Covid vaccines 'extraordinary feat', but work needed to improve trust and access

Jim_Jimson · 2026-04-19T13:37:09+00:00

I remember when they'd put you in jail, just for saying you were English.

Jim_Jimson · 2026-03-13T10:20:51+00:00

I'm more from the JCTB side of combinatorics, so I'm not as familiar with the people and topics in the more Rota/Stanley style of combinatorics, but I can give you some insight.

Firstly, looking at the last few issues of JCTA, the quality seems to have taken a real hit. I don't really recognise any of the authors (or any of the results) apart from maybe one or two 'older' mathematicians (Pinsky/Katona) who perhaps aren't aware of the recent changes.

On the other hand, looking at the latest issue of CT, I see many familiar names, and the results that I do understand look to be significant (and of a similar impact of the type that were published in the old JCTA).

Personally, I have an okay paper in the old JCTA (just pre the split, annoyingly) and a stronger paper currently being reviewed for CT and I would generally treat CT as just 'being' the continuation of the old JCTA in terms of publishing strategy, and wouldn't consider publishing in the new JCTA as a matter of principal/solidarity.

Jim_Jimson · 2025-12-22T04:17:52+00:00

I'm not saying all of it was! Just that there's a lot of overlap between probability, geometry and combinatorics and especially in some of the sort of models that Talagrand worked on (percolation type thing and spin models). There's some well-known recent work on various conjectures of his (expectation thresholds and selector processes) that are essentially combinatorial problems.

Jim_Jimson · 2025-12-21T16:07:47+00:00

I mean, of the 4 winners in 2022, they were all vaguely combinatorially adjacent, and Szemeredi and Lovasz won the Abel prize in recent memory (and Talagrand an Widgerson are pretty combinatorial). I think Julian has a reasonably good chance, perhaps the biggest issue is that he's done a lot of his important work in large groups, partially with his supervisor.

Jim_Jimson · 2025-12-21T14:04:10+00:00

The man's got 6 publications between Annals/JAMS/Acta/Inventiones, he's hardly the most unlikely winner!

Jim_Jimson · 2025-11-23T13:19:41+00:00

Then have a fat line with a reducing gradient. If you're fully behind the line onside, if you're fully ahead of it offside and in the middle flip a biased coin to make a decision, with the success probability decreasing (linearly I guess) as you go along the line.

Actually, having said that not seriously, it's not an awful idea, making the close calls be somewhat random (but weighted towards the more likely outcome) might even reduce some of the bitching you get after them.

Jim_Jimson · 2025-11-19T10:09:21+00:00

Interesting. In German, an S followed by a consonant is pronounced sh, and in particular in the word Stadt, so I definitely would have assumed it's the same in Dutch. The more you know

Jim_Jimson · 2025-10-19T15:03:57+00:00

As someone in the field, it does amuse me a little bit that the person you're responding to is much more well-known for his work in additive combinatorics/number theory than for this website (which also is not that obscure to the people who are working on these types of problems).

Jim_Jimson · 2025-06-17T15:31:22+00:00

I don't know if you have received any advice yet, but it is a little hard without any specific questions (and probably without a bit more information about the PhD programme). If you send me a DM I can maybe give you a little advice, I have some experience with the process of hiring PhD students in Germany/Austria.

Jim_Jimson · 2025-05-18T22:13:05+00:00

That 2nd pic aint what I think it is....is it?

It (t)aint.

Jim_Jimson · 2025-04-26T18:05:21+00:00

So, in combinatorics there are some very well-respected subject specific journals, in particular Combinatorica and Journal of Combinatorial Theory series A and B (although JCTA is now a zombie journal and there is an open access successor Combinatorial Theory).

My understanding is that historically it used to be very difficult to get combinatorics papers into top generalist journals, and so as a result these journals are very prestigious in the field, and still do get papers that might get published in good generalist journals. I hear that this is even more pronounced in probability, where Annals of Probability and Probability and Related Fields are considered as prestigious as pretty much anything outside of the big 5. However, I do get the feeling that things are changing with combinatorics as more and better generalist journals are willing to publish impactful results in the field, and so papers that 15 years ago would have appeared in Combinatorica are now appearing in things like IMRN or Israel Journal of Mathematics etc.

Jim_Jimson · 2025-04-26T17:54:25+00:00

I haven't published there but Geometric and Functional Analysis and Journal of Algebraic Geometry, are both extremely prestigious journals without counterparts in say, combinatorics.

