Research

Lots (read: more than one) of people have been asking what I'm up to nowadays, which has led me to the conclusion that I'm neglecting my blog. The whole purpose of this exercise is to avoid frivolous conversation by publishing the answers to questions which form the bulk of small-talk; that my conversation time may be better spent. The inefficiency of giving the same facts to different people in different conversations is amazingly annoying.

So.

Having finished university (results are out on Thursday 18^th with luck), I'm now...at university. I'm working as a research student for ten weeks, working in the same area as with my final year project.

I'll hopefully be publishing a paper in AAMAS (Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems), and then presenting it in May/June 2010, in Canada. Also it pays for rent and clothes shopping over summer - but let's pretend I'm doing this for the advancement of human knowledge.

We're still finalising a topic - I'll post a dumbed down (read: jargon-free) version of whatever I do up here :)

Xx

PS: I have a small office with (inexplicably) 9 chairs, yet on the rare occasions anyone stops by for a chat, they generally stay standing. Explanations on a postcard please.

One Million Giraffes

Following a (presumably) drunken bet, someone on the Internet is looking to collect 1,000,000 hand-drawn giraffes by 2011. I really can't think of any more noble aim for the future - and it'll be one hell of a puzzle for digital archaeologists in a few hundred years when they find all these pictures without any context.

You can see the (pitiful) 600 or so he's collected here and you can submit your own drawing in myriad ways; the most obvious being simply to email it to him.

For reasons I really can't explain, here's my favourite so far:



For reasons anyone who has ever seen me draw anything will perfectly well understand, I won't post my effort up here. And I think I might even submit it under a pseudonym.

Get drawing :)
Xx

Crazy People

It makes waiting for buses (and the subsequent journeys) so much more interesting when instead of a sullen Brummie looking annoyed at everything, there's a crazy* person repeating the same thing over and over to anyone who might vaguely listen. Top of the list, of course, is an old lady who wants to tell me how lovely my hair is; but crazy people are a close second.

There were two such folks who got the bus in with me today; one alternately shouting and singing "You can't go in this afternoon, mate" and the other with a more elaborate spiel about how "You only ever have one exam, that's music" (although he did then go on to contradict himself, saying how he'd failed two assessments).

That's not the interesting part.

These two, apparently entirely independent people were waiting at the bus stop at 8.30am (ok, 9.30am - but if my supervisor asks, I was in work at 9). They got the bus in to town. As I stepped on the bus at 5.30pm (fine, fine - 4.30pm) - they were both there again, shouting and singing their way home.

What kind of magical, wonderful day did they have? Were they perhaps just getting buses to and from town all day, entertaining the passengers? Or did they get to town, walk into the office and have a full, normal day's work before resuming their alter-egos? Maybe they're brilliant physicists who were doing important research all day, and just do the shouting for a laugh.

Or, even better, is there a club for such people? Do they have a full day at the club, with various shouting and walking oddly and talking to strangers rooms and sessions? Do they pop home at 5 to have dinner and get ready for the club's evening party, where they dress up in their best and bring their partners along for some couples shouting?

Next time I see one of these folks and I'm not so busy, I'll follow them and let you know.

Xx

--

*'Crazy' probably isn't the PC term any more, but I may as well continue my downward spiral into immorality.

Your Erdős-Bacon Number

Your Erdős-Bacon number is the sum of your Erdős number and your Bacon number. With an opener like that, I'm sure I've got your attention - now to elaborate.

I've been looking into social network topology for a paper I'm writing (more on that later) - if that doesn't mean anything to you, try and recall the time you saw '6 degrees of separation' in some junk mail; the wildly unsubstantiated and poorly researched idea that everyone in the world is separated by just 6 links.

This has been a topic of some quite interesting research by a number of fairly important chaps you haven't heard of, and it seems a few of them either a) snapped or b) had a sense of humour. I'm banking on a).


_{Paul Erdos - he could easily have been in films with a face like that}

Post snapping (or Schnapps) some mathematicians came up with the concept of an Erdős number - this is your academic degree of separation from influential mathematician Paul Erdős. Your Erdős score is 1 if you've co-authored a paper with Paul, 2 if you've co-authored a paper with someone who's co-authored a paper with Paul...and so on.

A later take on this was a Bacon number - your degree of separation from actor Kevin Bacon. If you've starred in a movie with Kevin, score 1. If you've starred in a movie with someone who's starred in a move with Kevin, score 2...and so on.


_{My favourite bacon related picture on the Internet}

Your Erdős-Bacon number is the sum of these.

Unbelievably, there are a whole range of people who actually have an Erdős-Bacon score. There's a messy list of them here - some people have Erdős-Bacon numbers as low as 4 or 5.

I think this goes to prove two points:

1. Some of your favourite actors may be closet mathematicians and..
2. The mathematicians that didn't make it into Hollywood have way too much time on their hands.

Also, consider this post a standing offer from me to buy drinks for the evening for anyone who can prove they have an Erdős-Bacon number.