All that’s very well. But your idea of secrecy over there seems to consist of keeping the Home Secretary in the dark
May 17, 2013 § Leave a comment
On August 31, 2012, Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki posted four papers on the Internet.
The titles were inscrutable. The volume was daunting: 512 pages in total. The claim was audacious: he said he had proved the ABC Conjecture, a famed, beguilingly simple number theory problem that had stumped mathematicians for decades.
Then Mochizuki walked away. He did not send his work to the Annals of Mathematics. Nor did he leave a message on any of the online forums frequented by mathematicians around the world. He just posted the papers, and waited.
Two days later, Jordan Ellenberg, a math professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, received an email alert from Google Scholar, a service which scans the Internet looking for articles on topics he has specified. On September 2, Google Scholar sent him Mochizuki’s papers: You might be interested in this.
“I was like, ‘Yes, Google, I am kind of interested in that!’” Ellenberg recalls. “I posted it on Facebook and on my blog, saying, ‘By the way, it seems like Mochizuki solved the ABC Conjecture.’”
The Internet exploded. Within days, even the mainstream media had picked up on the story. “World’s Most Complex Mathematical Theory Cracked,” announced the Telegraph. “Possible Breakthrough in ABC Conjecture,” reported the New York Times, more demurely.
On MathOverflow, an online math forum, mathematicians around the world began to debate and discuss Mochizuki’s claim. The question which quickly bubbled to the top of the forum, encouraged by the community’s “upvotes,” was simple: “Can someone briefly explain the philosophy behind his work and comment on why it might be expected to shed light on questions like the ABC conjecture?” asked Andy Putman, assistant professor at Rice University. Or, in plainer words: I don’t get it. Does anyone?
The problem, as many mathematicians were discovering when they flocked to Mochizuki’s website, was that the proof was impossible to read…
“His other papers – they’re readable, I can understand them and they’re fantastic,” says de Jong, who works in a similar field. Pacing in his office at Columbia University, de Jong shook his head as he recalled his first impression of the new papers. They were different. They were unreadable. After working in isolation for more than a decade, Mochizuki had built up a structure of mathematical language that only he could understand. To even begin to parse the four papers posted in August 2012, one would have to read through hundreds, maybe even thousands, of pages of previous work, none which had been vetted or peer-reviewed. It would take at least a year to read and understand everything. De Jong, who was about to go on sabbatical, briefly considered spending his year on Mochizuki’s papers, but when he saw height of the mountain, he quailed.
“I decided, I can’t possibly work on this. It would drive me nuts,” he said.
Soon, frustration turned into anger. Few professors were willing to directly critique a fellow mathematician, but almost every person I interviewed was quick to point out that Mochizuki was not following community standards. Usually, they said, mathematicians discuss their findings with their colleagues. Normally, they publish pre-prints to widely respected online forums. Then they submit their papers to the Annals of Mathematics, where papers are refereed by eminent mathematicians before publication. Mochizuki was bucking the trend. He was, according to his peers, “unorthodox.”
But what roused their ire most was Mochizuki’s refusal to lecture. Usually, after publication, a mathematician lectures on his papers, travelling to various universities to explain his work and answer questions from his colleagues. Mochizuki has turned down multiple invitations. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Bruno Dayan
The Roman Conquest was, however, a Good Thing, since the Britons were only natives at the time
May 16, 2013 § Leave a comment
The last time I had my teaching evaluated by my administration, I was disappointed. Although I was happy to get a grade of “excellent” (highest on a five point scale), the comments from administration made me gag: “Kate is a kind and a patient teacher,” and “Her students like her very much and respond well to her teaching.”
I don’t mind if students see me as kind and patient because they don’t usually see into the inner workings and complexities of the art of teaching, but I expect administration to be a little more savvy, and to appreciate some of the nuances.
Besides, kindness and patience are character traits and the implication is that I am a good teacher because I am a good person, not because of the work I put in, the knowledge I have acquired, and the skills I have honed over the years.
They are virtues associated most closely with women, and the stereotype raises its ugly head again–lower level students, adult basic literacy students, can (should) be taught by women because of their warm and nurturing natures; students at a higher level need to be taught by people with real skills and knowledge of subject matter. read more
ART: Kathleen Gilje (after Gentileschi)
‘She reads at such a pace,’ she complained, ‘and when I asked her where she had learnt to read so quickly, she replied “On the screens at Cinemas.”’
May 15, 2013 § Leave a comment
This morning I saw a very nice quiz concocted by a financial markets guy. I don’t want to get him in trouble so will borrow heavily from him but without attribution. If you can get this right, then you know why Quantitative Easing One, Two, and Three is a big bunch of baloney.
Consider the following thought experiment. These are the scenarios; what is the expected result of each?
