mathbabe

I’ve been thinking recently about the definition of “civilization.” What makes a society civilized? I have some guesses, here are a few guesses, kind of in order of obviousness:

• A place where grown men don’t get harassed when they walk around minding their own business. I’m looking at you, broken windows policies.
• A place where young girls don’t get sexually harassed when they walk around minding their own business. I’m looking at you, India rape culture.
• A place where young girls and grown women aren’t constantly bombarded by messages that they are expected to conform to a male fantasy definition of beauty. I’m looking at you, almost everywhere. But specifically Brazil.

Here’s what I’d like to see: a series of articles in places like NY Magazine, that directly contrast to articles about how French women use makeup – but spend only 15 minutes on it per day – and still look amazingly sexy, or don’t diet and still look amazingly sexy, and so on.

I’d like instead an article specifically written for the woman who wants to know where they can walk around minding their own business and being utterly indifferent to their appearance, and they won’t be bothered. Let’s defend our right to be dowdy as shit.

Special kudos to places where young women can walk around dressed in anything they want and still be left alone.

So tell me, do you know of any places like that?

I’ve been skeptical of Uber and other so-called “sharing economy” companies for a while. It seems like they are making money by skirting regulation and pretending not to have employees; they are a “platform” for matching people who want services with people willing to provide them, and as such they don’t have the legal responsibility of a traditional company. Or at least that’s the idea. Plus it is offensive to think of the word “share” in this context.

But my complaints have remained relatively vague, until this morning, when I read two articles about the issue.

First, Sharing and Caring by Tom Slee, published by Jacobin. He nailed it:

Meanwhile delivery giant DHL has launched its MyWays delivery service, powered by “people who want to deliver parcels and earn some extra money.” TaskRabbit and others call their workers “micro-entrepreneurs,” but that is a poor description of precarious piecework. The preferred phrasing of “extra money” harks back to women’s jobs of forty years ago. And like those jobs, they don’t come with things like insurance protection, job security, benefits — none of that old economy stuff.

Next, The Class-Action Lawyer Shaking Up the Share Economy, published in The Recorder (hat tip Nathalie Molina). It profiles a lawyer named Shannon Liss-Riordan who is going after the sharing economy companies to first acknowledge, then pay their employees better wages and benefits. From the article:

“Uber is what, the most highly valued startup in the world right now?” she asked. “Valued at over $40 billion? I think they can afford to pay for workers’ comp and unemployment.”

Last Friday I was honored to be part of a super interesting and provocative conference at UC Berkeley’s Law School called Open Data: Addressing Privacy, Security, and Civil Rights Challenges.

What I loved about this conference is that it explicitly set out to talk across boundaries of the data world. That’s unusual.

Broadly speaking, there are four camps in the “big data” world:

1. The corporate big data camp. This involves the perspective that we use data to know our customers, make our products tailored to their wants and needs, generally speaking keep our data secret so as to maximize profits. The other side of this camp is the public, seen as consumers.
2. The security crowd. These are people like Bruce Schneier, whose book I recently read. They worry about individual freedom and liberty, and how mass surveillance and dragnets are degrading our existence. I have a lot of sympathy for their view, although their focus is not mine. The other side of this camp is the NSA, on the one hand, and hackers, on the other, who exploit weak data and privacy protections.
3. The open data crowd. The people involved with this movement are split into two groups. The first consists of activists like Aaron Swartz and Carl Malamud, whose basic goal is to make publicly available things that theoretically, and often by law, should be publicly available, like court proceedings and scientific research, and the Sunlight Foundation, which focuses on data about politics. The second group of “open data” folks come from government itself, and are constantly espousing the win-win-win aspects of opening up data: win for companies, who make more profit, win for citizens, who have access to more and better information, and win for government, which benefits from more informed citizenry and civic apps. The other side of this camp is often security folks, who point out how much personal information often leaks through the cracks of open data.
4. Finally, the camp I’m in, which is either the “big data and civil rights” crowd, or more broadly the people who worry about how this avalanche of big data is affecting the daily lives of citizens, not only when we are targeted by the NSA or by someone stealing our credit cards, but when we are born poor versus rich, and so on. The other side of this camp is represented by the big data brokers who sell information and profiles about everyone in the country, and sometimes the open data folks who give out data about citizens that can be used against them.

The thing is, all of these camps have their various interests, and can make good arguments for them. Even more importantly, they each have their own definition of the risks, as well as the probability of those risks.

For example, I care about hackers and people unreasonably tracked and targeted by the NSA, but I don’t think about that nearly as much as I think about how easy it is for poor people to be targeted by scam operations when they google for “how do I get food stamps”. As another example, when I saw Carl Malamud talk the other day, he obviously puts some attention into having social security numbers of individuals protected when he opens up court records, but it’s not obvious that he cares as much about that issue as someone who is a real privacy advocate would.

Anyway, we didn’t come to many conclusions in one day, but it was great for us all to be in one room and start the difficult conversation. To be fair, the “corporate big data camp” was not represented in that room as far as I know, but that’s because they’re too busy lobbying for a continuation of little to no regulation in Washington.

And given that we all have different worries, we also have different suggestions for how to address those worries; there is no one ideal regulation that will fix everything, and for that matter some people involved don’t believe that government regulations can ever work, and that we need citizen involvement above all, especially when it comes to big data in politics. A mishmash, in other words, but still an important conversation to begin.

I’d like it to continue! I’d like to see some public debates between different representatives of these groups.

I just got back from Berkeley, California, which was amazing.

Listening to the radio out there, I was pleased to hear all about the growing standardized testing protest movement going on here in New York City. And although I see lots of reasons to discuss Common Core issues separately from the over-reliance on testing, I can understand why parents are wrapping all of that stuff up together.

There’s just too much time spent in our schools on testing, so pulling our kids out of that complete waste is an obvious step in the right direction. And New York parents are not the only ones complaining. In Florida, of all places, they recently limited the number of hours kids can be made to take standardized tests.

There will be a rally today at 4pm at the Prospect Park bandshell in Brooklyn for parents who are joining the New York state opt-out movement. I wish I could go.

Another huge story out there in the Bay Area, which I’ll come back to on some other day, is the racist texting and email scandal among the San Francisco police.

Readers, Aunt Pythia has an amazing guest philosopher here with her today in sunny Berkeley, a paradise on earth and home to the Kouign Amann:

The Bay Area’s answer to the cronut. Plus they’re sexy if you look at them right.

His name is Aristippus, and he claims to be the inventor of hedonism. We’ll be the judges of that, though, shall we? His philosophy dictates a lifestyle in which he consumes delicious pastries and quality coffee on a daily basis, takes long walks by the Bay, and meets new and interesting people while basking in hot tubs. He loves you all, assuming you do not give him reason to stop.

I hope you enjoy Uncle Aristippus, and afterwards don’t forget to:

    ask Aunt Pythia a question at the bottom of the page!

By the way, if you don’t know what the hell Aunt Pythia is talking about, go here for past advice columns and here for an explanation of the name Pythia.

