The Oak's Shilling

My new book, Maths in Minutes, is formally published on 1 March. It's a great format due to Quercus: 200 short articles on areas of mathematics, intended to introduce the non-mathematician to the subject. Even with 200 sets of 200 words it is impossible to cover the whole of mathematics, so I have concentrated on core mathematics rather than applications.

It looks good, and some of the entries are (I hope) very good, though there are inevitably some weaker areas! I am particularly proud of the introduction of the ideas of proof, and how Holmes' deductive method fits into this (the role of the contrapositive). On the other hand, the short topic-led format makes it harder to bring out the deep inter-connectedness of mathematics. You win some, you lose some.

You can buy it at all good bookstores, but I get no royalties (boo hoo).

Versatile Virtuosity

The special issue of Dynamical Systems, and International Journal in memory of Jaroslav Stark is published next month. It is always sad to think that Jaroslav has gone, but writing the editorial reminded me that Jaroslav was an amazingly versatile mathematician. In his early career his interests spanned from pure mathematics to engineering via rigorous computer proofs and he went on to  become an important voice in Systems Biology. He also published on statistics and data interpretation.

This versatility reminds me of another of my heroes. The other day I came across Boris Vian on youtube. Vian was an engineer (he is credited with the design of the rubber wheels in the Paris Metro, which ensure a smooth and relatively quiet journey) but he is better known as a writer and one of the people responsible for bringing jazz to France (he died in 1959). His books were required reading for arty  French adolescents when I was young (I'm less keen on the best known J'irai cracher sur vos tombes, but L'herbe rouge, L'Ecume des jours and L'Arrache-coeur are amazing). I wonder whether he is still read.


I had not realized that Vian wrote music too. His anti-war song, Le Deserteur is wonderful; a very simple but powerful song written as a letter to the President on having received his military papers to leave for the war `by Wednesday evening'.  Another example of versatile vituosity.

I suppose both Stark and Vian show that extraordinary people are often extraordinary in a variety of ways. The rest of us just get on with what we do.

Welcome Back

Such a long absence requires a short explanation (not sure of the blog etiquette here). A lump in my leg grew over the summer and after extensive screening I had a small operation in October to remove it.

Fortunately it was not what they thought it was (I was diagnosed with a neuroma, a tumour of the nerve sheath but a nodular fascia, which is non-malignant and boring) so normal service will be resumed shortly....

Responding to EPSRC's Shaping Capability Agenda

Two weeks ago the EPSRC Fellowship call was published, and it has been restricted to statistics and applied probability as part of the Shaping Capability agenda. This is the first direct consequence of this policy, and the Council for Mathematical Sciences has reacted by arguing that even if one accepts the policy, the post-doctoral fellowships are an inappropriate vehicle for the implementation as it hits the really excellent young researchers in other sub-disciplines who do not have the luxury of being able to mark time until there is an open call. We will see how EPSRC responds.

The fellowship announcement has alerted the community to the potential effects of the policy. Tim Gowers has blogged a detailed critique -- though the gist could have been predicted a while ago (see my earlier blog in January). Whilst I agree with most of what Tim writes, the critical issue is how the mathematics community responds. The difficulty is that there are two alternative approaches. Let me overstate each case:

Alternative 1:
The political direction of mathematical research is wrong, and this is compounded by the fact that it is to be implemented by people who do not have the expertise to assess the value of the research (consultation with the community is restricted to rubber-stamping exercises). The mathematics community has a duty to stand up to this political interference and to point out the contradictions inherent in the policy. Only by doing this forcibly can we expect to persuade EPSRC to reverse this patently absurd course of action, and it is our democratic right and duty to bring about a reversal of the policy.

Alternative 2:
At a time of economic uncertainty, David Delpy has negotiated a level funding for science by promising greater engagement with the needs of UK plc either economically or socially. The Shaping Capability policy is intended to deliver contributions to priority areas (the grand challenges), whilst maintaining our research base, at a time of need. Since the EPSRC does not have the expertise to implement such a policy effectively, the community needs to work with EPSRC to identify the most effective ways of developing mathematical activity within these constraints; and as a group of researchers funded through the public purse we have a democratic responsibility to engage so as to minimize the damage to the research base and maximize new opportunities for mathematics even if we do not agree with the policy.

The debate within the mathematics community is around how to react to events when we are divided between these two equally honourable but contradictory views.

The danger of Alternative 1 is that we are seen as intransigent moaners; maths is not powerful enough to change a global EPSRC policy, and the net effect is that ill-informed policy will be imposed on us. Our involvement will be purely (outraged) reaction.

