Climate science needs professional statisticians | Environment - The CT Mirror

Editor’s Note: This opinion piece is the part of a larger series exploring how Connecticut and the nation are grappling with the effects of climate change.

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Climate science needs its own specialized 'climostatisticians' as integral members of multidisciplinary research teams, according to Daniel Cooley, Department of Statistics, Colorado State University and Michael Wehner, Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley.

Photo: Samuel Mann - Flickr

“Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get!”

This old cliché rings true, for climate is the distribution of weather. Weather’s distribution depends on season, location, internal variability, and external influences, both natural and human. As it is weather, not climate, that is observable and measurable, any study of climate is inherently statistical in nature.

Climate change is one of the most important social issues of our time. The climate science community faces the immediate, important task of informing difficult decisions that must be made regarding our economic, environmental, and public health systems. Confidence in the effectiveness of these decisions derives from confidence in the underlying climate science. Appropriate statistical analyses can increase such confidence...

Integration of statisticians into climate science does not have the long history that biostatistics has. However, there are many important and successful examples of joint work between statisticians and climate scientists, and some of this work has influenced policy at the federal government level. In one such example, statisticians played a role in producing and reviewing the 2006 National Research Council report on paleoclimate reconstructions [North et al., 2006], which aimed to reconcile the “hockey stick” controversy arising from the congressional inquiry into the work of Mann et al. [1998].

Another example of collaboration between climate scientists and statisticians that should influence climate science practice is that of Paciorek et al. [2018]. This research shows that in the context of event attribution—that is, attributing the occurrence or severity of specific weather events to climate change —naïvely implemented (but commonly used) statistical bootstrap techniques quantify uncertainty poorly, particularly when estimating the small probabilities associated with attributing causes to individual events.
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Source: The CT Mirror

Book review: The Maths of Life and Death | Book reviews - TES News

This book raises the key issue of ethics in mathematics - but it doesn't fully explore the human tragedies involved by Lucy Rycroft-Smith, produces the Mathmatips podcast for Tes.

Photo: TES News

It’s 8pm on a balmy evening in March. I can barely contain my wildly spiralling thoughts as I watch a spellbinding lecture from Dr Hannah Fry, part of her acceptance of the Zeeman Medal for which I (as well as many others) wrote a glowing nomination.

Fry is talking about mathematics with her usual grace and humour, but the topic she has settled on has me particularly riveted. I wave my hand at her as she closes. She greets me by name, thrillingly.

“I was at a lecture by Paul Earnest last week about ethics in mathematics,” I begin. "He suggested that we should have better training for mathematicians, a national organisation, much more thought and awareness around the topic. What do you think?”

In his new book, The Maths of Life and Death, Kit Yates writes: “We should treat claims sceptically and ask for more information… Maths and statistics can be difficult to understand, even for trained mathematicians; this is why we have experts in those areas. If needs be, ask for help from a professional, a Poincaré [a famous mathematician], who can lend an expert opinion. Any mathematician worth their salt will be happy to oblige.”...

Balancing honesty and truth I acknowledge the paradox of finding the balance between telling stories with honesty and “truth” and telling them with a generous side of authorial sensitivity; navigating between the twin straits of fact and opinion is the most difficult issue facing writers in our time, and I don’t think Yates missteps significantly. (He also loosens up as the book progresses, and addresses these issues head-on.)

Another point Fry makes well is that so many mathematicians who are now being asked to work on problems of this magnitude are “young white boys”. Without better representation, the breadth of the input and therefore to some extend the quality of our decisions will be only as narrow as the pool of experts we have bothered to invest in. The author of this book cares about these issues and is interested in them, but not enough emphasis on them in the book left me slightly disappointed. 
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Recommended Reading

The Maths of Life and Death

The Maths of Life and Death by Kit Yates, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and co-director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology at the University of Bath.

Source: TES News

Mother Nature's Favorite Number Sequence - The Fibonacci | Biology - Interesting Engineering

From pine cones to sunflowers, from nautilus shells to Dan Brown thrillers, mother nature has a favorite number sequence - the Fibonacci Sequence, explains Marcia Wendorf, former high school math teacher, technical writer, author, and programmer.

Photo:  Alphotographic, RedHelga

The spiral of seeds in a pine cone, the fruitlets of a pineapple. What do they have in common? They both conform to the Fibonacci Sequence.

As anyone who has read Dan Brown's thriller The Da Vinci Code or seen the movie knows, the Fibonacci Sequence is a sequence of numbers created by adding two sequential integers together, starting at 0.

RELATED: PHI AND THE MATHEMATICS OF BEAUTY

The sequence can be described by the equation: F_n = F_{n - 1} + F_{n - 2,} where n > 1 so, F₀ = 0, F₁ = 1 and F₂ = F₁ + F₀ = 1.
The sequence of numbers comprising the Fibonacci Sequence is: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987 ...