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Hi Aunt Pythia,

I have recently started to masturbate in front of my partner of 10 years. It’s something I have done before with other partners but not a lot.

On Saturday night we went out and got drunk we came home and ended up in bed, I went down on her as usual and she came a couple of times then I wanted to wank in front of her. We kissed and she touched me as I masturbated, I love it and find it so erotic. I pushed her hand between her legs and she started to masturbate in front of me, something she has never done before. I watched and finished myself off, with her watching me it was so good.

I now feel a little awkward in front of her, like this was a place we should never have gone, like it’s dirty or she may feel it’s dirty but just does it for me? I know I should ask her about it but I am too shy.

Your advice and advice from other would be welcome.

Thanks,
Horny UK

Dear Horny,

I’m really beginning to wonder if Aunt Pythia has just become a place where people test out their erotic writing chops. I mean, here you are, with an awesome girlfriend who is game for your deepest, dirtiest desire – not so deep, and not so dirty, I might add – and there’s really nothing wrong, and no question in sight, so you made one up. My only real advice is: “it was so good” might need some elaboration.

Aunt Pythia

Friend Horny,

I’m somewhat at a loss for words. Taking your question completely at face value, I can only suggest that you do the obvious: talk to your mate. You’ve been together ten years, you say? It’s wonderful you two are still having regular, mutually satisfying sex, even if you think sharing masturbation is dirty or kinky. Many people do that long before they have sex (my initial reaction to your letter was, “Wait, it took you ten years?”).

If this is an activity you enjoy, but that makes you uncomfortable, you have three choices. First, become desensitized and unlearn the discomfort, so you guys can just enjoy each other’s bodies without feeling that shame. Second, learn to actually enjoy the discomfort – there are definitely people who get off on doing things that feel transgressive or shameful, and if that’s you, there’s nothing wrong with that. Your kink is not my kink, but your kink is OK too! Third, well, give up masturbating in front of each other and find some other kink to enjoy. There are plenty to choose from!

Love,
Aristippus

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Dear Aunt Pythia,

Perhaps you would indulge a break from the “Page Six” titillations to direct your prophetic vision to a math study question. Kind of like a word from our sponsor, MathBabe.

In reading this outstanding post which primarily deals with the eventual delights of not knowing, mention was also made of “Silverman and Tate,” and how it extricated you from the slough of despond. I too had tumbled into that dreaded mire (although I had substantially less to fall).

I immediately took the advice and was similarly uplifted.

So here is my question. Any mention of “Silverman and Tate” is quick to point out, pejoratively, that it is but an easy, undergraduate text. I did find it quite accessible. Now I would like to go further in studying elliptic curves. In that pursuit, I got a copy of Cassels “Lectures on EC.” I thought this would be a well-conceived next step, as one comment I saw characterized it as a “high-brow Silverman and Tate.”

But I find it difficult. Perhaps because it is quite pithy – forgive the eponymous remark. Actually my difficulties with it go far beyond that. This is one of many similar experiences I have had where standard undergrad texts (e.g., Dummit & Foote, Axler “Linear Algebra Done Right” -yuck, even the early parts of “Ireland & Rosen”) go quite well, yet Lang, “Atayah & Macdonald”, etc. are impenetrable. Plus I find it much more enjoyable to study math in action as in “S&T” rather than a catalog of definitions, theorems, and proofs. (Although some proofs are quite symphonic.)

I am a self-studier with no real math education. And I am willing to put in the work. I am in need of advice as to how to progress.

Pilgrim’s (Lack Of) Progress
PLOP

Dear PLOP,

It’s a language! You can’t just read it, you need to learn how to speak it. Seriously, very few people can just pick up a graduate text in math and understand it. It’s not a bad sign, nor is it a failure.

I’d recommend meeting up with others who are also trying to learn this stuff, and finding online resources where you can see people using this stuff. Math Overflow is also a great resource. A quick YouTube search exposes hundreds of relevant lectures. I’m sure there are also podcasts you might consider (look at this list of math podcasts for example).

Keep at it, that stuff is gorgeous!

Love,

Auntie P

Wise PLOP,

Aristippus is afraid he cannot help you with this problem, as he failed at being a real mathematician, and went off to do applied statistics instead.

Love and apologies,
A.

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Dear Aunt Pythia,

You are all-knowing and all-seeing.

What should I think about Amazon Sales Rank figures for my Kindle books? I have only known about them since Thursday. I read a Kindle book by Steve Scott about Kindle books and so I created an Author Page in Amazon. From there, I saw the Sales Rank figures (obviously, a Big Data product). From the Amazon Author Page, I saw the link to Nielson BookScan and saw the sales figures for my hardback book (someone I know from Weight Watchers said “Oh, a coffee table book”).

Lost in Space

Dear Lost,

I have no idea. I have never looked at my Amazon sales rank. Wait, I just did. 12,215. I have no idea what that means.

If I had to guess what that means, I’d say they take a time window – maybe 48 hours – and count how many copies of books have been sold, and simply rank them in order. If they made it too much longer than 48 hours, it would not be sensitive to new hits, and if they made it too much shorter, it would be too volatile. Twitter has a kind of metric like this to define “what’s trending,” and it’s a wee bit more complicated but that’s the gist.

Aunt Pythia

Comrade LIS,

I have known and loved a few authors. Although Aunt Pythia seems to be immune to the fever, all of other writers I’ve known well fell victim, at one time or another, to a mania for checking their sales rank, feeling delighted if it improved, and despondent if it declined. But ultimately they got perspective, and realized it was more important to them to get back to writing their next book, and cash any royalty checks that came in from volumes that had earned out their advance.

So, to be frank, my advice would be to emulate Pythia’s example: don’t think about it at all.

Love,
Aristippus

——

Dear Aunt Pythia,

What is your opinion of the pickup artist community? A few of my friends (with severe social anxiety) are obsessed with pickup, crediting it for their newfound confidence and ability to talk to women. They see it as a tool for self-improvement and their dedication is almost stoic, but I see it as misogynistic and myopic.

I am happy to see my friends overcoming their fears, but am torn about the method. What are your thoughts?

Sincerely,
Silently Torn

Silently,

I have some opinions! You may not be surprised to hear this! In fact I already wrote them down more than two years ago, here. And if I do say so myself, that’s some sound advice I gave back then.

As for your friends, I’m not sure if the “you’ve overfit” argument will hold water for them. They are just so excited to finally feel in control and to get laid that nothing will penetrate (har har) their consciousness except if it stops working. I’d suggest laying off hanging out with them until they become humans.

Loverdover,

Auntie P

Quiet Thomas,

My own advice parallels Pythia’s fairly closely. Having once been a nerdy, introverted young man who had difficulty talking to the objects of my desire, I understand the appeal of the PUA community. But I think its casting of dating and mating as adversarial, and its embrace of concepts like “friendzoning,” are counter-productive, at least if your goal is a long-term, collaborative, companionate relationship.