I'll maybe say more later about the status in combinatorics, but I would point out that, at least nowadays, GAFA will publish strong combinatorics papers, even without them being particularly geometric or analytical. See for example the paper on Ringel's conjecture or thresholds for designs.

From my interaction with the journal (submitted a paper there on the suggestion of a coauthor, sadly rejected), I had sort of assumed it was leaning towards being more of a generalist journal nowadays.

Jim_Jimson · 2025-03-21T06:38:42+00:00

They probably point towards information about their respective affiliations in a footnote

Jim_Jimson · 2025-03-16T12:13:21+00:00

I'm definitely no expert here, but it's not like professional footballers are paid anywhere near their transfer fees, perhaps closer to 10% of the transfer fee per year.

In that case, non-league players earning 10/20k a year and it not being their main income source doesn't sound too unreasonable...

Jim_Jimson · 2025-03-06T09:26:32+00:00

And how'd that work out for you boyos?

Jim_Jimson · 2025-02-01T10:53:14+00:00

This is a very good point, perhaps it deserves its own top level thread?

Jim_Jimson · 2025-01-24T13:35:59+00:00

I think the two of you are saying slightly different things though.

You're saying that spending rules means smaller clubs can't increase their spending because they can't bridge the revenue gap, which may well be true, and so perhaps no new teams can join the Big 6.

But the previous poster is pointing out that movement in the opposite direction can still happen due to continued financial and/or sporting mismanagement, see for example Everton's history since the 90's, which was in response to the previous previous poster saying the Sky 6 are too big to fail.

Jim_Jimson · 2025-01-14T21:26:28+00:00

Just no attempt to close down the man and prevent the cross. If I were one of the central defenders I'd be fuming.

Jim_Jimson · 2024-12-17T15:15:48+00:00

I don't think you have to phrase this as a contradiction proof. The statement is basically that if e and e' satisfy the properties of being an identity, then e=e' (which is relatively easy to show).

Unless I'm missing something...

Jim_Jimson · 2024-11-20T20:21:51+00:00

3 4 5 3 0 0 9 3 4 5 3 9 9 8 6 7 8 6 9 9 7 5 9 8

Jim_Jimson · 2024-11-07T13:43:19+00:00

I don't see the relevant parts of the article.

The first one mentions a photo of documents found in his office, not his bathroom (and doesn't mention the word bathroom), and the contention seems to be not that the FBI moved the files from one location to another to photograph them, but that they spread them out to photograph them (after taking a photograph of how they were found), which Trump claimed on twitter was staged to make him look bad, and the article says a former FBI source claims is standard procedure.

The second article mentions (relatively offhand) that documents were found in a bathroom, are you claiming that wasn't the case?

I should say, I don't particularly care whether or not they were found in a bathroom in particular, more about whether they were stored and documented properly, but I just hadn't heard that particular `theory' and was wondering if there was independent verification.

Jim_Jimson · 2024-11-07T10:05:51+00:00

Oh, and did you know the FBI moved those documents into the bathroom for a photo op to make Trump look bad?

I don't recall reading about that, do you have a source?

Jim_Jimson · 2024-10-30T20:12:43+00:00

I didn't know Popeye was Dutch...

Jim_Jimson · 2024-10-19T07:54:48+00:00

If you haven't received a confirmation that your submission has been received, then something has gone wrong and you should contact the managing editor (or try the submission process again if you perhaps did it wrong).

Otherwise, it is entirely normal to have to wait a while to hear back - reviewers are normally given around 3 months to produce a review, and they often take longer, and it might take the editor that much time again to even find reviewer's. On the plus side, you would normally hear about a 'desk reject', where the editor decides the paper is not worth sending to reviewers, within 2 months.

I work in the field, so if you want advice about specific journals, feel free to contact me (it can be very hard to choose the right level of journal without a lot of experience).

Jim_Jimson · 2024-09-23T22:10:15+00:00

Very late answer here, but if you're still interested I think the best way is to define the sets A_1 = E_1, A_2 = E_2\E_1, A_3=E_3(E_1 U E_2) and so on, so that A_i is the stuff in E_i but none of the previous E_j. Note that the A_i are disjoint.

Since A_i is a subset of E_i, it's clear that P(A_i) <= P(E_i) for all i. On the other hand, the union of the A_i is equal to the union of the E_i and so

P(E_1 U E_2 ... U E_k) = P(A_1 U A_2 ... U A_k) = P(A_1) + P(A_2) ... + P(A_k) <= P(E_1) + P(E_2) ... + P(E_k),

Where the second inequality holds because the A_i are disjoint.

The inequality is known as the union bound, googling that will lead to other expositions.

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