Brian Hayes

Words, numbers, bits, pixels.

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

@AlgebraFact In 2015 Robert D. Matson reported a search through 4 x 10^11 without a fourth solution.

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

Doug Lenat has died. Doug was both a champion and a critic of artificial intelligence. He argued for the importance of common sense in AI (and in life, for that matter). From 2008, commenting on the Turing test:

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

World Conference of Science Journalists, Medellín, Colombia. Venue for plenary talks: la Orquideorama at the Jardin Botanico.

[Republic of Mathematics @republicofmath]

The Thue-Morse sequence in base 3/2

https://t.co/9ChhiS676l

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

@dtkung Frost heave; needle ice. It's a fascinating phenomenon (in which mathematics, of course, has a proper place).

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

Grandparent of the OEIS, published 50 years ago. See https://t.co/tgQHNARPm8.
(The squiggles above and below the title are stamp-folding diagrams. "The full sequence begins 1,1,2,5,14,38,120,353,1148,3527,..., A001011. No formula is known.")

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

@michael_nielsen Sorry, I forgot the twitter sarcasm emoji. I *did* notice the petitio principii.

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

@michael_nielsen What's the problem? Seems concise to me.

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

But who would dream of eating such an objet d'art?

[Dave Richeson @divbyzero]

New item in our CSA this week! 😄

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

New on bit-player: The Middle of the Square. https://t.co/M2AOV8BCXp

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

@iconjack Carr has 13K tweets and I've looked at only the most recent 50. But of those 39 were math/stats-related, and only three had any obvious bearing on race.

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

Just the other day I was marveling out loud about the sweetness and rationality of mathematical Twitter. No hate and snark in *this* corner of the Twitterverse. I should have known the experience might be different without my white face.

[Kareem Carr, Ph.D. @kareem_carr]

Feeling a bit bummed out by all the racism I have to deal with on this site.

It feels so excessive given I mostly tweet about math and statistics not politics.

So many people on here can’t see past my skin color.

They make up wild statements about me and question my humanity.

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

@JimPropp Maybe not so far-fetched! That community (von Neumann, Ulam, Metropolis) were fond of games. On the other hand, if you want an A...A place, why not Antarctica or Argentina or Alabama or Alaska or...

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

In 1954 Nick Metropolis discussed a certain iterated function system with an isolated fixed point (lower left of the diagram). "Such a number is called 'samoan'," he says. Can anyone explain the meaning or origin of that term?

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

@monsoon0 le 20 juillet 1922!

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

@porges Metropolis, N. 1954. Phase shifts—middle squares—wave equation. In Meyer, Herbert A. (ed.). 1956. Symposium on Monte Carlo Methods. (The relevant section discusses von Neumann's middle-square algorithm for pseudorandom numbers.)

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

The paper: Metropolis, N. 1954. Phase shifts—middle squares—wave equation. In Meyer, Herbert A. (ed.). 1956. Symposium on Monte Carlo Methods.

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

Words for the Wordle-Weary. New on bit-player. https://t.co/RQhrPDwvhm

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

@yenergy @USPS Two packages shipping separately. (The USPS is in the shipping business, after all.)

[Brian Hayes @bit_player]

@monsoon0 I really hope it works out for you, but I have fabulous pencils and papers, and yet I STILL haven't proved the Riemann hypothesis.