CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-23 06:51:05 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Tips and Tricks for Google+ Hangouts on Air - The Book

Today I decided to write a 6000-word book. Phew. 

Based on my Tips and Tricks for Hangouts on Air and Marketing Guide for Hangouts on Air, I wrote up a big ebook on how to run and market your Hangouts on Air. It's completely revised, expanded and improved based on what I've learned after running literally hundreds of Hangouts on Air.

This is a rough draft of the book, but I've made it open to the public, and anyone can make comments. Please let me know if there are any ideas you'd like me to include. At some point I'll actually get it designed, with picture examples and then release it as a free PDF.

2013-05-23 06:50:22 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

The graphic nature of groups

Group theory is an area of abstract algebra that can be used to produce visually appealing pictures like these ones. The underlying algebraic structure here is the set of all sequences of length d whose entries are integers in the range 0 to n-1. Two such sequences can be added together entry by entry, like vectors, where all the additions are computed modulo n. This set, equipped with this operation, is known as the group (Z/nZ)^d. Each of the pictures is generated by choosing a value of n, a value of d, and one sequence from the group.

Groups measure symmetry in the same way that numbers measure quantity. Furthermore, groups have symmetries of their own, known as automorphisms. For example, if we scramble up the d entries in one of the sequences of (Z/nZ)^d using some fixed permutation, this gives an automorphism of the group. (The key... more »

2013-05-22 19:54:21 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Super Science Circle - May 2013 Edition

Need more science in your Google+? Well, here's all the science you can handle! Enjoy my latest, heavily curated edition of the Super Science Circle.

Please share this circle... for Science!

For the uninitiated, I maintain a circle of 450+ people who are active on Google+ and regularly post on Google+. In this circle you'll find scientists, journalists, astronauts, educators, and science enthusiasts. By importing this circle into your own circles, you'll immediately gain a vibrant and fascinating feed of amazing science stories.

I recognize that it might be too much science, so I suggest you create a brand new temporary circle and evaluate the people in the circle. Only transfer the keepers to your permanent circles. Then, when I update the circle next month, rinse and repeat.

Are... more »

2013-05-22 12:08:43 (8 comments, 1 reshares, 13 +1s)

Got my +Raspberry Pi stuff from +Nudatech in the post today. (Thanks +Davide Coppola!)

2013-05-22 11:54:56 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Spent some time organising my book shelf. They're now in nice categories ( #gametheory , #mathed , general #orms  etc...).

Felt like a good use of my time when I got started...

2013-05-22 08:25:51 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Just had my pal +Thomas Coudrat point this out to me.

It's the follow on course by +Yoav Shoham and +Matthew O. Jackson. I've just signed up although I probably won't have time to attend properly... I did the same with their Game Theory 1 course but it was still nice to dip in and out to see what seemed like a very very cool course.

(Interesting to see that this seems to have been done with google course building instead of +Coursera...)

2013-05-22 06:59:12 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

A counter-intuitive manifestation of a zero-one law: according to computer models. everyone who was alive in 1000BCE is either an ancestor of everyone alive today, or else an ancestor of nobody alive today (including people in extremely remote and isolated communities).  

This seems unbelievable until you realise that with each generation, anyone who is a descendant of the original person will propagate that property to slightly more than two people in the next generation on average.  This birth-death process either extinguishes early on, or else ignites and grows exponentially until it covers most of the world's population after a couple dozen generations; and then all the isolated holdouts eventually get "infected" through one or two migrants.  Geographical or cultural barriers can create bottlenecks for a few generations, but they don't last long(e... more »

2013-05-22 06:14:59 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 12 +1s)

"Dear diary, it is three in the morning.  The authorities have closed the door to the bedroom.  I can only assume that they have forgotten about me and have left me here to die.  As a last resort, I will stand post for the rest of the night and sing the song of my people in the hopes that they rescue me."

A bit before midnight here, working on an article on mental health and cancer.  Will try to post the abstract at some point.

#caturday  everyday

2013-05-22 06:05:10 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

I'll have a few pieces in the Bridges 2013 Art Exhibition this summer, including Building Sines.

I've been playing around with Python, writing custom scripts to apply mathematical transformations to my photography.  Here, I compressed an image of some favorite buildings around a vertical sine wave.

You can see more here:  http://gallery.bridgesmathart.org/exhibitions/2013-bridges-conference/phonner

2013-05-21 16:49:37 (3 comments, 3 reshares, 15 +1s)

"Some Predictions about computers that didn't come true"

I'm currently going through "Computer Science Illuminated" by Dale and Lewis and it's a really nice book (echo "Blog about book" >> todolist). At the very beginning there's a collection of quotes about computers that are pretty cool (some of which I'd seen before, others were new to me):

- "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, chair of IBM, 1943

- "Where.. the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons." - Popular Mechanics, 1949

- "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad... more »

2013-05-20 20:42:18 (1 comments, 2 reshares, 7 +1s)

Stats for programmers

This is very cool.

