O brave new quantum world!
Visiting Shtetl-Optimized always brings out the neologista in me. Reading tonight led me to the following idea for a useful phrase:
Front of the envelope calculation A calculation so simple that you don’t even need to use the back of the envelope to carry it out.
JohnQPublic points me to a new use of quantum theory. World peace:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsvEkPNitdQ&mode=related&search=[/youtube]
At about 4:30 you’ll find my favorite line: “…the radiated influence of peace in the environment grows roughly as the square of the number of people doing it together…” Can we expect Grover speedups in achieving world peace if we use quantum theory?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qadw0BRKeMk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Etechcrunch%2Ecom%2F2007%2F08%2F28%2Fadobe%2Dhires%2Dco%2Dinventor%2Dof%2Dimage%2Dresizer%2Dtechnology%2F[/youtube]
Because, of course, you’ve all been wondering about goings on in my life. Of couse you have, that’s why you’re wasting your time reading blogs on the intertubes, no?
From a New York Times article:
Using virtual reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences — the sensation of drifting outside of one’s own body — in healthy people, according to experiments being published in the journal Science.
Link to links to articles here.
Doesn’t this make you want to go out and buy some VR goggles, a camera, and a stick? Seriously if someone set up a stand in a mall to do this, I’d want a ride. Reminds me of a story my dad told me about how he would sell electric shocks to the local kids instead of lemonade. It makes me worry, however, whether someday they will be able to induce Alien abduction experiences as well. Might not be quite as pleasant.
Is gr-qc/0504083 the world record holder for number of versions on the arXiv? Seventy four is a lot of versions.
Um…arXiv:0708.2410:
Title: How to become a superhero
Authors: P. M. Gleiser
We analyze a collaboration network based on the Marvel Universe comic books. First, we consider the system as a binary network, where two characters are connected if they appear in the same publication. The analysis of degree correlations reveals that, in contrast to most real social networks, the Marvel Universe presents a disassortative mixing on the degree. Then, we use a weight measure to study the system as a weighted network. This allows us to find and characterize well defined communities. Through the analysis of the community structure and the clustering as a function of the degree we show that the network presents a hierarchical structure. Finally, we comment on possible mechanisms responsible for the particular motifs observed.
From an article in the New York Times today:
More recently, executives have blamed very unusual events — known to experts as 25-standard deviation moves, things expected only every 100,000 years — for the disruptions that computers could not predict.
Um, according to my calculation, a 25 standard deviation move on a normal distribution has a chance of occuring which is about [tex]$6 times 10^{-138}$[/tex]. This means then that if the above statement is correct (100,000 years equals one 25 standard deviation move), then financial transactions occur at a rate of one transaction every [tex]$10^{-117}$[/tex] seconds. This is, you know, only [tex]$10^{-73}$[/tex] times shorter than the Planck time relevant to a quantum theory of gravity.
Which is great if your a physicist! Forget about building the Large Hadron Collider, just use the financial markets to test your theory of quantum gravity! Maybe the recent credit crunch is evidence for the Higgs boson or a selectron? I mean, seriously, we already have huge numbers of physicists working in the financial sector. Maybe they were on to something we didn’t notice and they’re really doing fundamental physics using this incredible financial transaction speed (and even making money while they’re poor thesis advisors slave away in tenured at a state institute land 🙂 )
More seriously, I wonder if one could predict the future behavior of a financial instrument by examining the incidences of mathematical jargon in the instruments literature and the percentage of times the statement actually makes sense (would you invest if you found a clarifier about 25 standard deviation moves in a hedge funds plan?)
Paper dance. Delayed posting here about the paper dance because I did the paper dance in Bocas de Toro in Panama. “Panama! Panama ah ah ah! … Model citizen, zero discipline.” New paper, arXiv:0708.1221 (scirate here):
Title: Caching in matrix product algorithms
Authors: Gregory M. Crosswhite and Dave Bacon
Abstract: A new type of diagram is introduced for visualizing matrix product states which makes transparent a connection between matrix product states and complex weighted finite state automata. It is then shown how one can proceed in the opposite direction: writing an automata that “generates” an operator gives one an immediate matrix factorization of it. Matrix product factorizations are shown to have the advantage of reducing the cost of computing expectation values by facilitating caching of intermediate calculations. Finally, these techniques are generalized to the case of multiple dimensions
Because we all love medical animations set to a techno beat:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjhbZ8zrtKw&mode=related&search=[/youtube]