Somewhere Euclid is Smiling

Image and article from Quanta magazine

"[P]article interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry ....Interactions that were previously calculated with mathematical formulas thousands of terms long can now be described by computing the volume of the corresponding jewel-like “amplituhedron,” which yields an equivalent one-term expression."

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

More Than Numbers

The shift is on.

With the home team hanging on to a 2-0 lead, Giants closer Sergio Romo took the mound in the top of the ninth. Diamondbacks left fielder Jason Kubel was the first batter up, and the shift was on.

The Giants moved shortstop Brandon Crawford to the right of second base, and third baseman Pablo Sandoval was all by his lonesome on the left side of the infield.

Kubel's spray chart

Jason Kubel is a left-handed "pull" hitter who is almost incapable of hitting the ball left when he faces right-handed pitching. True to form, he flew out to right field.

Before Sabermetrics became widely employed, managers made decisions based on personal experience, gut feel, and scouting reports. Now no one makes a move without extensive data collection and number crunching. Though rooting for the Giants, I was secretly hoping to see Jason Kubel hit the ball to left field to show that man is more than numbers.

By the way, the Giants did win, 2-0. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

We Don't Need No Stinking Badges

....or diplomas. When a product (college) costs more and delivers less value (jobs), young people may well become discouraged about their prospects of achieving the American dream. Fortunately, in the recovering tech economy college is not the only path to a good job. Employers are hiring workers with aptitude in science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics (STEM). [bold added].

A new report, "The Hidden STEM Economy," reveals that a university degree is not required for 27.5 percent of all jobs in the San Jose area in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. The number is even higher -- 36 percent -- in San Francisco and the East Bay. [snip]

Drawing from high schools, vocational schools and community colleges, these jobs pay annual salaries averaging $73,000 [note: the national average is $53,000]-- less than positions requiring a university degree, but $30,000 a year more than those in fields outside science, technology, engineering and math.

It won't be easy, one may have to defer one's "real" calling, and one may have to swallow some pride initially because of lower pay and status, but after a few months on the job most co-workers won't care about where or even if one went to college. In the pay-for-performance economy it's remarkable how many people succeed once they get in the door.

Cheering Him On

University of Arizona graphic

When an outsider comes up with a "breakthrough" in a specialized area, the natural reaction of the experts is to pooh-pooh the discovery. Why haven't we heard of this guy, what are his credentials, what did he publish, etc. are all questions commonly leveled at the interloper, usually with good reason; rarely do these so-called breakthroughs pan out.

Nevertheless, there's great appeal in the someone-who-comes-out-of-nowhere story. It gives hope to all of us that it is possible to master knowledge or skill in a new area (for us), and we enjoy watching the discomfiture of the proud lions in the field. This phenomenon may be happening in the rarefied air of theoretical physics.

Eric Weinstein gave a lecture at Oxford in which he outlined a theory that he has apparently been working on for a number of years. [It] is an attempt at a Theory of Everything — specifically, a theory that would unify the standard model of particle physics with general relativity, explain dark matter and dark energy, and basically provide a synthesis that would resolve many of the big questions facing physics today.

This sort of thing is always exciting. But this proposal gained particular attention for the fact that Eric Weinstein is not a Physics professor. Yes, he has a PhD in math from Harvard, but he has been out of academia for twenty years, and his day job is at a hedge fund in New York.

The greatest minds from Einstein to Hawking have been struggling to construct the Theory of Everything, and it's very unlikely that a non-physicist has come up with major new insights, much less The Answer. Of course, it was more unlikely that, just over a hundred years ago, a Swiss patent-office clerk would revolutionize the way we look at the universe.

Very few can follow what Eric Weinstein is doing, but many are cheering him on. © 2013 Stephen Yuen

Sunday Math

The use of data analysis in the world of baseball was popularized in Moneyball, first the book, then the movie. Now the geeks are taking over the front offices in professional football (link requires SI subscription).

Now nearly every team in the NFL has an analytics group, though most are as forthcoming as the CIA regarding the work these employees perform. [snip]

Among those teams riding the stats wave are the Ravens, who announced in August that they'd hired a former NBA statistical consultant with degrees from Yale and Carnegie Mellon to lead their new analytics department. They're just now catching up to opponents like the Patriots, and the 49ers, who in 2001 lured Stanford M.B.A. Paraag Marathe from his consulting job at Bain & Co. to lead their analytics department.

It's nice to know that the San Francisco 49ers are second to none in the analytics arms race:

"There's one team right now that is applying all of this better than everyone else, and that is San Francisco," says [Jaguars executive Tony] Khan. He points to one 49ers play in Week 10, against the Rams: San Francisco faced fourth-and-one at St. Louis's 21-yard line, down 10 in the fourth quarter. The Niners went for it, converted and scored a touchdown two plays later. The game ended in a 24-24 tie. "Most people disagreed with that," says Khan. "But I've seen the chart they use. And certainly guys like [pioneering football statistician] Brian Burke agreed with what they did."

Although the article is about football, the writer throws some love at the baseball Giants:

Throughout professional sports, forward-thinking teams are engaged in an arms race for new technology that can lend them any advantage. The most progressive organizations have quietly begun incorporating video technology into their analysis: Fieldf/x, which tracks players' movements on the baseball field, has been a secret weapon for the world champion San Francisco Giants; and 10 NBA teams use SportVU, which can identify opposing teams' plays based on movements. NFL teams are starting to use similar technology: This year the Falcons, Giants and Jaguars began using GPS tracking technology on their players during practices. (The league prohibits it during games.)

Note: The local basketball team, the Golden State Warriors, uses video-capture technology from Sportvu (aka Stats LLC). Perhaps Titletown will be here sooner than we thought. © 2012 Stephen Yuen

Number of the Day, Month, and Year

Displaying a hitherto unknown degree of marketing creativity, the CPA education website offers a "twelve"-themed sale just for today. Discounts are offered in multiples of 12% on such page-turners as the "IFRS: What's New This Quarter?" and "Interactive Tax Checklists." Tempting, but I think I'll pass.

I'm husbanding (oops--sorry about the sexist / pro-marriage language) deferring discretionary business expenses till 2013, when it will be important to keep one's adjusted gross income below certain thresholds to minimize both taxes and the reports that one is required file.

Speaking of "12", the predominance of binary and octal systems in the computer age has quieted discussion of duodecimal counting methods, but it's fun to think about "dozenal" mathematics. Many repeating decimals in our base-10 system, such as 1/3 = .3333...., become terminating decimals (1/3 = 4/12 = 0.4) in base-12. If we were to adopt a base 12 system, 10 inches will make a foot, and 30 inches will comprise a yard, perhaps reducing, slightly, the insults Americans have to endure for not switching to metric.

Most importantly, we will weigh much less: 200 pounds in base 10 becomes 148 pounds in base 12 (144+48+8). That's a discount most of us can get behind. © 2012 Stephen Yuen