The danger of Alternative 2 is that we could appear to accept the principle and find ourselves in a position where there is no chance of a future reversal. It would be deeply divisive if some areas were labelled for reduction in resource by the community, and we would effectively be collaborating with the enemy by helping them to implement a flawed policy.

I've oversimplified both stances, but my current feeling is that we need to develop a form of Alternative 2 which does not tinker with the EPSRC implementation around the edges, but provides a unified approach to Shaping Capability, accepting it (though not agreeing with it) as current policy and putting it into the hands of the mathematical sciences. Of course, there's a danger that EPSRC would cherry-pick our plan, but at least we'd have a positive and proactive agenda to push.

Other disciplines have managed to work with and influence EPSRC. Maths struggles to find a unified voice. One of the things I plan to do is find out how the other areas, particularly Theoretical Physics, manage to react in a way that at least appears unified from the outside.

Where's that man Haldane when you need him?

Changing of the guards

I haven't seen any of the chasers for the last two weeks. Last year, after clashes over the pond it was clear that there was only room for one male broad-bodied chaser, (an example of the male the Libellula Depressa is pictured above).  This year we have had two apparently content to occupy different parts of the bank.

This may be due to the higher levels of the vegetation at the edge of the pond, meaning that there are more perches to choose from, or because there are more females in the neighbourhood -- I have seen several in the long grass behind the pond (home-grown like the one that died and which was the subject of a blog last month).

Whatever the reason, it was wonderful to see them back.

This week saw the return of the hawkers. The girls swear an emperor has visited, but all I've seen is this rather small but beautiful common sympetrum (at least, that's what I assume it is, it's the first I've seen).

Newton's Cradle Revisited

The next View from the Pennines looks at some fairly recent work on visco-elastic collisions based on Newton's cradle. This is an executive toy with five (or so) ball-bearings hanging from a frame so that they line up perfectly when hanging down. If one of the end balls is lifted back and released it makes a pendulum swing, strikes the line and an impulse is instantaneously propagated along the line to the other end, and that ball swings up and the cycle repeats.

That is the standard physics textbook explanation anyway, and of course it is wrong! Experiments show that all the balls move a little and there is a complicated long term evolution of the behaviour.

As part of the article I made a simple model to deal with the three halves power law of the (Hertzian) interactions of the balls whilst in contact, with a simplifying assumption that the time of interaction is constant (I had to beg an extra day from the IMAs patient editor, Rebecca Waters to make the calculation). Of course, no sooner had I sent off the final version than I realized that -- almost certainly (I haven't checked the details) -- my analysis is much more accurate than I had thought and the 'assumption' is in fact completely justified.

I'll have to go through it more carefully, but if true it provides a nice example of a hybrid system for which it is possible to obtain an exact return map without being able to solve for the full details. One unknown parameter is introduced, but the quantitative details are pretty much independent of this parameter anyway!

This peachy version of Newton's Cradle is from Caroline Savva's website:

http://carolinesavva.blogspot.com/2011/06/newtons-cradle-revisited.html.

It makes me smile.

Just answer the question (But don't expect me to tell you what it is!)

The Government has expressed surprise that many universities have opted to charge the maximum (£9K p.a.) fees to students to cover their costs and to maintain their reputations as serious institutions. (There's a hint as to the reason at the end of the last sentence.) This was clearly not the answer the Government wanted from the universites, so the new initiatives announced by David Willetts on Tuesday (28th June) seem designed to give Vice-Chancellors a clue about the 'correct' response to the charging issue. There will be no Government imposed cap on the recruitment of high quality students (AAB) to any institution, and 20000 supported places for students at universties charging fees at the lower end. Is that clearer? To benefit, institutions need either to be able to recruit very good students (e.g. Russell Group universities) or have taken the risk of charging lower fees.

Does that make more sense about what a 'correct' response might be?

On Newsnight, Willetts insisted that there was no hidden agenda; the Government simply wants to allow market forces to work their magic to restructure the higher education sector. This might be more believeable if the Government did not keep changing the rules under which these forces are operating. One could be forgiven for thinking they were pushing towards an unstated outcome!

There are lots of good arguments to be had about the role of learning versus training, and the effect of large departments and small departments (plenty of choice of courses, but fewer opportunities to get to know teachers and vice versa) but this is not being encouraged. It would be much more honest if the Government simply said what it wanted to achieve and get on with implementing its vision. At least then we could have a rational argument rather than the current system of university reactions to artificially imposed  sequences of financial constraints.

Or maybe it is all about money.