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LATEST ARTICLES ( 295 )

• Talk Today at Johns Hopkins

  I’m giving a computational neuroscience lunch seminar today at Johns Hopkins.  I will be talking about my work with Michael Buice, now at the Allen Institute, o... Read more

  Posted on 12 December 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Von Neumann’s Response

  Here’s Von Neumann’s response to straying from pure mathematics:“[M]athematical ideas originate in empirics, although the genealogy is sometimes long and... Read more

  Posted on 11 December 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Complexity is the Narrowing of Possibilities

  

  Complexity is often described as a situation where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. While this description is true on the surface, it actually... Read more

  Posted on 06 December 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Von Neumann

  Steve Hsu has a link to a fascinating documentary on John Von Neumann. It’s definitely worth watching. Von Neumann is probably the last great polymath. Read more

  Posted on 04 December 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• News as Entertainment

  This is an obvious observation but it struck me one day while watching the evening national news on multiple channels that the only thing that can... Read more

  Posted on 21 November 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Economic Growth and Reversible Computing

  In my previous post on the debt, a commenter made the important point that there are limits to economic growth. USCD physicist Tom Murphy has some thoughtful... Read more

  Posted on 12 November 2012 COMPUTING, ECONOMICS, SCIENCE

• Debt is Relative

  

  One of the memes that is dominating American political discourse is that the US national debt is too high. The debt is currently around 16 trillion dollars whic... Read more

  Posted on 09 November 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Prediction Requires Data

  

  Nate Silver has been hailed in the media as a vindicated genius for correctly predicting the election. He was savagely attacked before the election for... Read more

  Posted on 08 November 2012 BIOLOGY, SCIENCE

• Predicting the Election

  

  The US presidential election on Nov. 6 is expected to be particularly close. The polling has been vigorous and there are many statistical prediction web sites. Read more

  Posted on 03 November 2012 SCIENCE, SOCIETY, TECH

• Weather Prediction

  

  I think it was pretty impressive how accurate the predictions for Superstorm Sandy were up to a week ahead. The hurricane made the left hand turn from the... Read more

  Posted on 01 November 2012 SCIENCE

• Time Constants in the Economy

  

  I was struck recently by a figure that economist Paul Krugman posted on his blog of the recovery time from recessions.The interesting point to me was that... Read more

  Posted on 17 October 2012 SCIENCE

• Using Formal Logic in Biology

  

  The 2012 Noble Prize in physiology or medicine went to John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka for turning mature cells into stem cells. Read more

  Posted on 10 October 2012 SCIENCE

• Revised SDE and Path Integral Paper

  

  At the MBI last week, I gave a tutorial on using path integrals to compute moments of stochastic differential equations perturbatively. The slides are the same... Read more

  Posted on 10 October 2012 SCIENCE

• More on Health Care Costs

  

  I posted previously that the rising cost of health care may not be a bad thing if it ends up providing jobs for the bulk of the population. Read more

  Posted on 02 October 2012 SCIENCE

• Complete Solutions to Life’s Little Problems

  One of the nice consequence of the finiteness of human existence is that there can exist complete solutions to some of our problems. Read more

  Posted on 25 September 2012 SCIENCE