(Via +Laura McLay on twitter)

2013-05-20 19:03:20 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne has a tenured professor position open (and is shortly expected to also have a number of tenure-track assistant professorships as well). (via Arun Ram)

2013-05-20 15:13:48 (6 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Added another photo to my "+Cardiff University  Maindy Park Construction" album. If you click through to the end you can see that there's a really nice building here now. Apparently it'll be opening this summer sometime...

(I've been taking these for just over a year now I think, when I remember to on my walk to work).

2013-05-20 14:50:01 (0 comments, 3 reshares, 6 +1s)

#mathematicalmonday: The Mathematics of Juggling [Video]: Scientific American - Mozilla Firefox http://ow.ly/l1EJB ^jc

2013-05-20 14:33:58 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Finally bought a case for my +Raspberry Pi over at my "G+ buddy" +Davide Coppola's company +Nudatech :)

#raspberrypi  

2013-05-20 16:29:26 (13 comments, 27 reshares, 64 +1s)

Saying yes to academic responsibilities

I just read this cool post by +Adriana Salerno about the need to learn how to say "no" every now and then in academia (http://goo.gl/znq5h)

I thought I'd put a blog post together  in which I attempt an xkcd style graph showing the probability of saying "Yes" to academic responsibilities based on career stage. You can find it here: http://goo.gl/D6c4F.

I made use of the XKCDify (for matplotlib + +Python) code here: http://goo.gl/1xX2O

#xkcd  

2013-05-20 07:33:51 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

We Want to share your posts

If you have added our page, and are a women who posts about Science, technology, Engineering, or Maths, submit your name so we can add you back.

Are you a woman with a degree in a STEM field? Are you an advanced student of STEM? Are you active on G+? If you answered yes, then fill out this form (http://goo.gl/rvKEf) to add your profile to the Shared Circle. You also need to add this Brand Page to your circles. 

2013-05-19 17:32:52 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 14 +1s)

Hey here's my first "auto awesome" from the new G+ features :)

 I was at my dad's for lunch and there was a bee on a leaf just sitting there which I thought was a bit strange (is it strange? Don't they normally sit on flowers or fly around? - I don't know much about bees).

I took a couple of photos trying to get a clear one I just took a look and G+ created a gif for me :)

One of the reasons I was trying to get a good pic: is the legs of the bee, is that pollen?

2013-05-19 11:07:53 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

Working on updating my CV. Decided to re-write from scratch and I like the look of +Dana Ernst's which is at this github repo: https://github.com/dcernst/CURM2012-MiniGrant

(Dana I haven't forked your repo as I'm putting this in a separate repo and wasn't too sure how to do this without things getting messy #noob  - Will put it up on github myself and will be sure to link towards your repo. Sorry!)

2013-05-18 22:00:59 (12 comments, 0 reshares, 24 +1s)

+Zoe Prytherch and I are engaged. This was the whole point of #jog2nog ...

2013-05-18 16:03:44 (15 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Student choices between SAS and R

Just finished putting together the first post in a series of posts I'll be writing reflecting on my SAS/R class.

In this post I take a look (in a very shallow way) at student's attitudes/preferences towards both languages.

#mathed   #mat013review  

2013-05-18 08:09:02 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

Every so often I have a completely free saturday during which I'll work in front of the rugby on TV: today is one of those saturdays :)

Going to be taking care of various mindless tasks and possibly getting around to writing a short blog post before giving 100% attention to the Heineken Cup final this pm...

If anyone is interested here's the Rugby Union community on G+ with a bunch of great conversations going on. I used the member numbers for this group as data for a blog post a while back showing how to carry out basic linear regression and handle dates in python:  http://goo.gl/UyMsC

2013-05-18 07:25:35 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

R Journal on github.io

2013-05-17 12:10:34 (7 comments, 0 reshares, 12 +1s)

Open source is just so awesome.

I'm probably a bit late to the party but how awesome is matplotlib?

Playing around with it doing some basic analysis and keep on thinking, "oh I'll have to hack that a bit to make this happen" but NOOO someone's already done it. So cool.

2013-05-17 11:56:03 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Good luck to +Leanne Smith who's currently in her PhD viva :D

2013-05-17 10:53:48 (6 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

The science behind the Dambusters raid - 70th anniversary of Operation Chastity

May 16 marked 70 years since the daring Dambusters raid of World War II, in which RAF pilots used bouncing bomb to breach two German dams.  This has been recreated by a Cambridge-led team (Dr Hugh Hunt et al) to demonstrate how the amazing feat was achieved.   

Sir Barnes Neville Wallis (1887-1979). Wallis was the engineer and inventor behind the science of the bouncing bombs (http://www.sirbarneswallis.com/)
 
Cambridge Research:
http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/bombs-away-the-dambusters-bounce-back

http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~hemh/

Source of video at: http://goo.gl/hNbgy

2013-05-17 05:34:00 (4 comments, 2 reshares, 9 +1s)

Go nerds.

hat tip via twitter:
RT @_inundata: The #xckd R package is finally out. http://t.co/NoadYvECGp let the nerdiness ensue. #rstats
http://t.co/sAeQNcbaeA

2013-05-17 05:27:04 (3 comments, 2 reshares, 4 +1s)

Interesting post doing some analysis on the use of statistical packages

"Forecast Update: Will 2014 be the Beginning of the End for SAS and SPSS?" http://feedly.com/k/105Xia9

2013-05-16 17:56:49 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 11 +1s)

Spent some time organising my book shelf. They're now in nice categories ( #gametheory , #mathed , general #orms  etc...).

