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[This post has a technical-sounding title but is not technical in its contents. That will come in follow-up posts; I generally think that mathematicians should take the reader to dinner, first;-).] When I studied mathematics in my master’s, I conformed my interests, for practical purposes, to those of my supervisor. This did save some anguish in choosing the topic for my thesis, but it meant that the only soul I had in the game was that of the artisan who wants to do things as well as possible. Maybe I was just too sensitive, but pushing so hard in an area that didn’t at leastRead More →

In classic mathematics-style, I begin with a couple of definitions. Definition 1: ‘Power’ is the ability to influence or change an outcome. Definition 2: ‘Personal power’ is influence or authority that a person has over that person’s followers because of who that person is perceived to be, and not because of that person’s position. Aside: I am officially punting (for now!) on the philosophical status of personal power (which we might think of as being of a similar degree of dubiousness to free will). I want to discuss personal power this week, in contrast to political power, partly because present political situations and the enormousRead More →

Technical Disciplines as Ethical Disciplines This post is inspired by mathematician and luminary Cathy O’Neil and her book, Weapons of Math Destruction, which is an eye-opening and disturbing survey of how society has constructed opaque and damaging systems on a mass scale, many of which are based on quantitative models. Having been hit deeply on an emotional level by this book, and seeing its significance to my own professional presence, I want to share some of what I have learned, as well as my own ethical principles surrounding the use of mathematics in society. I am an applied mathematician not by training, per se, butRead More →

For contrast to the boundaries and open relationships discussions, I’ll introduce the first of several analogies between physics and humanity that I have found helpful, intriguing, or entertaining. Just as no frame of reference is inherently any better than another, at least an interesting exercise is to contemplate the same neutrality for human perspectives. It’s easy to personalize people’s lives to the extent that we think they see things a particular way because of properties “intrinsic” to them — for example, their personalities and idiosyncrasies. But I think this is actually getting the causality backwards; these seemingly “intrinsic” attributes are the results of interactions betweenRead More →