This afternoon my postman delivered a review copy of The Space Book by Jim Bell. This is the latest book in a series that includes Cliff Pickover’s math, physics, and medical books. Like the other books in the series, The…
Blog Archives
Playful and purposeful, pure and applied
From Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera: … applied science, purposeful and determined, and pure science, playful and freely curious, continuously support and stimulate each other. The great nation of the future will be the one which protects the…
How to double science research
Scientists spend 40% of their time chasing grants according to some estimates. Suppose they spend 20% of their time doing something else, such as teaching. That means they spend no more than 40% of their time doing research. If universities…
How mathematicians see physics
From the preface to Physics for Mathematicians: In addition to presenting the advanced physics, which mathematicians find so easy, I also want to explore the workings of elementary physics, and mysterious maneuvers — which physicists seem to find so natural…
History of weather prediction
I’ve just started reading Invisible in the Storm: The Role of Mathematics in Understanding Weather. The subtitle may be a little misleading. There is a fair amount of math in the book, but the ratio of history to math is…
Personalized medicine
When I hear someone say “personalized medicine” I want to ask “as opposed to what?” All medicine is personalized. If you are in an emergency room with a broken leg and the person next to you is lapsing into a…
Cancer moon shots
M. D. Anderson Cancer Center announced a $3 billion research program today aimed at six specific forms of cancer. Acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome (AML and MDS) Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) Lung cancer Melanoma Prostate cancer Triple negative breast…
True versus Publishable
This weekend John Myles White and I discussed true versus publishable results in the comments to an earlier post. Methods that make stronger modeling assumptions lead to more statistical confidence, but less actual confidence. That is, they are more likely…
Flying to Mars in three days
Richard Campbell brought up an interesting idea in his recent Mars geek out show. Suppose you could travel to Mars accelerating at 1 g for the first half the trip, then decelerating at 1 g for the final half of…
George Boole, Claude Shannon, and information
Paul Nahin writes books that are somewhere between popular and academic. His books are popular, but not light reading. They tell a story, but they go into more detail than most popular books. (I haven’t read everything Nahin has written,…
Deniers, skeptics, and mavericks
Suppose a scientist holds a minority opinion. There’s a trend in journalism to call him a denier if you think he’s wrong, a skeptic if you don’t care, and a maverick if you think he may be right. If this…
Ancient understanding of tides
In his essay On Providence, Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD) says the following about tides: In point of fact, their growth is strictly allotted; at the appropriate day and hour they approach in greater volume or less according as…
How things break
Venkatesh Rao wrote a blog post today Stress Failures versus Decay Failures. It reminded me of three other resources I recommend on how things break. The first is about how things literally break. For example, why the steel in the…
Eat, drink, and be merry
Almost every bit of health advice I’ve heard has been contradicted. Should you eat more carbs or fewer carbs? More fat or less fat? Take vitamin supplements or not? It reminds me of this clip from Sleeper in which Woody…
Approximating galaxies as spheres
A couple days ago I compared different ways of approximating Earth and other ellipsoids by spheres. The earth is so nearly spherical that the difference in the approximations would only matter when you need fairly high accuracy. Elliptical galaxies, however,…