A. The Treasury decides that it will fund itself 30% more in Overnight Bills and reduce bond issuance across the curve.
B. The Fed announces it will increase QE by 30% (it will remit the net income of this activity back to the Treasury).
C. Congress announces a new tax on all passive income from USTreasuries, to holders both at home and abroad (ie Central Banks), for all new-issue USTreasuries. The tax will be equal to 30% of the return in excess of the fed funds rate.
D. Treas Secty Lew pre-announces that we will ‘selectively default’ and apply a haircut of 30% on all future Treasury coupon payments of new issues in excess of fed funds rate.
What will be the likely effects of each policy? Don’t peek!
OK here is what the markets guy (rightly) says:
Here’s what’s funny. Most intelligent market participants will say things like:
A. Stocks down a few percent on fear of US debt downgrade. Economy slightly weaker or unchanged.
B. Stocks up 5-10% and economy grows another 1% for 1-2 yrs; monetary stimulus.
C. Stocks down 5-10% on tax hike (like last year) that maybe corrects. Economy slows 1-2% for a year or so because it’s a tax hike (ie fiscal consolidation).
D. Stocks down 80% and we go into a great depression on steroids. All investment dollars flee the US. I can’t tell you what happens next because my Bloomberg account gets shut down. They might even declare an Internet Holiday.
Here’s what’s craziest: THESE ARE ALL THE SAME THING. The name and the processes are different, the OPTICS are different, but the net is the same. There’s the government and there’s everyone else. The government either pays more out – in interest payments or transfer payments or vendor payments, or it takes back more in taxes or default or interest ‘savings.’ Everything the government net gets in ‘revenue’ the rest of the world loses in income. Everything the government dissaves (deficits) the rest of the world saves. Equal and opposite. read more
COPY: Matt Bloom
We’re old not retarded
May 14, 2013 § Leave a comment
Last night, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York hosted the 2013 Met Gala. This year’s theme was “Punk: From Chaos To Couture.” For many celebrities, this was the first time they had used the word “punk” in a sentence that wasn’t “Have my assistant get me Daft Punk tickets.” It was also an excuse for them to spend $10,000 to spike their hair up…
“I’m embracing the punk. There’s so much punk style in everything we do and wear everyday; we just never have the chance to do it all the way.”
—Hanneli Mustaparta, former model/current dummy read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Beth Budwig
SUNNYSIDE: Why, Dora, what’s the matter? Your eyes are red. DORA: Are they? Thank you. I don’t care, they were blue this morning, but it don’t signify now
May 13, 2013 § Leave a comment
Examples of premature obituaries range from that of arms manufacturer Alfred Nobel, whose premature obituary condemning him as a “merchant of death” may have caused him to create the Nobel Prize, to black nationalist Marcus Garvey, whose actual death was apparently caused by reading his own obituary…
Eric Blore: great comedic film actor of the 1930s and 1940s. His death caused an unexpected stir, quite independent of his fame. The British critic Kenneth Tynan, writing for The New Yorker, had recently made a mistaken reference to “the late Eric Blore”, and this error passed by the normally vigilant checking department. When Blore’s lawyer demanded a retraction, the editor had no choice other than to refer this demand to Tynan, pointing out in a fury that this was the first retraction ever to appear in that uniquely authoritative magazine. In disgrace, Tynan prepared a major apology, to appear prominently in the next issue. On the eve of publication, when the edition was printed and ready for delivery, Blore passed on. So next morning, the daily papers announced Blore’s death, while The New Yorker apologised for any insult to Mr. Blore’s feelings through their erroneous report of his demise. read more
ART: Utagawa Kuniyoshi
proverbial say, we can hear the words decay
May 10, 2013 § 1 Comment
The Old Bailey Proceedings Online makes available a fully searchable, digitised collection of all surviving editions of the Old Bailey Proceedings from 1674 to 1913, and of the Ordinary of Newgate’s Accounts between 1676 and 1772. It allows access to over 197,000 trials and biographical details of approximately 2,500 men and women executed at Tyburn, free of charge for non-commercial use. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Ralph Gibson
Such shreddes of sentence strewed in the shop
May 9, 2013 § Leave a comment
Dear Wikipedia
I am Philip Roth. I had reason recently to read for the first time the Wikipedia entry discussing my novel “The Human Stain.” The entry contains a serious misstatement that I would like to ask to have removed. This item entered Wikipedia not from the world of truthfulness but from the babble of literary gossip—there is no truth in it at all.
Yet when, through an official interlocutor, I recently petitioned Wikipedia to delete this misstatement, along with two others, my interlocutor was told by the “English Wikipedia Administrator”—in a letter dated August 25th and addressed to my interlocutor—that I, Roth, was not a credible source: “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work,” writes the Wikipedia Administrator—“but we require secondary sources.”
Thus was created the occasion for this open letter. After failing to get a change made through the usual channels, I don’t know how else to proceed.
