Old Papers (and maths!) (by alaric)

This weekend, I've been going through old papers and dealing with them. This involves sorting them into three categories:

1. To be shredded and turned into logs with our log maker
2. To be filed in the cabinet (with many subcategories corresponding to the files therein), and sorted by date where applicable
3. Demanding some action (which, for now, means putting them into my in-tray, rather than disrupting the activity in progress)

The magnitude and importance of this task is not to be underestimated - when we moved here I had a new baby, a very sick wife, and two jobs to deal with; unpacking and properly setting up my office never really happened, as opposed to setting up a desk and digging through boxes to find the things I needed to get started. So my once-pristine filing system was never quite established, and my "to file" tray grew fat with paperwork I needed to put somewhere. There was slow progress, of course; but then two years later the house flooded, so we had to rush a lot of furniture and stuff from downstairs up into the office, then pack a lot of stuff up and send it into storage while the house was repaired... and we weren't living in the house for nearly a full year, so more often than not I was working on my laptop from wherever I could get an Internet connection. Once again, my paperwork was in disarray.

But, three years on, we're finally catching up. I've gone through my filing cabinet and re-filed the mish-mash therein, then gone through my to-file tray and the various piles of papers dotted around the place, and dealt with them all. "To shred" has been by far the biggest category; as I write, Sarah is sitting feeding sheet after sheet into the shredder. And I've found a bunch of interestings that need further action.

For one of them in particular, the action is to write it up. Many years ago, I bought and read a book on statistics in order to refresh my memory, as I was working on a system for analysing the actions of large numbers of people. Now, I didn't enjoy statistics much when I was doing A-level maths, and reading the book reminded me why: I find the random-variable notation unnecessarily vague and confusing, and the various other notations used in statistics seem inconsistent to me.

I recall reading this book on a long bus journey (the bus from Tottenham Court Road to Gallows Corner in Romford, to be precise), and deciding to take matters into my own hand, and designing m own notation for statistics based on set theory. I like set theory and find it sensible and logical, so this was an obvious choice. I wrote my notation down on a sheet of paper, tucked it into the book, and took it home.

Many years later, I found the sheet of paper inside the book, and put it in my TODO pile, as I needed to take a second look at it and do something with it. This never happened. Until now.

So without further ado, here's the content of the sheet. It still needs more thinking about, but if I write it up into the computer now, this is more likely to happen than waiting for me to encounter this bit of paper again.

Let L be a multiset of real numbers.

• SUM(L) = sum of x, where x is an element of L.
• |L| = the number of elements in L.
• L(n) where 1 <= n <= |L| = nth largest element of L
• MIN(L) = L(1)
• MAX(L) = L(|L|)
• MEDIAN(L) = L(|L| / 2) if |L| is odd, (L(floor(|L| / 2)) + L(ceil(|L| / 2)))/2 otherwise
• SUM^2(L) = sum of x^2, where x is an element of L
• VAR(L) = SUM^2(L) - (SUM(L))^2 etc.
• L ~ D iff L is distributed as per D (D is a distribution as per normal stats notation)
• SRn(L) is a multiset of all possible sets of n random samples from L with replacement
• SWn(L) is a multiset of all possible sets of n random samples from L without replacement

Let L be a multiset of records (named tuples) of real numbers (a,b,c,...)

• La is a multiset of just the as
• Lab is a multiset of the products, a*b
• sigma(L) f(a,b,c) is the sum of f(a,b,c) across all the elements in L
• pi(L) f(a,b,c) is the product
• L ~ (D1, D2, ...) iff. La ~ D1 and Lb ~ D2 and so on
• cov(a,b)(L) = sigma(L) ab - M(La)*M(Lb)

...and there it ends!

It’s not a case of Art Verses Science (by sarah)

I am aware that there are funding cuts all around and that some people view the problem as art verses science and argue things like art never took part in war. But a) this is wrong art very much does take part in war - in the form of writing or visual arts - think propaganda and b) the whole concept of there being an art/science dichotomy is blatently wrong. They are not opposites, they are not diametrically apposed things.