Nicknamed Fibonacci

The person who brought the Fibonacci Sequence to Western audiences is Leonardo of Pisa, who was born around 1170 A.D. and died around 1250 A.D. He was later nicknamed Fibonacci, from Filius Bonacci, which means 'son of Bonacci'. The sequence had actually been deduced by Indian and Arab mathematicians a thousand years earlier.

In 1202, Fibonacci described the sequence in his Liber Abaci ('Book of Calculation'), which was intended as a math guide for tradesmen, so they could calculate profit and loss, and loan balances...

Finally, have you ever noticed that the covers of many high school mathematics textbooks display a nautilus shell? The shell can be described as having a spiral that expands by the Golden Ratio every 180 degrees. Although this is just an approximation, it is often cited as a sign of the appearance of the Golden Ratio in nature, and that's why it's on the cover of math textbooks.
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Source: Interesting Engineering

Remembering George Salmon, mathematician, theologian and provost of TCD | Science - The Irish Times

Peter Lynch, emeritus professor at UCD School of Mathematics & Statistics says, The outstanding mathematician switched his focus to higher matters and devoted his last 40 years to theology.

George Salmon: In 1833, aged just 14 years, he entered Trinity College, where he was to spend his entire career.

As you pass through the main entrance of Trinity College, the iconic Campanile stands before you, flanked, in pleasing symmetry, by two statues. On the right, on a granite plinth, is the historian and essayist William Lecky. On the left, George Salmon (1819-1904) sits on a limestone platform. 

Salmon was a distinguished mathematician and theologian and provost of Trinity College.

For decades, the two scholars have gazed down upon multitudes of students crossing Front Square. The life-size statue of Salmon, carved from Galway marble by the celebrated Irish sculptor John Hughes, was erected in 1911. Next Wednesday will be the 200th anniversary of Salmon’s birth.

Salmon was born in Dublin. His father was a linen merchant from Cork and George grew up and went to school in that city. In 1833, aged just 14 years, he entered Trinity College, where he was to spend his entire career. He graduated in the year 1838 after an outstanding undergraduate performance. In 1841, he was elected to a fellowship. In 1858, Salmon was appointed Donegall lecturer in mathematics.

As a tutor, Salmon would lecture twice each day, advising, directing and examining his students. In addition to this heavy load, he produced 41 mathematical papers and four influential mathematical texts during the following 20 years or so. Salmon did research in algebra, matrices and group theory, in close collaboration with Arthur Cayley and Joseph Sylvester, the leading English mathematicians of the day.

Salmon is mostly remembered today for his four textbooks on mathematics...

An evening course on recreational maths, Awesums: Marvels and Mysteries of Mathematics, is open for booking online at UCD (www.ucd.ie/lifelonglearning) or by phone (01-716 7123).
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Source: The Irish Times

45 New Skills to Incorporate into Your Daily Routine | New Courses - The Learning Blog

Zoë Kelsey, Learning Supporter at LinkedIn summarizes, Each week presents a new opportunity for you and your team to learn the skills necessary to take on the next big challenge.

Photo:  Learning Blog - LinkedIn Learning

At LinkedIn Learning, we want to do everything we can to help make that happen. Each week, we add to our 15,000+ course library. This past week we added 45 courses. What can you expect from the new additions? 

Have you heard the phrase “consistency creates consistency?” Habits take about 21 days to develop, but don’t have to be time consuming. An overwhelming number of professionals—66% according to our latest survey—say that they feel more confident after they spend time learning. Look for content you can consume in short bursts as part of your daily routine—we’re talking under five minutes each day.

If you’re looking to learn to code for social justice, or how to gain the most in-demand skills of 2019, like creativity and social media marketing, we’ve got you covered on those topics and more. Check out one of the 45 new courses this week.

The new courses now available on LinkedIn Learning are:
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Source: LinkedIn Learning

Philosopher of the Month - September| Philosophy - Oxford University Press

Panumas King, marketing executive for philosophy at Oxford University Press explains, John Duns Scotus (b. c. 1265/1266–d. 1308) was one of the most significant Christian philosophers and theologians of the medieval period. 
 

Photo: Rainier Ridao on Unsplash.

Scotus made important and influential contributions in metaphysics, ethics, and natural theology. Little was known of his life but he was born in Scotland, became a Franciscan monk, spent his learning and professional life at Oxford and Paris, and died in Cologne. He was also the first theologian to defend the theory of Immaculate Conception. The doctrine of Immaculate Conception holds that God preserved the Virgin Mary from the taint of original sin from the moment she was conceived. Although Aristotle’s ideas were prevalent during the turn of the 13^th century, he belonged to Franciscan tradition which, as opposed to Aristotle, emphasised the power of faith and will. He was also much influenced by Arabic philosophers, especially Avicenna, with their emphasis on Being as the metaphysical object.