Roth then goes on to explain that while our article claimed Anatole Broyard was the inspiration, the inspiration was in fact Melvin Tumin. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Jesse Riggins
Your answers have been veru lomd.tp ,e
May 8, 2013 § Leave a comment
It’s almost too perfect.
The roar of the presses that ruled these rooms has been replaced, just as we all suspected, with the calculated silence of the conduit that carries our data. This data, in fact. These very photos.
100 years from now, when another one of you goes spelunking around this basement, that data, those bits, today’s moments, will likely be long, long gone.
But the women on the wall might still be waiting. read more
If the revolution ain’t gonna be televised then, fuck, I’ll probably miss it
May 7, 2013 § Leave a comment
Niall Ferguson has apologized for his offensive suggestion that Keynes’ phrase on being dead in the long run was somehow related to his sexuality or the fact that he was childless. Good for him. Note, however, that in that famous phrase from the Tract on Monetary Reform, from 1923, Keynes was still very much a conventional Marshallian author who thought that full employment would reassert itself, and that the Quantity Theory of Money (QTM) worked pretty well. In fact, it is often said that the Tract was Milton Friedman’s favorite among all of Keynes’ books.
The full quote says:
“But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.”
The point of the quote is that in the long run everything would be fine, since markets do get to full employment, and so, even without intervention, deflation and inflation do its magic, but the process is too long and painful, so it would be more reasonable to act in the short run. This was typical of the Cambridge version of Marginalism, which was very much in favor of government intervention to deal with market imperfections in the short run. This is true of Marshal and Pigou, as well as Robertson, and certainly Keynes, before the General Theory. Note that this does not mean, as most people think, that one should only be concerned with the short run. The point is that action in the short run facilitates the road towards the fully adjusted equilibrium in the long run.
This was still essentially Keynes’ view by 1930, when he published the Treatise on Money, a book that is essentially Wicksellian [so at least he got rid of the QTM in this book], and that suggests that unemployment results from a monetary rate of interest that is too high with respect to the natural rate, in practice as a result from the Gold Standard rules, which Keynes wanted to abandon. [This precedes the modern views that the Gold Standard caused the Depression, by the way, as say defended by Barry Eichengreen]. This was a cyclical crisis that could be solved by reducing the monetary rate of interest, and in the short run employment programs, something Keynes defended in Can Lloyd George Do It?
The point of the General Theory (GT) is that there is no natural rate of interest, meaning that reducing the rate of interest would not bring investment to the full employment level of savings, and that the crisis was caused by lack of demand. The equilibrium between investment and savings was determined by variations in the level of output, and in the long run we are not self adjusted to full employment. Hence, the very logic of the phrase above is debunked by Keynes, when he became Keynesian, so to speak, and got rid of the old modes of thinking. read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Ryan McGinley
As you can imagine you go forward and you do not remember exactly what you have done
May 6, 2013 § Leave a comment
Kossoff speaks reluctantly; he hates talking about painting. “It’s all right,” is the most he shrugs at the sooty charcoal drawings of building sites and train tracks – “Railway Bridge Mornington Crescent”, “Building Site St Paul’s”, “York Way” – as he re-encounters them after half a century. “I was very young! It was all done on the spot. Then I would take them back to the studio, look at them, a few days later decide whether they’re finished. If not, I redrew them completely – like scraping off a painting. I destroy an enormous amount, it’s my greatest regret. I could kick myself. It’s part of my madness.”
Travelling by overground train to an early studio in Dalston, he began observing railways, which “always provide an interesting landscape, it’s all about space and light”. A rush of sensations is packed into converging lines in “Here Comes the Diesel” (the title from a grandson’s scream; a railway line passes Kossoff’s garden); shafts of sunshine illuminate gleaming rails in “Between Kilburn and Willesden, Spring Afternoon”. Building sites too, “beautiful as well as dark”, are “very exciting to see”. In their processes of demolition, excavation, construction, their sense of disequilibrium, they parallel Kossoff’s method of creation, anxiously accumulating then scraping away paint, criss-crossing networks of lines to make stormy drawings – “Demolition of YMCA Building, London”, “Kings Cross Building Site Early Days” – as vividly textural as paintings.
Structure against transience and instability, coherence against chaos, is perhaps the inevitable battleground for any painter picking up the European representational tradition after Cézanne. “I feel embarrassed to use the word ‘Cézanne’, but it’s Cézanne all the time,” Kossoff answers when I ask about influences. “Cézanne gets bigger and bigger. The older I get – I’m pretty old – he could be another Giotto as far as I’m concerned.”
No painter is more steeped in Old Masters than Kossoff, who, aged nine, walked from the east end to the National Gallery and began to teach himself to draw. “My parents weren’t interested in me becoming an artist. They were puzzled by me altogether. I wasn’t much good at anything at school, and at St Martins they didn’t like what I was doing. I always felt I couldn’t draw.” read more
PHOTOGRAPH: Tamura Miha
my nerves are bad to-night 