October 2015 Newsletter
Mathematics and Statistics
UC Innovation Medal
From Rick Beatson, some background to the research that led to his UC Innovation
Medal:
All but the most careful and consequently slow laser scans will have holes due to occlusion etc.
For example, scanning from the side, one finger will obscure the side of the adjacent finger, as
in the left hand picture below. By fitting a radial basis function, s, to be zero on the surface and
nonzero off, and then extracting the isosurface s(x)=0, one automatically fills the holes. The fast algorithms
made this workflow practical. Software broadly following this workflow is bundled with laser scanners ARANZ
manufactures. It has been used as part of the process of manufacturing custom-fitted artificial limbs in the
Hanger chain of hundreds of prosthesis laboratories in the USA.
Left: Raw laser scan of hand with large holes on the sides of the fingers.
Right: The surface after radial basis function mesh repair. Note the filling
on the holes.
Also from Rick, the research tip of the month:
Build relationships with people you enjoy working with elsewhere. This provides the opportunity to occasionally
undertake concentrated research elsewhere, out of your local noise. Bear in mind that in such exchanges the
visitors always has lots of time and the host much less.
Postgraduate Successes
Congratulations to Chitraka Wickramarachchi,
who successfully defended his Statistics PhD in
September.
His farewell message before
returning to Sri Lanka: The time has come to say
goodbye to the School of Mathematics and
Statistics. It has been a wonderful period of time
and I can’t even think about my leaving. However,
the time has come do so. My heartfelt thank you
to all members of the academic and
administrative staff, and postgraduate students,
as you all are a part of my PhD life at UC. In case
of visiting Sri Lanka, you are most welcome and
please don’t forget to contact me at
[email protected].
Congratulations to Rebecca Abey for completing her MSc degree. The title of her thesis is The Statistics of
Topic Modelling.
- Miguel Moyers-Gonzalez
Conferences and Visits
Maarten McKubre-Jordens: presentation of Marsden research at Joint Mathematics Meeting, Seattle, 4 – 10 January
2016.
Maarten McKubre-Jordens: CORCON-funded research visit to Munich and Stockholm for sabbatical, 4 March -20 June
2016.
Raaz Sainudiin: presented a seminar on Optimally L2-smoothed and Asymptotically L1-consistent adaptive multivariate
histograms from a complementary pair of priority-queued Markov chains over statistical regular pavings, Department of
Mathematics, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, 29 September 2015.
Raaz Sainudiin: presented a seminar on The binary transmission process: a combinatorial stochastic process on rooted
ranked planar binary trees over the contact graph of hosts in an epidemic at Epidemics Group meeting, Mathematical
Statistics Division, Department of Mathematics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden, 1 October 2015.
Phil Wilson: invited participant at BIRS and post-workshop research trip to collaborator at York University, Toronto, 28
May – 17 June 2016.
Raaz under CORCON followed the RRR <!R> Rule: Refueling, Relaxing, Rejoicing, if not Researching!
Photos L to R: (1) Refuelling at maths@Uppsala’s post-seminar lunch; (2) Relaxing at Uppsala’s cathedral; (3)
Rejoicing by a Viking runestone; and (4) Researching ‘distributed tree arithmetics’.
Research Chair in Paris
Raaz Sainudiin has been offered an invited Professorship (November-December 2016) in Paris, France. This is
supported by a Research Chair in Mathematical Models of Biodiversity held by Veolia Environnement, French National
Museum of Natural History, Paris and Centre for Mathematics and its Applications, Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau,
France. During this time Raaz will work on combinatorial stochastic processes that algebraically encode parametric
families of animal behaviours, including monogamy and patri-locality, into recombining population pedigree models that
were completed with support from the same Research Chair in 2013.
Papers Published
Asgari, H., Chen, H-Q., Morini, M., Pinelli, M., Sainudiin, R., Spina, P.R., and Venturini, M.: NARX Models for Simulation
of the Start-up Operation of a Single-Shaft Gas Turbine, , Applied Thermal Engineering, 10 pages, 2015.
Teng, G., Harlow, J., and Sainudiin, R.: L1-consistent Adaptive Multivariate Histograms from a Randomized Queue
Prioritized for Statistically Equivalent Blocks, in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Mathematics,
Statistics, and Financial Mathematics 2014 with IASC-ARS Sessions, November 18-19, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, pp. 88102.
