With an acknowledgement to Stewart Martin-Haugh via Twitter I thought I’d share this important lesson in project management:
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Quantum Coherence Therapy
Posted in Maynooth on July 10, 2018 by telescoperI spent an amusing few minutes during lunchtime today looking through a leaflet from a local Maynooth business called Alchemy Holistic Therapies.
Unfortunately their advertised website appears not to be active, but here are a couple of examples of the sort of `therapy’ they offer:
The Quantum Sound Bath sounds a bit noisy to me, but Quantum Coherence Therapy has a good vibe to it. I’m sure it’s all based on proper physics too.
Follow @telescoperLaw like Love – W.H. Auden
Posted in Poetry with tags Law Like Love, W.H. Auden on July 10, 2018 by telescoperLaw, say the gardeners, is the sun,
Law is the one
All gardeners obey
To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.
Law is the wisdom of the old,
The impotent grandfathers feebly scold;
The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,
Law is the senses of the young.
Law, says the priest with a priestly look,
Expounding to an unpriestly people,
Law is the words in my priestly book,
Law is my pulpit and my steeple.
Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,
Speaking clearly and most severely,
Law is as I’ve told you before,
Law is as you know I suppose,
Law is but let me explain it once more,
Law is The Law.
Yet law-abiding scholars write:
Law is neither wrong nor right,
Law is only crimes
Punished by places and by times,
Law is the clothes men wear
Anytime, anywhere,
Law is Good morning and Good night.
Others say, Law is our Fate;
Others say, Law is our State;
Others say, others say
Law is no more,
Law has gone away.
And always the loud angry crowd,
Very angry and very loud,
Law is We,
And always the soft idiot softly Me.
If we, dear, know we know no more
Than they about the Law,
If I no more than you
Know what we should and should not do
Except that all agree
Gladly or miserably
That the Law is
And that all know this
If therefore thinking it absurd
To identify Law with some other word,
Unlike so many men
I cannot say Law is again,
No more than they can we suppress
The universal wish to guess
Or slip out of our own position
Into an unconcerned condition.
Although I can at least confine
Your vanity and mine
To stating timidly
A timid similarity,
We shall boast anyway:
Like love I say.
Like love we don’t know where or why,
Like love we can’t compel or fly,
Like love we often weep,
Like love we seldom keep.
by W.H. Auden (1907-1973)
Follow @telescoperThe Problem with Odd Moments
Posted in Bad Statistics, Cute Problems, mathematics with tags moments, probability, probability distributions on July 9, 2018 by telescoperLast week, realizing that it had been a while since I posted anything in the cute problems folder, I did a quick post before going to a meeting. Unfortunately, as a couple of people pointed out almost immediately, there was a problem with the question (a typo in the form of a misplaced bracket). I took the post offline until I could correct it and then promptly forgot about it. I remembered it yesterday so have now corrected it. I also added a useful integral as a hint at the end, because I’m a nice person. I suggest you start by evaluating the expectation value (i.e. the first-order moment). Answers to parts (2) and (3) through the comments box please!
Answers to (2) and (3) via the comments box please!
SOLUTION: I’ll leave you to draw your own sketch but, as Anton correctly points out, this is a distribution that is asymmetric about its mean but has all odd-order moments equal (including the skewness) equal to zero. it therefore provides a counter-example to common assertions, e.g. that asymmetric distributions must have non-zero skewness. The function shown in the problem was originally given by Stieltjes, but a general discussion can be be found in E. Churchill (1946) Information given by odd moments, Ann. Math. Statist. 17, 244-6. The paper is available online here.
Follow @telescoperEveryman in Cardiff, Azed in Maynooth
Posted in Biographical, Crosswords on July 8, 2018 by telescoper
As soon as I’d finished today’s Everyman Crossword in the Observer (which, together with a cup of coffee, is how I get my brain in gear on Sunday mornings) I walked into town to get the bus to Cardiff Airport. After some confusion (caused by an event called the Velothon) I managed to locate the correct bus stop and I was on my way back to Maynooth. It was very warm today in Cardiff and the airport was very busy, but at least the air conditioning was working so it was quite cool inside the departure lounge.
The flight was half an hour late, and very full, but I got a window seat over the wing. I took the picture as we passed over Cardigan Bay. If you look closely you can see the Llŷn Peninsula off in the distance.
I got back to Maynooth via the Hopper Bus from Dublin Airport at about 4pm, did a bit of shopping, and then had a go at the Observer’s Azed crossword. This is usually a far stiffer challenge than Everyman, and is the puzzle I usually do on Sunday evenings. Today’s wasn’t too tricky though.
I think however, that this is the first time I have done crosswords from the same paper on the same day either side of the Irish sea!
Follow @telescoperLeaving Thoughts
Posted in Uncategorized on July 7, 2018 by telescoper
Despite the distraction of today’s World Cup Quarter Final between England and Sweden I’ve actually been working on a grant application this afternoon ahead of travelling back to Ireland tomorrow.