And while PUA tactics may serve the goal of getting laid on a regular basis, there are better ways – you can get laid on a regular basis while retaining your dignity and self-respect. As to how, making yourself as intellectually and physically attractive as you reasonably can is certainly important step. Finding and contributing to a community that emphasizes sexual freedom helps a lot. In particular, if you’re a straight man, you should aim to build a culture that neither shames women for their desires nor pressures them to serve anyone else’s. Straight women’s sexual liberation is greatly to your benefit. I also have thoughts on where you can find this type of community, but that’s perhaps beyond the scope of this letter.

One point I might add to Aunt Pythia’s thoughts above: If your friends do still seem to have issues with social anxiety in situations outside of pickup bars, and you’re close enough friends that it would not be intrusive, you might suggest that talking with an actual licensed therapist about that. Social anxiety can interfere with their friendships and careers, not just their efforts to get their wicks dipped. It’s worth addressing this problem at the root, rather than trying to band-aid it with fancy hats and rote conversational routines.

Love,
Aristippus

——

Congratulations, you’ve wasted yet another Saturday morning with Aunt Pythia and Uncle Aristippus! I hope you’re satisfied, you could have made progress on that project instead.

But as long as you’re already here, please ask me a question. And don’t forget to make an amazing sign-off, they make us very very happy.

Click here for a form or just do it now:

This morning I’m preparing for my weekly Slate Money podcast by trying to learn all about patents and patent trolls. To tell you the truth, so far I don’t know why patent trolls are all that bad, besides the fact that they obviously have a terrible sounding name. It seems like the patent system works in many ways for good, at least when there’s no weird extensions of the time limitations and the original patent was valid. Feel free to disagree, though, and tell me why.

Also on the slate (harhar): Amanda Palmer, Wu-Tang Clan, and Lumber Liquidators. Another typical week in the world of podcasting, in other words.

My number of the week is going to be 2063, by the way, but I’m not saying why.

Today I want to share two articles today which call on the public to try to understand scientific error at a deeper level than we do now.

First, an academic journal called Basic and Applied Social Psychology (BASP) has decided to ban articles using p-values. This was written up in Nature news (hat tip Nikki Leger) with an excellent discussion of the good and bad things that might result. On the one hand, p-values are thoroughly gamed and too easy to achieve with repetitive testing, resulting in a corpus that is skewed towards such testing situations. On the other hand, if you get rid of p-values you have to replace them with something to give you an idea of whether a statistical result is interesting. Of course there are plenty others out there, but they too may quickly become gamed.

Second, The Big Story has an in-depth article on evidence-based sentencing and paroling models and what can go wrong there (hat tip Auros Harman). They focus on the fact that the people filling out the questionnaires can and do lie in order to game their scores and leave jail earlier. They also mention the fact that the scores are quite unrobust to small changes in input, specifically age. Finally, they punish people for being poor or for “hanging out with the wrong crowd” or even for having parents that went to jail.

People!

Do you really hate my advice? Do you disagree with everything I ever say, and wish you had an outlet for your frustration?

If so, good news for you today. I have officially found the place in the world where you can get advice which is the exact opposite of mine, namely by watching the new TV show Sex Box and then listening to the awful and rigid suggestions from the three judges. From the entertaining review of Sex Box:

Married couples briefly describe their unfulfilling sex lives, then are sent to the box, on the theory that the release of endorphins following sex will put them in the mood for a frank postcoital discussion of their problems. In the premiere, none of the men fall asleep after leaving the box, though this is a distinct possibility for viewers of any gender.

Worst part: the sex box is actually not made from clear material. We just have to take it on faith that sex is going on in there. But if that’s already enough for you guys, then be gone! Go ahead, leave!!

For those of you who are still here, I’ma let you into my sex-related reading list as a reward of loyalty. This very week I purchased two books which I think will be excellent reads, and might be titillating as well. Namely, Sex at Dawn and Sperm Wars.

I haven’t read this yet but the TED talk was pretty good.

Some of this stuff might be pseudo-science, but I don’t care, because it’s about sex.

I’m hoping to read these both over the next few days and weeks (after I finish the first three amazing Elena Ferrante Neopolitan Novels) and then write up a comparative review. I’d love to hear from you guys if you have more book recommendations in this genre. In the meantime,

        ask Aunt Pythia a question at the bottom of the page!

By the way, if you don’t know what the hell Aunt Pythia is talking about, go here for past advice columns and here for an explanation of the name Pythia.

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Dear Aunt Pythia,

Zac Weiner claims marriage is a lot like the Dollar Auction in game theory. I get the sinking feeling that his comic is an accurate portrayal of my life.

Do you agree with him? And if so, what is the best strategy to get out of a bad marriage?

“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?”

-Joshua

Dear Joshua,

Here’s the comic for anyone who doesn’t know what we’re talking about:

Here’s the thing. I think that people who wait for their spouse to end a marriage are cowardly. Let’s focus on that last frame, where the couple are both thinking that if the other one leaves them, it will be “easier.” Kind of the definition of cowardly to do something because it’s easier.

Also, easier in what sense? What are you trying avoid, guilt or unhappiness? I can only imagine that someone in that mindset has already accepted permanent unhappiness, barring some kind of miracle, and is focused on the last remaining issue, that of guilt.

Fuck that. Get more selfish (if you call it that) and focus on your own unhappiness, and screw the guilt. Tell your spouse you’re unhappy, because it’s more courageous, because it might be fixable, and because it will be much more likely to get fixed if you talk about it.

This is not a game, it’s your life.

Aunt Pythia

——

Dear Aunt Pythia,

I was on vacation in Utrecht the other day, and was very surprised to find a vagina, apparently abandoned. Can I keep it, or should I hand it in to the police?

Someone Not Accustomed To Commenting Here

Dear SNATCH,

Keep it, take good care of it, and I mean really good care of it, and then please return it to its rightful owner, who will be ever ever so grateful, I’m absolutely sure of it.

Aunt Pythia

p.s. I love your sign-off. And everything else about you.

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Hello Miss Pythia,

You are quoted here about your reflections on open algorithms.

Is it possible for a firm like Google to model billions of human brains when they collectively interact with computers? And if yes, why only do marketing when you can manipulate brains?

Michaël (Toulouse)

Dear Michael,

Marketing is manipulating brains. That’s exactly what marketing is, turning brains into things that pay you for stuff.

Aunt Pythia

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Dear Aunt Pythia,

My sister and her girlfriend came to stay with me and my family (husband, kids) at Christmas. The girlfriend was lovely and a good time was had by all.

The girlfriend has started emailing me, not including my sister on the emails, saying what a great time she had, how much she liked me, how she couldn’t wait to come back and visit again, asking me (only — no family) to come out and visit her, trying to make some inside jokes about my family, etc. Each time I wrote back, looping in my sister, and was nice but distant. The first email or two were fine but I feel like she is either seriously boundary-challenged or is hitting on me.

Should I keep responding to her emails? Say something to her? Say something to my sister?

