Author Archives: wilson.mark.c

Poor choices lead to death

No real surprise, but the extent of this problem is surprising to me: according to a paper by Ralph L. Keeney, almost 45% of deaths in the USA are due to clearly poor decisions about smoking, other alcohol, illegal drugs, diet, exercise, driving, etc. Thanks to Michael Trick’s blog for this pointer. Rejoinders to this paper are also available at OR Forum.

I would like to see detailed discussion of the effect of alcohol on premature death and disability. Living in a country where basic social interaction seems to involve alcohol to a ridiculous degree, I have often felt that the downside of its consumption is overlooked here. Perhaps this is now changing – I am now seeing articles on the bad effects of binge drinking, and Parliament is considering a reversal of the drop in the legal drinking age. Let’s hope that evidence-based policy will result.

Scenes from 4ICC

The just-finished conference 4ICC, of which I was the chief organizer, produced some memorable talks, and even more memorable statements. Some of my favourites (paraphrased and from memory):

  • Every romantic movie must have a kiss; every math talk must have a proof. But just as showing too much in a romantic movie leads to pornography, showing too many proof details is also in bad taste. (J. de Loera, also quoting H. Lenstra).
  • There are two schools of statisticians with respect to this question. The first maintains that the question is well-posed and worthy of study, the second maintains that the question does not make sense. To which the first replies, “Yes, it does!”. That is as far as I have been able to penetrate into the subject. (A. Barvinok)
  • If Santa Claus gives you the dimension, then you can solve it using only linear algebra. [description of how to do this] … The catch is, Santa Claus does not exist. I’m sorry to have to break it to you. (J. de Loera)
  • “Cossing a toin”, a great Spoonerism from Doron Zeilberger

The joys of conference organization

I have been the main organizer for 4ICC currently being held in Auckland. This is my first job of organizing a meeting of this type. I started 14 months ago and the last few months have been extremely busy. Before doing this I had an idea of the main tasks: finding invited speakers, booking rooms, budgeting, etc. All these are quite onerous, but predictably so, and I did get help with some of them. What surprised me was this kind of stuff (which will no longer surprise me if I ever forget myself enough to do it again): at the first coffee break on Monday morning, participants used the souvenir coffee mugs in their conference bags, instead of the cups supplied, so the coffee ran out halfway through; the travel agent I was forced to use made 4 errors with booking invited speaker accommodation, so that speakers emailed me late on Sunday night worried about where they were going to spend Friday night; having to give the same information over and over again to people who could have read it on the conference website; worrying about losing people on the excursion; catching a cold and having no time to rest; in other words, being ultimately responsible for everything! Overall, the last two weeks had more stress than the preceding 12 months, and I am filled with admiration for people who do this for a living.

The conference itself seemed to go well overall. Thanks to all who helped with the organization – I could not have done it without you. And no thanks to that travel agent.

Manipulation can be a good thing

I have studied strategic manipulation of voting rules in some detail, and it never occurred to me to question the basic assumption that manipulation (misrepresentation of a group of voters of their sincere preferences, thereby achieving a better outcome than if they had voted sincerely) is bad. It is unavoidable by Gibbard-Satterthwaite. A large number of papers have been devoted to trying to minimize its occurrence.

However, some people are now arguing that it might be a good thing, for example papers by Aki Lehtinen and by Keith Dowding and Martin van Hees. The reasons include maximization of total social welfare (utilitarian argument) and improvements to the democratic process through upskilling of voters.  It is not that often that I find such a basic assumption questioned, and it is very refreshing. Most of the mathematical techniques that I know can be used to analyse this new framework, and I will definitely be looking at doing so.

Algorithm song contest!

The NZIMA programme in Algorithmics is sponsoring a competition to produce a song on the topic of algorithms. There is a well-known parody of Billy Joel’s “For the Longest Time”, but this is 20 years old, and we are sure that New Zealand can produce something of comparable, if not higher, standard.

Rules: entry is open to anyone resident in New Zealand. The song must be to the tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”. It may be submitted either as lyrics or audio file (or both). The best entry by a secondary or tertiary student will receive $200 of textbooks of the winner’s choice. Desirable features of an entry include correct scansion and real content about the subject of algorithms. The deadline for entries is 28 February 2009.

