Thursday, August 19, 2010

Various Quick Pointers

While it may not be news elsewhere, I'm certainly interested in the "local" case of Marc Hauser, the evolutionary psychologist at Harvard whose work has been "under review".  The latest interesting update appears at the Chronicle of Higher Education

As reported elsewhere, congrats to Dan Spielman for winning the Nevanlinna Prize.

I'll be at the ill-named RATS (Research and Analysis of Tail Phenomena Symposium) tomorrow reviving my introductory talks on power laws, lognormal distributions, and the importance of verification.  Stop  by and say hi!   

While I was away in the UK the Microsoft PR machine must have gone to work, and I've seen a few articles like this describing our work on password popularity.  I'm happy to see my name "in lights" a bit -- why not? --  I just think it's interesting that this is the paper that gets it there.  (I guess our coding work is also being touted a bit as part of Dan's Nevanlinna Prize, so that's "in the news" as well.)  

The Museum of Mathematics is getting more notice -- check out their web page

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

When a colleague wins the Nevanlinna prize, one would hope for a few words about the colleague and the work but some how even that is used as a plug for one's own importance. Not classy.

Anonymous said...

It is fine to not be very appreciative of your colleague :-)

Jealous takes its place and there is nothing wrong about it. :-)

Michael Mitzenmacher said...

One thing I'll miss tons about blogging is people assigning various interpretations to my words based on, apparently, their own lens of the world. How about I put it in all caps: CONGRATS TO DAN SPIELMAN! Hmm, that's probably not convincing either.

Anyhow, in terms of "class" or "behavior to one's colleagues", I personally feel more of a twinge about linking to the articles regarding Marc Hauser, since the press is quite negative, although the "facts" thus far still appear speculative (and we have not heard from the other side).

Anonymous said...

I THINK Mike assumed most of his readers are well acquainted with Spielman's most celebrated work (smoothed analysis and the error correcting codes stuff)) and hence he felt no need to go into details. It would probably be the same for Irit Dinur or Subhash Khot. But if he was talking about someone not as well known he might have gone on a bit more.

And the post IS titled "Various QUICK pointers."

Michael Mitzenmacher said...

Thanks Anon #4. Yes, I assumed people are familiar with Dan's work (or could follow the link). And, as you noted, the title was pretty clear what the post was about. (One certainly could do a great post about Dan and his work, perhaps Dick Lipton will do one if he hasn't already.)