Sincerely,
Don’t Play On Your Team, Wouldn’t Sleep With You If I Did

Dear DPOYTWSWYIID,

This one is easy. Yes, she’s hitting on you. That’s fine because you’re super gorgeous and attractive and who wouldn’t want a piece of that? Everyone should be allowed to fall in love. I’d leave it at that, and strain to feel empathy for her situation rather than judgement.

As for what you should do: don’t write back, or wait like 6 weeks and then apologize for being super busy, and even then talk about incredibly boring things like getting your washing machine fixed and buying clothes for your ever-growing kids. Oh, and of course don’t tell your sister, nothing really happened.

Auntie P.

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Dear Aunt Pythia,

I had a book published recently (December 8). My publisher’s schedule needs caused me to have to abruptly stop working on the book and hand it over. It is a reference book with a lot of data, so that meant that there is some missing data. I had an opportunity to add some more content late in the game. That caused the publication date to slip from October 15 to December 8. The editor and publisher decided that it was more important to get the additional content than to make the original date, which was a good thing. The bad thing is that there is still missing content. I was told that I might have an opportunity, if there are additional printings, to add content and fix errors. I am back to working a 40 hour-a-week job, so that reduces the time that I have to do anything. That was the factor which slowed down the research and writing process originally. I was laid off in May, so I had time to build the index and add content. I also corrected some errors. Should I be pushing finding and adding the missing content? I had made a small start, but then the holidays hit and stopped me again.

Lost in Space

Dear Lost In Space,

Given that this is a technical book, it’s more about your integrity and reputation than it is about money. If I were you I would work on it, and I’d also maintain a webpage with the most updated links to data. When and if the time comes, add it to the book. You won’t regret doing that for your readers, and neither will they.

Aunt Pythia

——

Congratulations, you’ve wasted yet another Saturday morning with Aunt Pythia! I hope you’re satisfied, you could have made progress on that project instead.

But as long as you’re already here, please ask me a question. And don’t forget to make an amazing sign-off, they make me very very happy.

Click here for a form or just do it now:

Scott Walker has recently made waves in Wisconsin by surreptitiously attempting to change the mission of the University of Wisconsin, and by threatening to remove $300 million of federal aid to the University of Wisconsin, citing the “laziness of professors” as a problem in need of a solution. On the one hand, he’s right to say there’s a crisis in higher education. But on the other hand, he has the wrong villain.

Instead of focusing on state schools like U of W, we should be investigating the toxic for-profit college industry. For-profit colleges have mushroomed in the last decade and tend to represent themselves as a solution to a very real problem; namely, that it’s become increasingly difficult to get a good job out of high school.

People who have been told to get a degree to pull themselves out of poverty are often faced with two options: enrolling at a nearby community college, or at a for-profit. But, partly because public funds are being diverted to for-profits, more affordable community colleges are not able to fill demand, leaving potential students with the more expensive alternative.

The results have proven to be terrible for the students. They leave with devastating debt, low graduation rates, and often no real education, often worse off than when they started.

This hasn’t gone completely unnoticed. The for-profit industry has been getting into repeated messy problems lately for fraudulent practices, including lying about graduation rates and post-graduation jobs. In the past year alone we’ve seen Corinthian, ITT, and GIBills.com get busted for fraudulent marketing practices.

This won’t be a surprise to those who know how these for-profits operate. They represent a revenue-maximizing industry which game the federal student aid programs for the poor and for veterans. Corinthian obtained $1.4 billion in federal grant and loan dollars in 2010 alone, more than the 10 University of California campuses combined for that same year. We could and should be getting more for our money.

Moreover, the industry specifically targets vulnerable, poor, minority single mothers online with misleading ads promising an easy degree and a new life. Once they have a phone number, they have trained recruiters repeatedly call and “poke the pain” of their targets.

Even when the fraudulent practices are discovered, as is the case with Corinthian, which the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has accused of running a “predatory lending scheme,” the students haven’t gotten their money back, and neither have the taxpayers.

Obama has been making noises about a new college ranking system. Instead he should create a flat-out fraud detection system, built explicitly to be harder to game than the current watered-down regulatory framework, and particularly considering these companies are professional gamers.

Even better, the government should cut for-profits off of public assistance, and divert subsidies to struggling community colleges and institutions like the University of Wisconsin, which are better positioned to serve the common good. When education becomes a profit center, things go awry: admissions counselors become salespeople, students become consumers to be wrung for every last dime, and administrators become executives who cash out while students and taxpayers are left with the tab.

Corinthian and the other for-profits are only the worst along the spectrum of bad, and almost no college is immune to these kinds of tricks. We need to do a better job of quality control and educational goals. Beyond real punishment for the worst offenders, and refunding bilked student’s money, we should immediately increase funding for state schools, and try to once again create a country of opportunity.

Have you ever heard of phrenology? It was, once upon a time, the “science” of measuring someone’s skull to understand their intellectual capabilities.

This sounds totally idiotic but was a huge fucking deal in the mid-1800’s, and really didn’t stop getting some credit until much later. I know that because I happen to own the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was written by the top scholars of the time but is now horribly and fascinatingly outdated.

For example, the entry for “Negro” is famously racist. Wikipedia has an excerpt: “Mentally the negro is inferior to the white… the arrest or even deterioration of mental development [after adolescence] is no doubt very largely due to the fact that after puberty sexual matters take the first place in the negro’s life and thoughts.”

But really that one line doesn’t tell the whole story. Here’s the whole thing, it’s long:

Pages 1 and 2

Pages 3 and 4

Pages 5 and 6

As you can see, they really go into it, with all sorts of data and speculative theories. But near the beginning there’s straight up racist phrenology:

From page 1

To be clear: this was produced by a culture that was using pseudo-scientific nonsense to validate an underlying toxic and racist mindset. There was nothing more to it, but because people become awed and confused around scientific facts and figures, it seemed to work as a validating argument in 1911.

Anyhoo, I thought this was an interesting back drop to the NPR story I wanted to share with you (hat tip Yves Smith) entitled Recruiting Better Talent With Brain Games And Big Data. You can read the transcript as well, you don’t have to listen. Basically the idea is you play video games and the machine takes note of how you play and the choices you make and comes back to you with a personality profile. That profile will help you get a job or will exclude you from a job if the company believes in the results. There’s been no scientific tests to see if or how this stuff works, we’re supposed to just believe in it because, you know, data is objective and everything.

Here’s the thing. What we’ve got is a new kind of awful pseudo-science, which replaces measurements of skulls with big data. There’s no reason to think this stuff is any less biased or discriminatory either: given that there’s no actual science behind it, we might simply be replicating a selection method to get people who we like and who remind us of ourselves. To be sure, it might not be as deliberate as what we saw above, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

The NPR reporter who introduced this story did so by saying, “let’s start this hour with a look at an innovation in something that’s gone unchanged, it seems, forever.” That one sentence already gets it wrong, though. This is, unfortunately, not innovative. This is just the big data version of phrenology.