UPDATE: deadline extended to 31 May 2009.

Fewer distinctions, less diversity

I found this article from The Press while searching the Internet to see whether I was the only one annoyed at the National Party billboards around town (it’s election season in NZ now). One such billboard says “More doctors. More nurses. Less bureaucrats.” One of my senior colleagues doesn’t seem to know the distinction between “less” (a smaller amount of an uncountable noun) and “fewer” (a small number of a countable noun), but since he also doesn’t know the difference between “criterion” and “criteria”, I assumed that it was just isolated ignorance. However a major political party presumably knows it target audience well enough to mimic their speech, so I got more concerned. The Press article also seems to indicate that “fewer” is not as commonly used as I had thought.

The distinction seems to have been formalized only about 1770. It is a useful one. For example, “less qualified nurses are being hired” is confusing (unless we write “less-qualified nurses” to describe nurses of lower skill level). I don’t think it is the most essential distinction to make in English, but I also doubt that the distinction is being lost (as this seems to suggest) because of principled reasoning. I suspect the main reason for decline is purely ignorance that there even is a distinction. If you have fewer distinctions that you know how to make in your language, it becomes harder to think in a nuanced manner. I also want to know whether those not using “fewer” ever use the word “few” – I am all for changes that make language more logical, but removing an obvious comparative doesn’t seem to fall into that category.

Francis Eric Wilson RIP

My father died on Monday. I arrived 3 hours before, and was holding his hand as he died. He lived long enough to see photos of his second grandson, and recognized me when I arrived.

In case there is anyone reading who knew him, I enclose the death notice that my mother and I put in the newspaper. I intend to make a website as a memorial.

WILSON, FRANCIS ERIC passed away peacefully at home [address] on 1 September 2008 aged 77. His generous heart gave out at last. Loved husband of Renee, father of Mark, father-in-law of Golbon and grandad of Yusef and Yahya. Privately cremated. Donations in lieu of flowers to Nelson Regional Hospice Trust or NZ Heart Foundation. He drank deeply from the well of life, and took the final curtain with aplomb.

It is a strange feeling to be the “patriarch” as someone said to me today – childhood now feels officially over. It certainly has given me resolve to look after my health and try to be around until my children are 70.

A token post for August: illogical lyrics

Personal circumstances have made it hard to post for the last few months (I may post more details about the reasons later, but suffice it to say that this year has been very eventful). So as not to have a whole blank month, I will mention a song lyric that I find to be illogical. Perhaps we (meaning I and my handful of occasional readers) can build this to a more comprehensive list – I am sure there are more.

“You are to me like honey is to the bee”. (“The Door is Still Open to my Heart”, sung by Dean Martin). Although is is precious to them, bees are not especially attracted to honey, and it is made by them digesting nectar and then regurgitating it in some way. This doesn’t seem to convey the desired sentiment, not to mention using “like” instead of “as”, another of my pet linguistic dislikes).

Straight and crooked thinking

My Otago colleague Mike Atkinson recommended this book which he remembered from his youth. Written in 1930 by Robert Thouless, a psychologist at Cambridge, it is a superb exposition of errors of thought, dishonest rhetorical tricks, and how to combat them (the reviewers on Amazon.com seem to agree with me). Thouless believed in the existence of parapsychological phenomena (ESP) but was severe on purported experimental proofs of this existence. The examples in the book show his frustration with politics. It isn’t often that I find a kindred spirit from the past. Our lifespans overlapped considerably – I wish I had met him.

The book is out of print and hard to find (I found it in our university library). If anyone knows how to get such books reissued, please let me know.

Permutation Patterns 2008

I went to this conference in Dunedin just for the first two days – it ends on 20 June.

A lot of good generating functions arise from the enumeration of permutations avoiding certain patterns. The plenary talk by Mireille Bousquet-Melou (whose talks are always a model of clarity) discussed the systematic solution of various functional equations arising from fairly straightforward recursive decompositions of these combinatorial classes. As well as the by now traditional kernel method, she discussed the “algebraic kernel method” which uses symmetries of the kernel function to derive a system of equations that is amenable to simplification.

I have been thinking for a long time about the need for a better presentation of the kernel method in these contexts. Perhaps this will finally inspire me to write something.