couple of previous topics, I was wondering: is there a good platform for writing a math paper on a wiki? This seems like a desirable goal, both for small groups of collaborators and for any...
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Man and machine thinking about SPC4
I’ve just uploaded a paper to the arXiv, Man and machine thinking about the smooth 4-dimensional Poincaré conjecture, joint with Michael Freedman, Robert Gompf, and Kevin Walker. The smooth...
View Article20 questions
Two Berkeley grad students, Pablo Solis and Andrew Critch, just organised a “20 questions seminar”. The premise is pretty simple — everyone gets 2 minutes to ask a question they’d like an answer to,...
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Quantum mechanics and geometry
Here’s a nice little story about quantum mechanics, which surprisingly few mathematicians seem to know about. The essential idea is “quantum mechanics on the projective space looks remarkably like...
View ArticleMore on that webinar
So, I attended the webinar I mentioned in the previous post; it was an interesting experience. From an actual, learning, discussion it was a bit mixed. As far as I could tell, Anton, the moderator (her...
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