School Visitors
Visitor
University
Host
From
To
Room
Extn
Union College NY
C Montelle
7/9/15
17/12/15
714
7687
Marta Casanellas Rius
Barcelona
M Steel
8/9/15
6/12/15
616
8876
Jon Pitchford (Erskine)
York, UK
A James
24/9/15
30/10/15
607
8875
Kim Plofker
·
·
News from the Library
Library Liaison Officer for Mathematics and Statistics, Assoc. Prof. Marco Reale http://bit.ly/1zwYHKa
New titles for Mathematics and Statistics http://bit.ly/NVj1hV; for Mathematical Statistics
http://bit.ly/MIS2WA; new-titles-list generator http://bit.ly/1brTI3E
From the Web
1. Neil Sloane, Connoisseur of Number Sequences (Quanta Magazine) http://bit.ly/1Mf31F0
2. Attack on the Pentagon Results in Discovery of New Mathematical Tile (The Guardian)
http://bit.ly/1MsJWPL
3. Brobdingnagian Numbers (3quarksdaily) http://bit.ly/1JdzzhK
4. How Math Can Defeat Bullies (The Atlantic) http://theatln.tc/1W2AhE6
5. If We Don’t Know What Citations Mean, What Does It Mean When We Count Them? (Scholarly
Kitchen) http://bit.ly/1hiGn3d
6. Who Gets Credit? [ghost authors in papers] (Inside Higher Ed) http://bit.ly/1PNKY9k
7. Men Who Admire Their Own Work [self-citation] (Inside Higher Ed) http://bit.ly/1PwVbWV
8. Who Reviews the Reviews? [peer review] (Chemistry World) http://rsc.li/1hBYNfC
9. Australian Academics Seek to Challenge ‘Web of Avarice’ in Scientific Publishing (The Guardian)
http://bit.ly/1V3onIH
10. Einstein, Edison and an Aptitude for Genius (Starts with a Bang!) http://bit.ly/1T1QPI4
11. The Rise of Computer-Aided Explanation (Quanta Magazine) http://bit.ly/1NaY8vm
12. Analysis of August 2015 Leaked TPP Text on Copyright, ISP and General Provisions (ARL Policy
Notes) http://bit.ly/1NaUYtP
13. Discrete Analysis — An arXiv Overlay Journal (Gowers’s Weblog) http://bit.ly/1KksL2n
a. A Cheap Alternative to Pricey Journals (Blog on Math Blogs) http://bit.ly/1LdeBB2
14. Take an Epic Quest across a Hyperbolic Surface (Scientific American Blog) http://bit.ly/1Un4Qk9
15. There’s Something about Pentagons (Blog on Math Blogs) http://bit.ly/1NeDpJ3
16. “The future of mathematics is more a spiritual discipline…” [Vladimir Voevodsky] (Mathematics Rising)
http://bit.ly/1PmamlT
17. Problem of the Week: False Proofs (Jason Rosenhouse) http://bit.ly/1K5O0Rf
18. “Why Do I Have to Learn This?” (Starts With A Bang!) http://bit.ly/1KkyAgi
19. Turning a Page: Downsizing the Campus Book Collections (The Conversation) http://bit.ly/1NbiCr6
And on the lighter side...
· The h Index: Playing the Numbers Game (Andy Purvis) http://bit.ly/1SPWUwh
· A Grammatical Conundrum (PHD Comics) http://bit.ly/1DHWAsY
· 13 Trig Functions You Need to Memorize Right Now (Math with Bad Drawings) http://bit.ly/1JciQGU
John Arnold | Mathematics/Statistics Liaison Librarian
http://canterbury.libguides.com/prf.php?account_id=45546
Stitched Up
News from Jeanette McLeod of a new School stitching group inspired by the book Crocheting Adventures
with Hyperbolic Planes by Cornell mathematician Daina Taimina. The aim of the group, which meets on
Fridays 12 – 2pm in Erskine 448, is to create beautiful mathematical objects while enjoying some down
time with colleagues. No previous experience is necessary and materials can be supplied. People are
invited to bring any project they like, mathematical or otherwise, or just to come and chat with the group
while they eat lunch.
Meanwhile, can you guess the identity of these busy hands getting stitched up one recent evening at
Clemency Montelle’s home? A chocolate fish from Clemency for the first correct answer!
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