Updates on my research and expository papers, discussion of open problems, and other maths-related topics. By Terence Tao
1 May, 2010 in non-technical, polymath | Tags: polymath1, Jordan Ellenberg, Michael Nielsen | by Terence Tao
Michael Nielsen has posted a draft of his article “Introduction to the Polymath Project and “Density Hales-Jewett and Moser Numbers”” for comments, which will precede our own polymath article in the Szemerédi birthday conference proceedings.
As an unrelated link, Jordan Ellenberg has just written a piece for the Washington Post on statistical sampling and how it could make the US census more accurate. (Whether this is politically viable is, of course, a different matter.)
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1 May, 2010 at 1:54 pm
Jonathan Vos Post
Great newspaper article! “… The skepticism that people like Gregg apply to statistics, if applied to other sciences, would get them lumped with the anti-vaccinationists and the homeopaths. The difference? Everyone knows that physics, chemistry and biology have changed radically in the past hundred years; the tools available are fantastically more powerful and reliable than those of the past. Math, by contrast, is taught as if Isaac Newton supplied the final word on the subject….”
1 May, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Kelly Johnson
I also enjoyed the Washington Post article by Jordan Ellenberg. I found the following sentence particularly incisive, “To choose the raw [census] count is to be wrong on purpose in order to avoid being wrong by accident.”
4 May, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Anonymous
In case there is anyone to whom it wasn’t known or obvious, there was a big political battle in the 1990’s (leading to the Supreme Court case with the opinion written by Justice Scalia) about whether to allow statistical sampling in the census. The political reason to oppose sampling was that the census is more likely to miss (undercount) people in lower income and minority ethnic groups, that were disfavored by sampling opponents, than it is to miss members of the groups the opponents favored. Undercounting these people diminishes the congressional apportionment given to the regions where they live, which is the outcome the opponents were seeking. For the side that prevailed, undercounting was not an unfortunate side effect of anything. It was the goal.