DNA data deluge

NYTimes reports: DNA Sequencing Caught in Deluge of Data. Spooks and other scientists have similar problems. See also here.NYTimes: BGI, based in China, is the world’s largest genomics research institute, with 167 DNA sequencers producing the equivalent of 2,000 human genomes a day.BGI churns out so much data that it often cannot transmit its results to clients or collaborators over the Internet or other communications lines because that would take...

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Higher education: signaling vs learning

This paper presents evidence in favor of the signaling (as opposed to human capital building) model of elite higher education. Of course, the data is quite crude and different fields may tilt more in one direction or the other. For example, I think most science and engineering students who attend MIT or Caltech are doing it because they feel it will develop their human capital (i.e., they will learn more and receive a perhaps painfully rigorous education) than because of the signaling value, although the latter is non-negligible.See earlier posts...

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Success in legal careers: status, credentials and grades

This detailed study concludes that law school grades, not prestige, have the strongest correlation with career success. I'd be interested in reactions from attorneys to these results. See earlier post credentialistm and elite performance, and links therein. Compare to success of graduate programs in physics in placing theoreticians.The Secret of My Success: How Status, Eliteness and School Performance Shape Legal CareersRichard Sander and Jane YakowitzAbstractIf...

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Godel's proof, compressed

I found this here, but it is originally due to Raymond Smullyan. I first learned about Godel's theorem when I read Douglas Hofstader's book Godel, Escher, Bach in high school. I still remember lugging the thick volume around in my backpack, and working through the early chapters on predicate logic. This treatment is much more compact! :^)We have some sort of machine that prints out statements in some sort of language. It needn't be a statement-printing machine exactly; it could be some sort of technique for taking statements and deciding if they...

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Talk cancelled

This talk has been cancelled, for complex reasons that I will not discu...

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Podcast roundup: November 2011

Gary Taubes discusses fat, sugar, cholesterol and nutrition on Econtalk. See also medical science?Progress in the age of Obama -- Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel. Strongly Coupled Components -- interviews with mathematicians.The Continental-Analytic Split in philosop...

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Is the wavefunction real?

This is a nice result. I haven't checked the calculations, but I like the logic very much. I'm kicking myself for not having tried harder to precisely formalize what the authors refer to as the "statistical interpretation" (note: this is quite a confusing terminology for most people -- see Further comments below) of the quantum state. Apparently, once you formalize this interpretation, it is easy to prove that it has to disagree with the predictions of ordinary quantum theory.This "statistical interpretation" (e.g., that the wavefunction, or quantum...

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Predictive power of early childhood IQ, part 2

I came across this table in Intelligence by N. Brody. Berkeley Growth Study (61 participants).See earlier post predictive power of early childhood ...

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Baumeister on Gender Differences and Culture

Nice discussion on Econtalk. I suspect Baumeister has slightly stronger opinions than he expressed to Russ.Roy Baumeister of Florida State University and the author of Is There Anything Good About Men talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the differences between men and women in cultural and economic areas. Baumeister argues that men aren't superior to women nor are women superior to men. Rather there are some things men are better at while women excel at a different set of tasks and that these tradeoffs are a product of evolution and cultural...

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Sonmi 451

My vote for best recent dystopian fiction featuring genetic engineering goes to the An Orison Of Sonmi 451 chapters of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Can't wait to see the big budget movie. Will they retain the Korean peninsula setting? Honorable mention: Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. Popular wisdom has it that fabricants don’t have personalities. This fallacy is propagated for the comfort of purebloods.“Comfort”? How do you mean? To enslave an...

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Veritas

Perhaps we will meet the ghosts of Stephen J. Gou...

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Good riddance, JoePa

I've always hated Joe Paterno and Penn State's holier than thou sham. Careful scrutiny suggests it's mostly sociopaths at the top.NYTimes: ... I have a hard time understanding why a 28 year old man, the grad student, did not go straight into that shower and rescue the kid. He is a coward. Law, lawsuits and all the oversight in the world is valueless unless people step up. This creep Sandusky was “caught” several times, in each case the so called men who witnessed it, quietly back away. Shame on them all. Shame on Mr. Paterno whose god status created...

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Generation gap

Look for intergenerational conflict to get worse as more boomers retire. Figure via Atlantic Monthly. 2001 net worth by age gro...

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OW! Learning can hurt

Two good articles on the state of higher education. The first dares broach the "higher education bubble" question.a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/24/our-universities-why-are-they-failing/?pagination=false">NY Review of Books: ... In Academically Adrift, Arum and Roksa paint a chilling portrait of what the university curriculum has become. The central evidence that the authors deploy comes from the performance of 2,322 students on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their...

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The burden of students

I always enjoyed interacting with Sidney Coleman (sadly, now deceased) when I was a postdoc. I was quite pleased to find this interview, part of the AIP Oral History project.His views about working with students are not surprising to me, despite the high quality of Harvard PhD students. The gap in brainpower between Sidney and even an exceptional graduate student might be vast. It's worth noting that Sidney had a large number of PhD students who became prominent theorists.I often make the analogy between teaching (or training PhD students) and...

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My Beautiful Genome

A nice interview with science writer Lone Frank about her book My Beautiful Genome.Click below for audio.(function(){var s=function(){__flash__removeCallback=function(i,n){if(i)i[n]=null;};window.setTimeout(s,10);};s();})...

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