Fifteen students have refused to pay back their student debt to Everest College, owned by the now disgraced for-profit company Corinthian College. They call themselves “the Corinthian 15”.

Good for them. Corinthian College is a predatory and fraudulent company which was in the business of gaming the federal loan system while making false promises to its students. Those students are victims of fraud and should not be the ones paying back the government money for an education they never got. Instead, Corinthian should pay back the money.

There are articles about this in the New Yorker, Newsweek, and the Guardian, and there’s a letter of support signed by Naomi Klein and Barbara Ehrenreich, among others, which contains the following:

By declaring a strike, the Corinthian 15 are taking debt relief for themselves and challenging the Department of Education to look out for students instead of protecting rich and powerful creditors. By declaring a strike, they are taking a stand for all student debtors, by reminding us that for-profits schools are just an extreme version of our increasingly untenable system of debt-financed higher education. By declaring a strike, the Corinthian 15 are asking why the U.S. lags so far behind other industrialized societies in denying its citizenry the right to free college enrollment.

At the same time, there’s a new Rolling Jubilee initiative that just freed $13 million dollars worth of student debt, which was covered by Democracy Now. Right on.

I’m really looking forward to tonight’s panel on mega-foundations and democracy, organized by the Big Apple Coffee Party. I will be the moderator of the event, which takes place at 6:30 tonight at All Soul’s Church at 1157 Lexington Avenue and is open to the public.

In preparation, I’m reading the article that inspired tonight’s discussion, written by one of tonight’s three panelists, Joanne Barkan. The essay is entitled Plutocrats at Work: How Big Philanthropy Undermines Democracy and it’s published by Dissent Magazine.

Also on the panel will be Gara LaMarche, President and CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies and a Senior Fellow at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, who can be seen putting philanthropy on trial here, and Stanley Katz, Director of the Center for Arts and Policy Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs at Princeton University, who wrote this piece called Beware Of Big Donors.

I hope I see you all there tonight!

Also, this Friday I’ll be giving a talk at Cornell Tech called Making The Case For Data Journalism. Send me an email if you want to come to that, I’ll need to get you on the list. It’s at 12:30 in the Google building.

Finally, I had a lot of fun over the weekend at the Rebellious Lawyer’s Conference at Yale, which is a yearly conference organized by law students. I was on a panel concerned with Occupy and the law profession, organized by Zorka Milin, an amazing tax lawyer and activist, and the other panelists were the amazing and inspirational Akshat Tewary of Occupy the SEC and Rebecca Wilkins, also an activist tax lawyer who is writing a book about tax law for the rest of us that I can’t wait to read.

This is guest post by Michael Carey. In his own words: I am a decidedly “alternative” math nerd, working in an environment where I’m on the wrong end of power and status relationships with a handful of conservatives.  (Like, “willing to say nasty things about the gays in public” conservatives.)  I have been an occasional pseudonymous contributor to the LGBT blog at Slate, Outward, on topics ranging from the poly closet to queer culture.

I was recently part of a task force for understanding the practices of “big data” from the perspective of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), which is an organization that promotes good standards for studying public opinion.

So for example, AAPOR has a code of ethics for how to track public opinion, and a set of understood methodologies for correctly using surveys. They involved themselves last year when they criticized the New York Times and CBS for releasing the results of a nationwide poll on Senate races where the opt-in survey method had “little grounding in theory” and for a lack of transparency.

But here’s the thing, the biggest problem facing the world of public opinion research isn’t that online opt-in polls, but rather the temptation to troll twitter to “see what people are thinking.” And that’s exactly what’s happening, in large part because it’s cheaper. Thus the AAPOR Big Data Report that I helped with.

I think we did a decent job of describing some of the intrinsic difficulties with using big data, specifically around quality control issues, and for that reason I recommend this report to anyone entering the field, or even people already in the field who haven’t thought through this stuff. If you don’t have time to read the full report, here are our recommendations:

1. Surveys and Big Data are complementary data sources not competing data sources.

There are differences between the approaches, but this should be seen as an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Research is about answering questions, and one way to answer questions is to start utilizing all information available. The availability of Big Data to support research provides a new way to approach old questions as well as an ability to address some new questions that in the past were out of reach. However, the findings that are generated based on Big Data inevitably generate more questions, and some of those questions tend to be best addressed by traditional survey research methods.

2. AAPOR should develop standards for the use of Big Data in survey research when more knowledge has been accumulated.

Using Big Data in statistically valid ways is a challenge. One common misconception is the belief that volume of data can compensate for any other deficiency in the data. AAPOR should develop standards of disclosure and transparency when using Big Data in survey research. AAPOR’s transparency initiative is a good role model that should be extended to other data sources besides surveys.

3. AAPOR should start working with the private sector and other professional organizations to educate its members on Big Data.

The current pace of the Big Data development in itself is a challenge. It is very difficult to keep up with the research and development in the Big Data area. Research on new technology tends to become outdated very fast. There is currently insufficient capacity in the AAPOR community. AAPOR should tap other professional associations, such as the American Statistical Association and the Association for Computing Machinery, to help understand these issues and provide training for other AAPOR members and non-members.

4. AAPOR should inform the public of the risks and benefits of Big Data.

Most users of digital services are unaware of the fact that data formed out of their digital behavior may be reused for other purposes, for both public and private good. AAPOR should be active in public debates and provide training for journalists to improve data-driven journalism. AAPOR should also update its Code of Professional Ethics and Practice to include the collection of digital data outside of surveys. It should work with Institutional Review Boards to facilitate the research use of such data in an ethical fashion.

5. AAPOR should help remove the barrier associated with different uses of terminology.

Effective use of Big Data usually requires a multidisciplinary team consisting of e.g., a domain expert, a researcher, a computer scientist, and a system administrator. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of Big Data, there are many concepts and terms that are defined differently by people with different backgrounds. AAPOR should help remove this barrier by informing its community about the different uses of terminology. Short courses and webinars are successful instruments that AAPOR can use to accomplish this task.

6. AAPOR should take a leading role in working with federal agencies in developing a necessary infrastructure for the use of Big Data in survey research.

Data ownership is not well defined and there is no clear legal framework for the collection and subsequent use of Big Data. There is a need for public-private partnerships to ensure data access and reproducibility. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is very much involved in federal surveys since they develop guidelines for those and research funded by government should follow these guidelines. It is important that AAPOR work together with federal statistical agencies on Big Data issues and build capacity in this field. AAPOR’s involvement could include the creation or propagation of shared cloud computing resources

I was going to blog about some serious stuff this morning but then someone (specifically, my cousin Anne Hall) sent me this socialist and feminist redo of 50 Shades, which made me forget everything else. Favorite line:

“You need to go away and sit and think about commodity fetishism and the compensation of emotional labour. Also your obvious issues with women. By the way, how did you get this number?”

Oh wait, I guess I still have 18 minutes to say something.

