Wisdom Of The Week

One night, I was sitting in the office trying to grok linear algebra. A wonderfully lucid textbook served as my guide: Introduction to Linear Algebra, written by Gilbert Strang. But I just wasn’t getting it. I was looking at various definitions — eigen decomposition, Jordan canonical forms, matrix inversions, etc. — and I thought, “Why?” Why does everything look so weird? Why is the inverse defined this way? Come to think of it, why are any of the matrix operations defined the way they are?While staring at a hopeless wall of symbols, a flash of lightning went off in my mind. I had an insight: math is a design. Prior to that moment, I had approached mathematics as if it were universal truth: transcendent in its perfection, almost unknowable by mere mortals. But on that night, I realized that mathematics is a human-constructed tool. Math is designed, just like software programs are designed, and using many of the same design principles. These principles may not be apparent, but they are comprehensible. In that moment, mathematics went from being unknowable to reasonable.

Mathematics is a system of objects, operations, and shorthand representations. It is designed to model real-world phenomena. Like all designs, there are certain degrees of freedom. The system could have been constructed in one way, or another. A matrix could have been designed as a round ball, in polar coordinates. It doesn’t matter, as long as the operations are consistent; it’s just a shorthand. At some point, someone made those design decisions. They picked the objects and the operations, and laid down rules of organization. Based on these fundamental decisions — if they are designed well — a number of other useful, provable properties then follow, and the whole thing can be used to model the things that we experience in the real world: the way that a tossed ball travels through space, the way sound waves dash across the ether, the rise and fall of stock prices. Physical reality contains layer upon layer of complexity. Well-designed mathematical systems offer clean and concise tools to represent physical reality at every layer.

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These are but a few examples of mathematical design at work. Our culture instills the strange notion that “math is hard.” Math is seen as too abstract, too impenetrable, too difficult to digest and impossible to know. But from an alternative perspective, mathematics contains striking parallels with software engineering. Both disciplines are heavy on jargon and notation. But once we parse through the jargon, we can begin to see the flesh and bones of mathematics. Understanding the design principles within mathematics provides us with an inlet into this strange land of hierarchical objects and changing representations. By becoming more familiar with the landscape of mathematics, we can help with the cross pollination of ideas between mathematics and software engineering. Maybe we can even begin to make modifications and come up with new designs of mathematics. Hey, that real number system is getting pretty old and cumbersome. Ready for something new?

- Striking parallels between mathematics and software engineering

Quote of the Day

Yet in another way, calculus is fundamentally naive, almost childish in its optimism. Experience teaches us that change can be sudden, discontinuous, and wrenching. Calculus draws its power by refusing to see that. It insists on a world without accidents, where one thing leads logically to another. Give me the initial conditions and the law of motion, and with calculus I can predict the future -- or better yet, reconstruct the past. I wish I could do that now.

- Steven H. Strogatz, The Calculus of Friendship: What a Teacher and a Student Learned about Life While Corresponding about Math

'The Cloud' and Other Dangerous Metaphors

Depending on the situation, data is either like a liquid (data streams), a solid (data mining), or a gas (the cloud). Why and how these metaphors get used when they do is not immediately obvious. There are tons of alternatives: Data could be stored in a “data mountain,” or data could be made useful through a process of “data desalination.”

The metaphors we use matter, because metaphors have baggage. Metaphors are encumbered with assumptions, and when people use metaphors, they embed those assumptions in the discussion. These assumptions are the residue of the physical analogues from which the metaphors draw. Referring to “data exhaust”—a term sometimes used to describe the metadata that are created in the course of day-to-day online lives—reinforces the idea that these data, like car exhaust, are unwanted byproducts, discarded waste material that society would benefit from putting to use. On the other hand, calling data “the new oil,” carries strong economic and social connotations: Data are costly to acquire and produced primarily for commercial or industrial ends, but bear the possibility of big payoffs for those with the means to extract it.

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What’s more, metaphors matter because they shape laws and policies about data collection and use. As technology advances, law evolves (slowly, and somewhat clumsily) to accommodate new technologies and social norms around them. The most typical way this happens is that judges and regulators think about whether a new, unregulated technology is sufficiently like an existing thing that we already have rules about—and this is where metaphors and comparisons come in.

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And in all our talk about streams and exhaust and mines and clouds, one thing is striking: People are nowhere to be found. These metaphors overwhelmingly draw from the natural world and the processes we use to draw resources from it; because of this, they naturalize and depersonalize data and its collection. Our current data metaphors do us a disservice by masking the human behaviors, relationships, and communications that make up all that data we’re streaming and mining. They make it easy to get lost in the quantity of the data without remembering how personal so much of it is. And if people forget that, it’s easy to understand how large-scale ethical breaches happen; the metaphors help us to lose track of what we’re really talking about.

- More Here

Quote of the Day

One of the first things taught in introductory statistics textbooks is that correlation is not causation. It is also one of the first things forgotten.

- Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

Quote of the Day

Among all the occurrences possible in the universe the a priori probability of any particular one of them verges upon zero. Yet the universe exists; particular events must take place in it, the probability of which (before the event) was infinitesimal. At the present time we have no legitimate grounds for either asserting or denying that life got off to but a single start on earth, and that, as a consequence, before it appeared its chances of occurring were next to nil. ... Destiny is written concurrently with the event, not prior to it... The universe was not pregnant with life nor the biosphere with man. Our number came up in the Monte Carlo game. Is it surprising that, like the person who has just made a million at the casino, we should feel strange and a little unreal?

- Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity

Learning From Animal Friendships

It is probably no coincidence that many of the better-known animal pairings involve dogs, which have honed the art of cross-species communication through millenniums of having lived with humans. The dogs at the safari park, each housed with a cheetah, are adept at reading body language and take a dominant role with their feline companions — Donna J. Haraway, a professor emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of “When Species Meet,” suggested that the dogs function almost as “social psychologists.”

And sometimes that means figuring out how to speak the other species’ language.

When one dog, Clifford, had trouble persuading his feline companion, Majani, to play, he adopted a new tactic, Ms. Rose-Hinostroza said. Having learned from a trainer how to fake a limp, Clifford tried it out on the cheetah, looking much like a wounded gazelle. The disability, she said, proved irresistible to the cheetah, who came down off its perch to join the game.

But it is grooming, not playing, that cements a dog-cheetah friendship, Ms. Rose-Hinostroza said. Initially, the young cheetahs are terrified by the puppies’ attempts to play, but gradually the two animals begin to trust one another, and at some point, the cheetah begins to lick and groom the dog.

“When you see that happen, you go, ‘Yes, the cat actually likes the dog now,’ so that’s a good day,” she said.

Communing between species, researchers said, can inspire speculation not just about the animals but about the humans that are so fascinated by them.

Dr. Bekoff, for example, said that videos of interspecies interactions offer a way for people to connect with a natural world from which they feel increasingly detached.

- More Here

Quote of the Day

Mathematics is security. Certainty. Truth. Beauty. Insight. Structure. Architecture. I see mathematics, the part of human knowledge that I call mathematics, as one thing—one great, glorious thing. Whether it is differential topology, or functional analysis, or homological algebra, it is all one thing. ... They are intimately interconnected, they are all facets of the same thing. That interconnection, that architecture, is secure truth and is beauty. That's what mathematics is to me.

- Paul R. Halmos

9 States That Have Banned Cruel Gestation Crates for Pigs

Imagine spending your entire life inside. Not just inside, but in a crate. And not just any crate, either. This crate you’re in is so small that you will never be able to turn around in it. Ever. For the duration of your life.

This kind of life is what it’s like for female pigs (or sows) who are used for breeding in factory farms. They are confined to gestation crates, which are usually only two feet wide. The sow can’t turn around, she can’t take steps backwards or forwards and she will never know any kind of life outside that crate. Not only is there limited-to-no mobility, waste piles up underneath the sows, severely diminishing the air quality within the housing unit.

Since 95 percent of pork in the United States comes from factory farms, almost all sows are subjected to this kind of torture. On average, a sow breeds two times per year and lives until she is three or four. After enduring this for years, she will be sent to slaughter for meat.

In early 2014, Canada took a big step to completely ban gestation creates in the entire country. The U.S. is making strides, with nine states already committed to banning gestation crates, but we’re still not close to the example Canada set for us. 

1. Arizona
2. California
3. Colorado
4. Florida
5. Maine
6. Michigan
7. Ohio
8. Oregon
9. Rhode Island

And unfortunately, we still have a long way to go. Just a month ago, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie vetoed a ban on gestation crates in New Jersey, despite 93 percent of state residents wanting Christie to sign the legislation. Maybe Christie — and politicians of the other 41 states — should take a page from these nine states and start taking steps to a better future for farm animals.

Banning gestation crates will undoubtedly improve the lives of millions of pigs in factory farms, however, it is important to remember that this is an improvement, not an all-out win for pigs. The reality is that as long as the demand for pork, bacon and countless other pig products exist, these animals will continue to be viewed as commodities and never really afforded the respect or the life they deserve. Banning gestation crates is the first step in acknowledging the multitude of cruel practices used by the factory farming industry. Once we start to look at the cruel ways we use animals, we can recognize that the best way to help these animals is not to participate in their exploitation at all. Why support an industry that will continue to exploit animals if a truly humane alternative exists?

- More Here and this guy Christie is planning to run for president in 2016. Really, Christie? What do you gain by making these poor pigs suffer more in NJ?

Quote of the Day

The history of science really gives you perspective on how easy it is to talk ourselves into this sort of thinking – that if my big, wonderful brain can’t envisage the solution, then it must be a really, really hard problem!

- Patricia Churchland

Good Bye R K Laxman (1921-2015)

All through my childhood, everyday I woke up to his cartoon sketches.  Sir, you made the common man a legend while making him laugh :-) 

Thank you for all the smiles.