Scotus’s masterpieces were the revised commentary on the writings of the Italian theologian Peter Lombard’s Sentences, known as the Ordinatio, the 12th-century compilation of authoritative passages that theologians had to comment on before qualifying as masters, and his questions on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, considered his most difficult work. Due to his early death, he was unable to carry out a final revision of most of his important works. His influence on later generations of thinkers was considerable and extended beyond the Middle ages.
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Source: OUPblog (blog) 

Science history: Otto Yulyevich Schmidt, hero of Russia | Mathematics - Cosmos

He was a man of many talents, and many awards. Jeff Glorfeld, now a freelance journalist based in California, US.  reports.

Otto Schmidt on a Russian stamp released in 1966.
Photo: Post of the Soviet Union / Public domain

If Otto Yulyevich Schmidt hadn’t lived, some creative storyteller would have had to make him up.

Various sources describe him as a scientist, mathematician, astronomer, geophysicist, statesman and academic. The list scarcely does him justice.

He received the Order of Lenin, three times; the Order of the Red Banner of Labour, twice; and the Order of the Red Star. In 1937 he was named a Hero of the Soviet Union.

In 1948, Russian astronomer Pelageya Fedorovna Shajn discovered and named a minor planet - 2108 Otto Schmidt – in his honour

Schmidt, whose name is often written as Shmidt, was born on 30 September 1891 in Mogilev, part of the Russian Empire now in modern Belarus. By all accounts a gifted and hard-working student, he graduated from Kiev University in 1913, specialising in physics and mathematics...

In 1921 Schmidt was appointed director of the State Publishing House and saw to it that the publishing of scientific journals and research papers resumed. In 1924 he was appointed editor-in-chief of the Great Soviet Encyclopaedia.

In 1923 he became a professor of mathematics at Moscow State University.
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Source: Cosmos

Best of arXiv.org for AI, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning – August 2019 | insideBIGDATA

In this recurring monthly feature, we filter recent research papers appearing on the arXiv.org preprint server for compelling subjects relating to AI, machine learning and deep learning – from disciplines including statistics, mathematics and computer science – and provide you with a useful “best of” list for the past month. 

Researchers from all over the world contribute to this repository as a prelude to the peer review process for publication in traditional journals. arXiv contains a veritable treasure trove of learning methods you may use one day in the solution of data science problems. We hope to save you some time by picking out articles that represent the most promise for the typical data scientist. The articles listed below represent a fraction of all articles appearing on the preprint server. They are listed in no particular order with a link to each paper along with a brief overview. Especially relevant articles are marked with a “thumbs up” icon. Consider that these are academic research papers, typically geared toward graduate students, post docs, and seasoned professionals. They generally contain a high degree of mathematics so be prepared.
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Enjoy and take a cup of ☕️coffee!  

Source: insideBIGDATA   

September is international ‘Read a New Book Month’ | Days Of The Year

Learn about Read A New Book Month

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.
George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

When you open the pages of a new book, you find yourself swept up in a new world of characters and stories, or maybe just information. The best books, even instructionals, guide you through a storyscape that builds up and shares the vision of the author. Read A New Book Month is your opportunity to pick up that novel you’ve been meaning to finish, that DIY manual you bought to finish that project, or even a technical manual to help you understand a new piece of machinery.

History of Read A New Book Month Books have stood as a testament to the spread of knowledge, the sharing of tales, and the expansion of the mind by recording and passing on these ideas down through a written medium. By writing down and replicating the thoughts, ideas, and imaginations of authors to fans, students, and philosophers everywhere we create the ability to share and expand our own thoughts by reading them. The first written word appeared in 3400BC, and the first story was The Epic of Gilgamesh, a tale of the eponymous ruler of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk between 2700-2500BC, told in a mythological style.
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Happy read a new 📚book month and drink ☕️coffee!

Source: Days Of The Year 

At a unique Sydney bookshop, multilingual storytellers are keeping languages alive | Australia - SBS News

More than 180 languages are spoken in the Sydney suburb of Fairfield, with creative storytellers at one of its bookshops ensuring many are passed down to the next generation by Sandra Fulloon, SBS News.

Families enjoy multilingual story time at Lost in Books.
Photo: SBS

Jasmine Baker loves to tell stories, but it wasn’t always that way. 

“I speak Arabic and English. I come from a background where my parents speak five languages,” she tells SBS.

The 29-year-old is studying early childhood education and works part-time performing stories to children in more than one language.

The daughter of Lebanese parents who migrated to Australia in 1970, Jasmine was born in Sydney’s south-west and attended a local high school. But fitting in was a challenge...

Fairfield has resettled more than 12,000 refugees in recent years, including a large proportion from Iraq and Syria as part of the Australian government’s additional settlement program in 2016.

Jane Stratton started Lost in Books to keep Sydney's languages alive.
Photo: SBS

Lost in Books founder Jane Stratton aims to help new arrivals settle in Australia and help families retain a connection to their cultures through the multilingual books.
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Source: SBS News