So yesterday my Facebook page lit up with mathematicians discussing this USA Today list of top 10 colleges for math majors:

1. HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE: CLAREMONT, CALIF.
2. COLORADO SCHOOL OF MINES: GOLDEN, COLO.
3. MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
4. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – LOS ANGELES
5. CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY: PITTSBURGH, PA.
6. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO: CHICAGO
7. CORNELL UNIVERSITY: ITHACA, N.Y.
8. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS: SAINT LOUIS, MO.
9. UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: PHILADELPHIA
10. CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: PASADENA, CALIF.

These are some fine schools, but not at all the typical list one would consider. That makes you wonder, how does one decide where the best place is for a math major? Scanning this list, I have no idea, and it certainly doesn’t correspond to the places that produce the most research mathematicians. But maybe that’s not what USA Today cares about.

In fact, it isn’t. The methodology is outlined here, and the “full methodology,” which doesn’t actually explain much, is here. But as for figuring out what is actually valued, we get some glimpse:

So here’s the thing. We mathematicians think that money doesn’t buy happiness, and we don’t care so much about early career salaries. That’s the first thing that sticks out.

But also, and I’d say just as importantly, we do care about the extent to which the average undergraduate math major is exposed to research mathematics, which is why we care much more deeply about the “doctoral degree market share” than this ranking does. I mean, I guess to the non-expert, it makes sense to care way more about the undergraduate focus of a college for judging the quality of an undergrad math major, but it all depends on what you want to have happen next.

I’m enjoying how different this list is from the typical inside baseball list. I don’t even know who it’s for, if anyone, but as a thought experiment it’s interesting to imagine what would happen if suddenly all the math departments everywhere suddenly tried to game this particular system, like colleges do with the US News ranking.

So, for example, we’d throw out pure math majors altogether in order to focus our attention on applied math majors that will make loads of money out of college. We’d also compete for students against other majors, something very few math departments actually do. It would be interesting, but I’m not holding my breath.

Really into writing right now but I’d still like to share my reading list with y’all.

1. The review of 50 Shades I wish I’d written (hat tip Chris Wiggins). I still can’t decide whether the net effect of the film is bad, because the characters are so terribly stereotypical and stalkerish, or good, because it at least forces people to ask the question, what do I desire and how is that different from other people’s desires.
2. Alexis Goldstein’s newest piece in Medium.com about the newest pawn in the financial lobbyist’s chess set, community banks.
3. Remember SketchFactor? Well now there’s PlaceToLive (hat tip Jordan Ellenberg).
4. I’m researching the toxic industry that is for-profit colleges. On the other hand, the Washington Post seems to be shilling for that same industry: here, here, and here (hat tip Auros Harman).
5. If you’re a listener, try this interview with Edward Baptist, author of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. I’ve heard great things about this interview and its explanation of the earlier versions of “financial innovations” that directly involved slaves. This piece and many many more can be found on the Alt Banking website.

Readers! Dearest readers! Welcome! And a very warm welcome as well to anyone coming from the Slate Money podcast “Exotic Fantasies” edition, where Aunt Pythia was delighted to be featured this week.

Aunt Pythia is so very happy to welcome you (and your Inner Goddesses) onto the bus today. Please enter single file, find an empty seat, or sit on someone’s lap, or lie across a series of laps, and then apply the “restraints” (otherwise known as seat belts) to yourself and others. I’ll wait. Oh, and before Aunt Pythia forgets, please sign this consent form before we begin. Yes, that’s what I said. It’s an unusual column today, people.

Because, dear readers, although Aunt Pythia does not believe in Valentine’s Day in general, she is making an exception this year for the opening weekend of 50 Shades of Grey, simply because it has created an extraordinary opportunity to talk about sex nonstop for a week:

The movie is entirely sold out all day today, so I’m going first thing tomorrow morning, kind of like church.

After you read the column, but before you go to the movie, please:

ask Aunt Pythia a question at the bottom of the page!

By the way, if you don’t know what the hell Aunt Pythia is talking about, go here for past advice columns and here for an explanation of the name Pythia.

——

Dear Aunt Pythia,

Now that you’ve been out of the ivory tower for a few years, do you have any particular advice for smart math phd’s who want to leave academia?

I’m asking because one of my students is more interested in having a permanent job after her Ph.D. than doing a research post doc and moving several times. She’s a decent programmer, but with little formal training beyond a few classes and a lot of experience with Magma.

Best,

Cutie-Patootie

——

Dear Cutie-Patootie,

Sounds like your students is not psyched for the nomadic, monastic, and frugal lifestyle of the mathematician. I get that.

And here’s the thing, I wrote Doing Data Science for people like her. She should take a look and see if that is her style. And if yes, she should learn python and do a few data projects and exhibit them online.

If not, she should take the following quiz:

1. Are you boring?
2. Are you evil?

If she said “yes” to #1, she might consider actuarial math. If she said “yes” to #2, she should think finance. If she said “no” to both, she should consider moving to Canada.

Good luck!

Aunt Pythia

——

Dear Aunt Pythia,

Couldn’t tolerate the thought of that picture getting posted again next week, so. . .

What are your suggestions for getting better at sex? I’m sure open communication, mutual exploration and play will be at the top of your standard list. Problem is that my partner doesn’t want to do any of that. I think the reasons are a mix of shame and an idealized romantic notion that this should be effortlessly perfect.

No More Bouncy Castle Genitalia Pics

Dear NMBCGP,

Do you mean this picture?

I could post this every week and die a happy woman

As to your question, here’s what I’ve noticed. A lot of people complain about their sex life and when I ask them whether they’ve tried various things, they tell me their partner “doesn’t want that.” But when I ask whether they’ve asked their partner, explicitly, about that, they admit they haven’t. It makes me wonder if their partner also goes around saying exactly the same thing.

The thing about open communication is that having it clears up these kinds of mutual misunderstandings. It’s worth double checking sometimes, in other words.

And if you do double check, and she agrees she doesn’t like open communication, mutual exploration, and play, then I’d say find a new girlfriend.

Good luck!

Aunt Pythia

——

Hello Aunt Pythia,

So this is a tricky question to phrase, or to ask at all, but I will give it a try.

I met my girlfriend online and for the first two years, all of our interactions were carried out that way. All of them. There was something I could do that she liked, and it IS kinda fun, once in a while. I didn’t know it was rare, but she assured me it is, and that it excited her enormously.

Now we are together, and of course she wants me to do it ‘in the flesh’. I worried that it wouldn’t be nearly such a turn-on for her as it was online … but she absolutely loved it. Now she wants me to do it every time, and even while I’m inside her. As I’ve said … I enjoy it sometimes … but not every time, plus I am a bit worried about the hygiene element of the whole ‘inside’ aspect of it.

I don’t want this to be something that dents our relationship, but nor do I want it to happen every time. I know it’s stupid, but occasionally I even think this might have been what brought her to me, and in those moments, I can’t countenance NOT doing it for her, in case I lose her. Most of the time I know that last sentence isn’t true, but that 1% of the time when I don’t rather carves me up.