Felt like a good use of my time when I got started...

2013-05-16 16:34:52 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

The University of Reading is hiring a new Teaching Fellow in Applied Statistics! Joblication details below.

2013-05-16 16:30:55 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

The latest addition to my desk toys (Donatello and Sheldon observe in the background): +Angry Birds star ways...

(I'm guessing that when +Zoe Prytherch told me to go pick do some dinner shopping for tonight, this was not what she meant...) 

2013-05-16 11:26:19 (5 comments, 3 reshares, 16 +1s)

Just gone through 3 groups presentations for my SAS/R course where I ask students to teach me something in SAS and/or R that was not covered in the class.

All the groups have done great and 1 group showed how to get the Mandelbrot set using R. I'm sure they won't mind me sharing the gif they got R to produce.

#fractals   #math  

2013-05-15 19:52:22 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

We’ll soon be launching Google Play for Education, a new destination for students and teachers to access highly engaging educational content and tools. Developers, find out how to get started: goo.gl/D18zy. Educators, sign up to learn more: goo.gl/YxRDM. #GooglePlay #Education   #IO13  

2013-05-15 19:19:42 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

+Moffitt Cancer Center has produced this beautifully shot video of our cancer centre. Not entirely sure people will gain much of an insight of our work with it but it's nice to see loads of good scientists I work with like +Lynch Lab , +Leah Cook and my colleagues at the department of Integrated Mathematical Oncology.

2013-05-15 18:02:05 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Vincent Knight was tagged in Vincent Knight's album.

2013-05-15 17:39:56 (11 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

The +Google+ updates look pretty awesome #googleio ...

2013-05-15 06:52:14 (6 comments, 2 reshares, 6 +1s)

This is accelerating.

2013-05-14 20:45:59 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Walking to pick up something from the printer this afternoon, I noticed a 1962 issue of Operations Research on the table.

Most interesting to me was the Editorial Board at the time.  Sure, there are some of the founders of the field in the list.  But, the EIC held a position in industry.  And 14 of the 24 associate editors were not affiliated with a university.  Some from government labs and think-tanks, but also some from consultancies and from industry.

Not sure precisely what it means, but today we have an OR EIC and 156 area and associate editors, and each and every one is in a university position.

2013-05-14 18:06:30 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Clear, Unambiguous Statement About the Missing Posts
+Yonatan Zunger has stepped in and made this clear and unambiguous statement about the issue with missing posts that so many of us have been experiencing in recent weeks.

(Source: plus.google.com/103697368260407276883/posts/bDj7QsPEurA)

2013-05-14 09:50:42 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Finishing up my marking this morning and I might actually find time to work on some research this afternoon which would be the first time in quite a while...

2013-05-13 10:51:54 (0 comments, 5 reshares, 10 +1s)

Clever algorithms

I love the distribution model for this book by +Jason Brownlee.

- The github repo is here: https://github.com/jbrownlee/CleverAlgorithms
- The website describing the book (where you can get the pdf for free) is here: http://cleveralgorithms.com/
- Finally you can also buy the book at a pretty reasonable price on Amazon or directly from the publisher (details on the website).

Have just grabbed the pdf but as the book looks pretty good I'll probably buy a copy too :)

Very cool.


2013-05-13 08:07:37 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

I've given myself two simple tasks for the day: finish my marking and catch up with my backlog of emails...

2013-05-12 17:43:34 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

Almost time to leave Station. Hard to express all of my emotions, but mostly gratitude. I came here on behalf of so many people - thank you.

Chris Hadfield's Mission Reflections

2013-05-09 15:26:17 (5 comments, 2 reshares, 11 +1s)

You'll be surprised (or maybe not) by at least one of the "habits" geniuses had in common.

2013-05-09 12:41:06 (13 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Sad times...

My transformer usb stick thing broke...

2013-05-09 08:34:07 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

New Blog Post: +Robert Talbert got me thinking about two popular "innovations" in teaching college mathematics.

2013-05-09 06:33:44 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

The new number is: 5.9

… for more exiting endeavours, please download me from here:

http://sagemath.org/download.html

2013-05-08 20:36:04 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

I really really love pandoc.

2013-05-08 18:32:57 (10 comments, 2 reshares, 2 +1s)

Awesome IBL in practice

In a comment on this post http://goo.gl/KHAlW, +David Richeson just posted a link to this blog post: http://goo.gl/KHAlW showing how he gets his student to put together a text book throughout his topology class.

Very cool.

2013-05-08 16:38:20 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

I've been asked to mark two undergraduate projects this year. One of them is a #mathed  project looking at the support offered to students transitioning from high school to university.

I look forward to reading them :)

#pcutl