Yesterday I went out for drinks with the good folk of the Data Innovation Research Institute as a sort of informal leaving party. I’d like to thank Claire, Ben, Owain, Ian, Unai and Cyril for a fun night out and for the card and presents!
I’ll be back in Cardiff for graduation the week after next so they haven’t quite got rid of me yet. Most significantly, some of my stuff is still in the office (in boxes) awaiting removal to Ireland. When I arrived in the DII office two years ago there was only me there. It’s great that the team has grown so quickly, but more importantly that it’s such a nice group of people.
Anyway in the absence of time for a proper post I thought I’d fall back on a standard social media standby, in the form of a picture of a cat. The cat pictured above usually patrols the area outside Maynooth University library but was just basking in the Sun when I stopped to say hello on the way to work the other day.
Follow @telescoperThe Workman’s Friend
Posted in Poetry with tags Flann O'Brien, The workman's friend on July 6, 2018 by telescoperWhen things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night –
A pint of plain* is your only man.
When money’s tight and hard to get
And your horse has also ran,
When all you have is a heap of debt –
A pint of plain is your only man.
When health is bad and your heart feels strange,
And your face is pale and wan,
When doctors say you need a change,
A pint of plain is your only man.
When food is scarce and your larder bare
And no rashers grease your pan,
When hunger grows as your meals are rare –
A pint of plain is your only man.
In time of trouble and lousey strife,
You have still got a darlint plan
You still can turn to a brighter life –
A pint of plain is your only man.
by Flann O’Brien (aka Brian O’Nolan; 1911-1966)
*plain here means `stout’ (e..g Guinness).
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It’s LGBTSTEM Day!
Posted in Biographical, LGBTQ+ on July 5, 2018 by telescoperSo here I am in Dublin Airport, waiting for a flight back to Cardiff for LGBTSTEM Day. Sadly the Airport WIFI isn’t working and I’m having to write this on my phone so I’ll keep it brief.
I just wanted to say thank you to all the individuals and organisations responsible for setting up and supporting this day, which I hope will become a regular feature in the calendar. In particular I hope there’ll be an event to mark LGBTSTEM Day in Maynooth next year!
I’ll be talking this afternoon in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University, but there are events all morning elsewhere in the University and beyond, both nationally and internationally.
Anyway, I had better get on with thinking about what I’m going to say in my talk…
UPDATE: We had quite a big turnout at the talk in Physics – here’s a picture I lifted off Twitter to prove I was there!
Day and Night and CP Violation
Posted in Art, The Universe and Stuff with tags CP-violation, Day and Night, M.C. Escher, Particle Physics on July 4, 2018 by telescoperI’ve had these pictures for quite a while and can’t remember where I got them from, but I used them in my lectures on Theoretical Particle Physics when I was in Nottingham to illustrate CP-violation.
The following picture by M.C. Escher is called Day and Night:
If you look at it you can see two kinds of symmetry emerging. One is a kind of reflection symmetry about a vertical axis drawn through the centre of the picture that applies to shapes but not to colour. The other is between black and white. But it is obvious that the picture doesn’t display these symmetries separately: to get a picture unchanged from the original you would have to do the mirror reflection and change black to white (and vice-versa).
The mirror reflection in the image can be taken to represent parity (P). Strictly speaking parity refers to a reflection through the origin in 3D rather than a mirror reflection, but it’s just for illustration. We know that a parity symmetry is violated in weak interactions just as it is in the picture.
The other possible symmetry, between black and white can be taken to represent charge-conjugation (C), the operation that converts particles into anti-particles and vice-versa.
While P is not an exact symmetry of weak interactions, it was long thought that the combination of C and P (CP) would be. Actually it isn’t. The story of the discovery of CP-violation is fascinating but I don’t have time to go into it here. It suffices to say that the Escher print also displays CP violation.
First lets do `C’, i.e. convert black to white and vice-versa. The result is:
Now reflect about the vertical mid-line to illustrate `P’:
If `CP’ were an exact symmetry then that image would be identical to the original, which I reproduce here:
You can see, however, that while some elements of the picture do look the same after this combined operation (e.g. the birds), others (e.g. the buildings at the bottom) do not.
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Literary Bayesianism
Posted in Bad Statistics with tags Bayesian probability, significance tests on July 3, 2018 by telescoper
I’m a bit busy today doing job interviews and other things, so I’ve just got time for a quick post to point out that there’s a nice polemical piece by David Papineau in the online version of the Times Literary Supplement recently called Thomas Bayes and the crisis in science. I get the print version of the TLS every week, largely for the crossword, but I think the online version of Papineau’s piece is public (i.e. there’s no paywall).
The piece touches on a number of themes I’ve covered on this blog over the years, in particular the widespread use of dodgy statistical methods in science. Here’s a little taster:
One of the great scandals of modern intellectual life is the way generations of statistics students have been indoctrinated into the farrago of significance testing.
I couldn’t agree more!
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In the Dark 