Tag: science

Designing Trust

Trust between people engaging in economic transactions affects the economic growth of their community. Reputation management systems, such as the Feedback Forum of eBay Inc., can increase the trust level of the participants. We show in this paper that experimental economics can be used in a controlled laboratory environment to measure trust and trust enhancement. Specifically, we present an experimental study that quantifies the increase in trust produced by 2 versions of a reputation management system. We also discuss some emerging issues in the design of reputation management systems.

fodder for your next non-zero-sum game.

World traveler

Science is the most interconnected of all human activities, they say, and requires a new series of maps to chart the changing scientific landscape. Knowledge has left books and libraries and is now changing more rapidly than ever before

as i am reading virtual reality and wondering where it got lost (wasn’t VR supposed to be here by now?), sites like nooface and this nsf project rekindle my interest.
you gotta love vivid descriptions like

Ultimately, I’d like to see a map of science in schools, as common as the political world map. ‘Continents’ would represent the diverse areas of science, and closely related areas would reside on the same continent. Teachers might say, ‘Let’s look at the new research frontier in sector F5.’ Students could say, ‘My mom works over there.'”

gives the notion of world traveler a new, highly appealing, twist.

Non-leaky abstractions in physics

i talked to prof. eberhard hilf yesterday. hilf is a retired professor of theoretical physics who is now working on the problems around long-term storage of electronic scientific data. we talked about the change in semantics as science moves forward, and the need to not only port content from old storage media to new ones, but also the need to transcribe the content itself to make it accessible to scientists of another age.
hilf demonstrated how equations as jotted down by einstein in 1905 would be almost incomprehensible to modern scientists today. over the years, verbose notations have been replaced by increasingly more succinct ones, new symbols have been introduced. i immediately had to think of leaky abstractions. hilf was adamant that physics was not prone to those problems because it is grounded in solid math.
good for them physicists, and too bad computer science cannot claim the same currently.

Future of computer science

Programs are getting re-shaped everywhere, and in many cases this is causing a real identity crisis. Which is it: computational biology, or bioinformatics? The fear at first was that computer science would become the servant of all the other disciplines; however, what some schools are seeing is that in the cross-discipline research efforts, often the computer scientists are emerging as the lead researchers on the projects. Things are going to look very different in 5-10 years. I honestly can’t tell you what a CS department will look like. But the very good news here is that computer science is alive and well, and in fact there is an energy and enthusiasm in the field that I have not felt for a long time, and a recognition that computing will have a huge impact on the world in almost every field of endeavor.

paul graham expresses the same notion in his typical eloquent style:

I’ve never liked the term “computer science.” The main reason I don’t like it is that there’s no such thing. Computer science is a grab bag of tenuously related areas thrown together by an accident of history, like Yugoslavia. At one end you have people who are really mathematicians, but call what they’re doing computer science so they can get DARPA grants. In the middle you have people working on something like the natural history of computers– studying the behavior of algorithms for routing data through networks, for example. And then at the other extreme you have the hackers, who are trying to write interesting software, and for whom computers are just a medium of expression, as concrete is for architects or paint for painters. It’s as if mathematicians, physicists, and architects all had to be in the same department.

when i started my studies in 1997, freshly minted graduates would mostly end up in incredibly dull bean counter roles at various financial institutions. luckily for me, the internet shifted the focus away from computation to communication. if kevins and pauls observations are correct, the hard (and interesting) problems outside of computer science are now coming into view. exciting times.

Powers of 10

View the Milky Way at 10M light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.

this time: the real deal. last time: tongue in cheek
2022-10-04: This Kurzgesagt brings this home in a much better way.

Cafe scientifique

i was at the cafe scientifique last night. a beautiful concept.

Cafe Scientifique is an informal discussion forum giving like-minded people the opportunity to gather in bars and cafes all over the world to discuss the great topics in science. It is based on the Cafe Philosophique movement which was started in France in 1992 by the philosopher Marc Sautet who wanted a place in which ordinary people could discuss topics in philosophy.

yesterday, the topic was spam, with short talks by simson garfinkel of oreilly fame, and the painter-programmer paul graham who popularized bayesian filtering. a most enjoyable experience.

Elegance

tuned into the elegant universe by chance. great, great show, not just for finally hearing the smartest man alive speak.

Although he is definitely a physicist (as his list of publications clearly shows) his command of mathematics is rivaled by few mathematicians, and his ability to interpret physical ideas in mathematical form is quite unique. Time and again he has surprised the mathematical community by his brilliant application of physical insight leading to new and deep mathematical theorems.

Fusing math and art

A 22-year-old MIT professor whose work fuses art, science, work and play is the recipient of a $500K MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the genius grant. Assistant Professor Erik Demaine of electrical engineering and computer science – who last month was called one of the most brilliant scientists in America by Popular Science magazine – is one of the youngest people ever selected for the fellowship and the youngest of the 24 named this year.

interesting combination of approaches. there is so much to explore here.