Art and science are subdivisions of Creative, they both use similar processes in creation of new things and more over one fuels the other. Now the issue with limited finding is - how much does it cost for paint brushes verses and MRI scanner? In an ideal world there would be no limitations but that is not the case. And the thing about science funding cuts is that is going to cost lives in the short and long term. Now don't get me wrong art does save lives but it is more of an enrichment thing (not that science doesn't enrich lives but you know what I mean!).

Of course I am biased in this due to the fact I chose to study science at university when I could have studied art - the deciding factor was that I could do art anywhere anytime but for science I needed access to machines - expensive machines.

This I suppose does mean the artists have to take more of an initiative in getting themselves going which due to social constraints means it sometimes doesn't happen.

Something else I have been meaning to blog on is how 'normal' people view both artist and scientists and too my suprise it is basically the same - but more on that later!

Rally – Science Is Vital (by sarah)

Today there is a rally where scientist and anyone passionate about science are going to march over the funding cuts to their fields. I can not be there not least because I am on crutches - this probably wouldn't have stopped me normally but baby has to come first!

Information can be found here.

And you can sign the petition here.

If you feel it's too late for today you can still join in the lobbying of our government on the 12th! Info on that is here.

And then there is always the ol' Write To Your MP.

Why is Science Vital (by sarah)

Science is threaded through out the modern world, everything is affected by or initiated by science. Shouldn't the money be spent on health care? I hear you cry - what do you think is at the bases of the treatments? What allows the equipment to function and be used? SCIENCE!

What about the environment? Surely that was caused by science? No it was caused by ignorance and mis-management and what do you think allowed us to see what was happening? SCIENCE - what do you think will allow us to drag ourselves and our planet out of it? SCIENCE.

Then there is our transport systems, heating for our homes, clean water, foods and hygien. The cloths we are wearing - all those nice washable colours and enduring fabrics? SCIENCE was at the root of all of these.

The artists pigments and the fact they don't die as much from accidental substance abuse - SCIENCE.

Even trying to sort out the mess of the financial crises comes from SCIENCE. Because you know what Maths is SCIENCE. And on that subject we plunge straight into the humanities from war anylises to domestic abuse statistics.

What about business? I hear you cry - shouldn't we be concentrating on strengthening the private sector and let nessecity drive invention?

Ok but you see modern business is reliant on computers - weather it is running their e-bay shop or because they use a bank and where do software engineers get the tools to be able to make these boxes of lights do such amazing things? SCIENCE. Yep sorry guys but even if you only take the logic part of programming into account here - computing is a SCIENCE.

(For the purpose of Research and Development - Science, Engineering and technology in general are all far too interlocked to be seperated out - though I do have views on this aswell but that is beyond the point being made here.)

And to those who say - ok but get rid of all non-vital research - I say that without blue sky research you hamstring the entire scientific entity. Things crop up in unexpected places leading to major breakthroughs - just look at some medical history 😉

I was horrified over the proposed funding cuts in science - how to spiral a country into a social war of attrition as all our initiative and endevours - business start ups etc.... disappear - in other words - all the sorts of things you need to bump a country out of recession.

Looking at other countries it appears that those who invested in science regardless clawed their way up whilst those who didn't dwindled and became weaker.

All of our global equivalents are currently increasing science funding so this is pure madness which is why I have chosen to write yet another blog post about it. Please please check out ScinceIsVital and sign their petition at the very least.

National Poetry Day Uk 2010 (by sarah)

Today is National Poetry Day UK and the them is Home. Like last year Jeany has composed a poem - this time it's a bit longer and she wanted to do loads more poems too :/

I like my home
It is great
But my window
Should be a different colour
It should be rainbow

I told the painter
And he didn't paint it
The colours I wanted
It should be
Blue, green, red, purple, yellow, black

I Jean love my home
I love my drinks bottle
And my slinky
It is rainbow coloured
Purple, orange, pink, blue, green, yellow
And it's boingy

I love my dinosaurs
My plastic ones
I'm covered in rainbows

I love my cats
I love Tom he's white and ginger
I love Helium she's white and black
I love Hydrogen she's white and black and pink

I love my toy baby
I love my rabbit
He's the same as Helium
The guinea pigs are daft

My slinky goes round my head a bit

I love my home
I love my computer
Oh no there's cornflakes
All over the floor

The tea cup and everything are good
Except the windows