Blog
Simple or simplistic?
2012 February 20
I very much appreciate the effort, but I just don't agree with a model for human interactions based on the maximization of a utility function, nor with the restriction of human responses to a very limited set of discrete, fixed-no-matter-what strategies.
Marked to Model
2012 February 20
I recently watched Moneyball, a movie that is based on the true story of the Oakland Athletics and how they used statistical analysis and modeling (sabermetrics) to put together a team of “misfits” that eventually won a record 20 consecutive games. Sabermetricians take the rich statistical information that is kept ... read more
The Wired Generation
2012 February 05
At this present moment, as I am writing this, I am among the most connected human beings in all of history. If you wanted to, you could send me a Facebook message, email me, send me a Gchat message (all of which I get both on my laptop and my ... read more
The Egocentrism's Dilemma
2012 February 03
As children, we all go through a stage during which we claim whatever interesting object we see as “Mine!” We eventually outgrow this extreme egocentrism, more or less. Such evolution takes many iterative cycles of fitting our current mental model to the new information from experience. As part of our ... read more
Behind the screen
2012 January 25
Blink is a wonderful book. So wonderful that I tend to think that every good story I ever read about bias, decision making and a number of other topics must have been in there. I just spent several hours trying to find one of those stories. Unfortunately, I couldn't - ... read more
The Probability of a Psychic Octopus
2012 January 24
You remember Paul, he was world-renown as the most successful prognosticator of the World Cup. He successfully predicted the results of all of Germany's games, and he correctly picked Spain as the winner in the final. Paul was the sensation of the year, with hundreds of articles written and TV reports made acclaiming his amazing soccer intuition. Also, he was an octopus.
Review of Packing for Mars
2012 January 20
Life in space sounds utterly unappealing in Mary Roach's new book, Packing for Mars. The book’s anecdotes primarily revolve around the troubles of vomit, body odor, and poop in a zero gravity environment. The discomforts of a space station it seems, far outweigh the small joys of floating.
Roach’s ... read more
Nicolás Peláez awarded HHMI International Student Research Fellowship
2012 January 20
Nicolás Peláez, a Colombian born graduate student jointly advised by Luis Amaral and Rich Carthew, was one of 48 international students working at U.S. institutions awarded the prestigious "HHMI International Student Research Fellowship":http://www.hhmi.org/annualreport2011/people-and-financials/fellowship-and-grants.html. Sean B. Carroll, HHMI’s vice-president for science education, noted that the ""applicant pool was spectacular":http://www.hhmi.org/annualreport2011/year-in-science-education/international-student-research-fellows-announced.html" and that ... read more
Diffusion in complex system: is the anomalous usual?
2012 January 11
A brief history of anomalous diffusion as it relates to complex systems. -- Haroldo Ribeiro
Movie science, science fantasies and real science for Ph.D. students
2012 January 10
I love movies. Especially when they show cool scientists doing crazy science. It doesn't matter if it would take 500 million times the energy of all nuclear weapons on Earth combined to stop the rotation of the Earth's core. When scientists in a movie tell me that it "just stopped ... read more
How can we improve Biology education?
2011 December 07
Biology is frequently talked and thought of as the field of science for those who are inclined to do science but are turned off by math and physics. This is a serious problem that not only impacts the quality of education, but also the preparedness of students for adapting throughout ... read more
Individual intelligence vs. collective wisdom?
2011 November 30
To both philosophers and scientists, the way that the human society is organized has always been a compelling subject. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Niccolo Machiavelli may enjoy telling stories about social contracts, monarchy and oligarchy, and modern physicists and social scientists see a world full of “links” and “hub nodes”. Regardless ... read more
Review of PRX
2011 November 22
The American Physical Society, publishers of Physical Review Letters among other journals, has recently started a new online-only open-access journal: PRX. The publisher claims that "PRX will bring valuable and innovative results to the broader physics readership." Does PRX make good on this claim? In this blog post I examine the three articles that relate to this lab's interests and come up with mixed results. -- David Mertens
The Danger of Truthiness
2011 September 15
This is an interesting article that talks about how certain things that seem intuitive become accepted as conventional wisdom ("truthiness").
"Apparently horses in races are almost always (98%) whipped.* The main reason is to make them go faster.
Congratulations to the scientists from the University of Sydney who won a ... read more
Friendship and colleagues
2011 July 28
In the academic world, the coming of spring brings more than migrating birds and warming temperatures. We can also count on seminars filled with faculty candidates, and prospective graduate students flocking to elaborate departmental recruiting events. Little time has elapsed since I was an interviewee in the latter category, but ... read more
Anthropocentrism and biology
2011 March 11
A recent The Scientist "commentary":http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/58047/#ixzz1GKJ9H21K on a recent paper (D. Dickinson, et al., " A polarized epithelium organized by beta- and alpha-catenin predates cadherin and metazoan origins," Science, 331: 1336-39, 2011) makes some wonderful points about the working and evolution of biological systems.
The first point relates to anthropocentrism: "Yet ... read more
Group IQ
2010 December 21
"Carolyn Johnson":http://search.boston.com/local/Search.do?s.sm.query=Carolyn+Y.+Johnson&camp=localsearch:on:byline:art, of the "Boston Globe":http://www.boston.com, wrote a fascinating story on "What makes one team of people smarter than another? "
You can read the full story "here":http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/12/19/group_iq/?page=full.
read moreAccountability and the Research Enterprise
2010 December 08
The Republican leadership has recently turned its attention to "wasteful" research sponsored by NSF (see "YouCut":http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/ for details.) In a youtube video, Representative Adrian Smith (R-Neb.) calls for Americans to search the NSF database and report "wasteful" grants and cites two projects as examples of such waste, a $750,000 grant ... read more
NRC Rankings have arrived
2010 September 29
(Revised Oct. 3, 2010)
The long awaited for NRC rankings have arrived and, as expected, lots of controversy ensued. To avoid suspense, I will state up front that I am convinced that someone has finally gotten the rankings right. The notion espoused by the 1995 NRC rankings or the annual ... read more
The role of controversy in scientific discourse
2009 October 05
Returning from a scientific meeting reminded me again of the current bias against controversy in scientific discussions. Maybe as a result of the hazing-like practices in some circles (math, statistics, old Sovietic academic institutions), many now appear to abhor public disagreement on scientific matters. This is sad, as there is ... read more