Dear Aunt Pythia – can you help me retain my lovely girlfriend, and also help us both to get the maximum enjoyment from sex?

Hopefully yours,
Finding Our Unusual Net Techniques Aren’t Intimate Nirvanas

Dear FOUNTAIN,

First of all, amazing sign-off. Possibly the best one ever.

Next, it’s not clear if you’ve ever expressed to your girlfriend that you’d like to try sex without this. For all she knows, you might like this as much as she does. So the first thing to do is to talk to her about how it would be nice to have sex without this element once in a while. She might be fine with that!

Third, it’s not ok for someone to insist on something, anything, to happen every time, unless both people want it. It borders on abusive, in fact. So keep in mind it’s totally OK to tell her what you need. Or another thing you might do is discover a kink of your own and agree to alternate between your two kinks, thus naturally creating balance.

Finally, here’s what I’d actually do if I were you. I would just “forget how to” do that thing that you do once or twice and see what happens and see what conversations emerge, if any.

After all, penises are mysterious things that women don’t have direct experience with and thus don’t understand. They don’t always do what you want them to do (we all know that from our experiences in 7th grade!), with all those myriad valves and fittings. It’s perfectly reasonable to believe that this specific thing sometimes just doesn’t work. Not that I want you to be consistently devious, but try it out and see whether the sex can be good for both of you.

Love,

Aunt Pythia

——

Aunt Pythia,

You seem to have a great and helpful perspective on sex. I’d love to ask a sex question or three. And you seem desperate for sex questions. But I’m afraid that the closest I can come right now is more of a disappointingly meta sex question.

In particular, how can people safely ask their sex questions? Aren’t they thinking ahead and afraid that their letter will be immortalized online and someone, someday, will read it and figure out who wrote it? Do people play tricks like reversing the genders? Would that really be convincing, like “I can’t get my wife to help with the dishes. Can you help?” Most of the time gender issues are raised that would not allow this. 

I think part of what makes your answers great is that you don’t always insist on the idea that one must necessarily share with one’s partner anything one might think, fantasize about, etc. Thus the worry.

Perhaps this has brought me closer to a sex question: what is your general guidance about when one should and should not share thoughts and fantasies about sex with a partner? That seems safe enough for starters.

ME Think Ahead

Dear META,

First of all, I’d advice you to stop worrying so much. Everyone thinks about sex all the time, so by the pigeon hole principle most people think for at least a few minutes a day about any one question, and might find themselves asking any old sex advice columnist that question. So you are well camouflaged here on earth.

Plus, if you are worried you could always just change your handwriting a little bit like students do on end-of-semester evaluation forms, which totally doesn’t work.

As to your eventual question, I’ve got three rules. First, share when it will make your partner hornier. Second, keep it to yourself if it will make your partner angry or jealous or less horny. And third, change it ever so slightly to bring it from the second category to the first. Become an erotic story teller!

Good luck,

Aunt Pythia

——

Well, you’ve wasted yet another Saturday morning with Aunt Pythia! I hope you’re satisfied! If you could, please ask me a question. And don’t forget to make an amazing sign-off, they make me very very happy.

Click here for a form or just do it now:

In a bit more than a week I’ll be on a panel at Yale’s Rebellious Lawyering Conference 2015, otherwise known as RebLaw. If you’re wondering what that is, here’s a description:

RebLaw is the nation’s largest student-run public interest conference. Every year the conference brings together practitioners, law students, and community activists from around the country to discuss innovative, progressive approaches to law and social change. The conference, grounded in the spirit of Gerald Lopez‘s Rebellious Lawyering, seeks to build a community of law students, practitioners, and activists seeking to work in the service of social change movements and to challenge hierarchies of race, wealth, gender, and expertise within legal practice and education.

The panel I’m on is entitled Using Law To Occupy Wall Street, and I’ll be on the panel On Saturday the 21st at 10am with my friend Akshat Tewary, of Occupy the SEC, as well as Rebecca Wilkins, who I’m excited to meet. The panel is organized and moderated by Zorka Milin, who is both a kick-ass lawyer and a math nerd. The other panels look amazing as well.

This is a guest post by Samuel Hansen, a podcast producer and the director of the ACMEScience podcast network. He spends his spare time listening to podcasts that he did not produce, playing soccer, and hoping more people would pitch him podcast ideas. He isn’t kidding, if you have ideas for a podcast he wants to hear them.

My name is Samuel Hansen and I love podcasts. This might not seem like that crazy of a confession, but I would like you to keep in mind that I am currently subscribed to 97 shows and am caught up on all but 10.

I started listening to them around the time I started my undergraduate studies, so 2005 or so. It might seem odd, but a huge amount of the good things that have happened to me in the past 10 years are because of podcasts. Most of my closest friends I have met because we are all fans of a certain podcasting network, the best working collaboration I have ever had came out of an interview that I did, and I have had the opportunity to travel around the world producing a show.

My journey down the mathematical podcast rabbit hole started when I started to apply to graduate schools. Being a huge fan of podcasts I went looking for a podcast that would help me better understand the world that I was about to enter into, the world of the mathematical graduate student. While there were a couple of shows, none of them were exactly what I was looking for so when I started graduate school I knew it would be up to me to make the show for the next person that went looking.

I will admit that first show was silly, very very silly, and quite vulgar, but I had to start somewhere. Since then I have produced shows featuring interviews with mathematicians, round ups of the week’s mathematical news, and multi-voice stories from the mathematical domain.

I am not the only mathematical podcaster though, there is a whole community of producers out there making great content for us to consume. I have collected all of the mathematical podcasts that I know of here. Not all of them are still running, and some formats will appeal to you more than others, but they are all wonderfully mathematical.

Regularly Released Podcasts

• One of my current favorites is Taking Maths Further from Peter Rowlett and Katie Steckles. Produced for the Further Maths Support Program the show takes a different field from mathematics every episode and features an interview with a mathematician working in that field.
• Wrong, But Useful is the brain child of Colin Beveridge and Dave Gale. New episodes come out around monthly and feature mathematical stories that they came across in the previous month with a bit of focus on the UK and UK mathematical education. Each episode also features a problem of the month.
• Conversational interviews with people who live mathematical lives, at least that is what I always envisioned Strongly Connected Components as being. The second podcast that I created, Strongly Connected Components is only recently relaunched and I am so happy to be producing new episodes and talking to yet more wonderful people from the world of mathematics.
• Math Mutation is a series of quick hit podcasts about the fun and interesting mathematics that is not usually talked about in school.
• Tim Harford, the Financial Time’s Undercover Economist, helms the BBC’s More Or Less , a radio show that does everything it can to examine and interpret numbers and statistics that appear in the news and everyday world. The podcast feed features both the full length Radio Four episodes as well as the shorter BBC World Service episodes which are produced even when the show is between series.

Irregularly Released Podcasts

• I am more proud of this podcast than anything else I have ever done. Relatively Prime is a podcast that features 8 episode series of stories from the mathematical domain. The first series had episodes about Chinook the AI that defeated checkers, my favorite mathematical building La Sagrada Familia, mathematicians favorite numbers, and first hand accounts of working with Paul Erdos. I am in the middle of producing the second Kickstarter funded series and believe me, it is going to be good. You can expect it late spring or early summer of this year.
• Inspired By Math is a podcast by Sol Lederman featuring long form interviews with mathematicians, educators, authors, and other people that are inspired by mathematics.
• Plus Magazine tries to bring the beauty and applications of mathematics to all who read it. Their podcast features interviews with mathematicians talking about their work and their lives.
• Both the AMS and the MAA have podcasts that feature interviews with mathematicians talking about their work.
• From the math blog The Aperiodical, The Aperiodcast features editors Peter Rowlett, Katie Speckles, and Christian Perfect discussing stories they had recently featured on the blog and was as aperiodical as its name would suggest.
• Math/Maths was a show that I co-hosted with Peter Rowlett where we discussed the past week’s news from the world of mathematics. It was very topical and could be odd to go back and listen to now, but there were some non-topical episodes mixed in. The show is sadly no more, but I have heard from a good source, myself, that the people behind it are working to bring it back in a slightly tweaked format.

The following mathematical shows are sadly no longer being produced. That should not stop you from going back and checking them out though, with the exception of my first show, Combinations and Permutations, which I give you free reign to skip.

• There were two podcasts about the history of mathematics and oddly enough both were produced in England. Bite Sized History of Mathematics was produced by Noel-Ann Bradshaw, Tony Mann, and Mark McCartney and was part of a project that was funded by HE Academy MSOR Network. It featured episode, and accompanying pdfs, about important theorems, important numbers, and important mathematicians. The other podcast, Brief History of Mathematics, was a BBC production presented by Marcus du Sautoy and focused on the biggest mathematicians from the past few centuries.
• If you like swearing, bad jokes, pop culture references, and a host that heavily relies on wikipedia during a show then Combinations and Permutations is the math podcast for you. This was the first podcast that I ever produced and featured my fellow graduate students at UNLV and I sitting around trying to be funny about mathematics while sneaking in some real content from time to time. I will readily admit it is not the best show, but it was tons of fun to do and from the feedback I did receive tons of fun to listen to if you are the right person.
• Tom Henderson and Nick Horton hosted the Math for Primates podcast for 14 episodes. It was an entertaining and irreverent look at topics in mathematics that relied heavily on the idiosyncratic viewpoints of the hosts. I looked forward to every episode and was very sad when they stopped coming, because(as the hosts themselves say on their website) talking about math is more fun that throwing poo.
• The Math Factor started in 2004 as a segment on Kyle Kellam’s Sunday Ozark’s at Large radio show on KUAF featuring mathematician Chaim Goodman-Strauss. Featuring a lot of puzzles and problems and other very Gardner-esque content the episodes were short, sweet, and well worth a listen.
• Peter Rowlett’s first podcast, Travels in a Mathematical World was a podcast of interviews with mathematicians talking about their work and episodes about math history and news. Done with the support of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications the podcast really focuses on the cool jobs and interesting work in which mathematics allows people to take part.

There are also more general science shows that often talk about mathematics. What follows is by no means an exhaustive list, but it does feature some personal favorites of mine.

• I will clearly expose my biases on this one, Radiolab is my favorite thing. I am actually wearing a Radiolab t-shirt as I type this. I will readily tell anyone who will listen about my favorite episodes and it is Radiolab’s producer and genius, literally the MacArthur Foundation decreed him as such, that is the reason that I even thought making mathematics podcasts might be possible. The show is mostly about big ideas and science, but some episodes do feature very mathematical stories.
• Presented by Melvyn Bragg In Our Time is a long running discussion program from the BBC. Every episode features a topic and a panel of experts, usually academics, to discuss the topic. While not a math show a quick google search shows that they often cover the subject.
• The BBC also has an irreverent panel show presented by physicist Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince called The Infinite Monkey Cage. They have had episodes about Randomness, Six Degrees of Separation, and Symmetry amongst many other sciency topics.
• Keith Devlin has been NPR’s Math Guy for many years and has contributed many different stories to the show Weekend Edition. Thankfully Keith has gathered all the episode for us.
• Science Friday has been a US public radio stand by for more than two decades. While primarily covering other scientific topics, they also feature mathematics at times.
• My podcast about fights from the history of science, Science Sparring Society, has featured stories about Newton Vs. Leibniz and Cantor Vs. Kronecker

Finally, I interviewed Mathbabe the other day and put it up on my podcast here:

I’ve been enjoying Sheryl Sandberg’s columns with Adam Grant in the “Women at Work” columns of the New York Times. See for example this one on discrimination at work.

The most recent one, third in a series of four, talks about how women at work do lots of extra “housekeeping” tasks like training, giving advice, and so on, which is often unrewarded. In fact they point out a double standard in expectations for this stuff:

In a study led by the New York University psychologist Madeline Heilman, participants evaluated the performance of a male or female employee who did or did not stay late to help colleagues prepare for an important meeting. For staying late and helping, a man was rated 14 percent more favorably than a woman. When both declined, a woman was rated 12 percent lower than a man.

So, part of this is absolutely just sexism, which doesn’t surprise me. But I think another part of it is mismanagement.

Let me explain. First of all, this stuff generally resonates with me – I’m absolutely one of those people who tries to make the workplace “more of a community.” So, for example, things like figuring out stuff and building and updating a wiki, which then everyone can use as a resource and saves a bunch of time for everyone. That stuff is not directly rewarded even though it’s actually useful. Because of that weirdness, men (in general) don’t try and don’t care as much about it, so given a men-only group, it simply wouldn’t get done.

But here’s the thing, what should we conclude from such group behaviors like this? Should women stop doing those extra things, or should men start? Should we continue to ignore how much stuff like that actually helps, or should we begin to keep track? You might be able to guess what I think.

Sanderberg and Grant’s column is a rare example of a column which doesn’t fall into the standard trap of telling women to simply conform to the current system of rewards. They explain that this kind of “Having people help both behind the scenes and in public is essential to organizational success. Research shows that teams with greater helping behavior attain greater profits,sales, quality, effectiveness, revenue and customer satisfaction.” and then they go on to state the obvious:

But doing the heavy lifting can take a psychological toll.

The question is, why? Is it because people ignore your efforts? I think it is, at least partly, and the other part is the sexism.

Now, Sandberg and Grant did suggest that we begin to “track acts of helping,” but then they go on to focus on how women should care for themselves before others, and give a load of advice about how to be more efficient when being helpful.

I’m already really efficient, though, so I’d like more advice on that first part, keeping track of acts of helping, and in particular how to build an incentive system that both men and women respond to which rewards stuff that’s actually good for the company. Because obviously just keeping track of stuff won’t help if you don’t actually care about the numbers. Or, even worse, if you just pity the poor fool who helped the most.

So the question is, how do you do that? Getting rid of assholes is already hard, and this is more nuanced than that.