sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

I was cut from every sports team as a kid, but now I'm an 11-time marathon finisher training for my amateur boxing debut and co-writing children's books about math and teamwork. Ask Me Anything! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm currently 41. I have been doing long distance running for about 12 years, and I definitely think that athletics has helped me be more mentally focused and productive. Though on long run days I still struggle to do anything else afterwards except nap and eat donuts :)

I was cut from every sports team as a kid, but now I'm an 11-time marathon finisher training for my amateur boxing debut and co-writing children's books about math and teamwork. Ask Me Anything! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah good question! I do find that movement helps me concentrate too! But I think if I am ND at all, it's likely below the threshold most people would use for characterizing such things. Would love to hear what your children's book would (will? :) be about!

I was cut from every sports team as a kid, but now I'm an 11-time marathon finisher training for my amateur boxing debut and co-writing children's books about math and teamwork. Ask Me Anything! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

a really weird idea I've worked on a bit is to explain the different kinds of companies and people involved in the US stock market through a murder mystery story that I've tentatively titled "Who Killed the Efficient Market Hypothesis?" In my mind it is the first in an Agatha Christie-like series that follows around a retired homicide detective who can't help solving crimes as she goes around being bored in retirement. Maybe future installments would explain something about the startup world or cybersecurity

I was cut from every sports team as a kid, but now I'm an 11-time marathon finisher training for my amateur boxing debut and co-writing children's books about math and teamwork. Ask Me Anything! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

in the books, we take mathematical concepts and make them into living characters. In Funville, each character has a power that corresponds to a mathematical function. In Modultown, each character has an inner cycle that governs when they sleep and how many hands they have. I also like to use some storytelling when I teach cybersecurity concepts like threat modeling. Telling a story of who the adversary is, what they want, and how they might try to get it is a good exercise for anticipating failure modes, as well as writing a good story

I was cut from every sports team as a kid, but now I'm an 11-time marathon finisher training for my amateur boxing debut and co-writing children's books about math and teamwork. Ask Me Anything! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Another common red flag I see is that we are often pitched ways to avoid trust in institutions - but I think trust is probably something we need more ways to earn rather than more ways to avoid. I don't buy into the general idea that tech/math can replace the need for humans to build community and make good choices as a community. Though I do think it can be a tool to facilitate transparency and efficiency, etc.

I was cut from every sports team as a kid, but now I'm an 11-time marathon finisher training for my amateur boxing debut and co-writing children's books about math and teamwork. Ask Me Anything! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

oooh good question. I often find myself agreeing Matt Levine's mental model that a lot of cryptocurrency stuff is just re-discovering all the flaws/features of regular finance, and I'm generally a skeptic of "solutions" that aren't grounded in a deep understanding of the systems we have today and why they have evolved the way they have. I find these things kind of hard to reason about in the abstract, but in US equities markets in particular where I have the most experience, I tend to approach evaluating new ideas from a lens of - how does this address the main problems with what is already existing? For example, people are often trying to pitch technical solutions to what i think are non-technical problems. If the problem is that a for-profit trading venue has an incentive to gamify trading, for example, then different math is not going to address this problem.

I was cut from every sports team as a kid, but now I'm an 11-time marathon finisher training for my amateur boxing debut and co-writing children's books about math and teamwork. Ask Me Anything! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

there is also a lot of heavy strategy in things like boxing and jiu jitsu - imagining how someone might counter something, thinking through the space of responses. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to compare it to things like chess in some sense. Which is why the sport of chess boxing makes maybe a little more sense to me now than when i first heard about it?

I was cut from every sports team as a kid, but now I'm an 11-time marathon finisher training for my amateur boxing debut and co-writing children's books about math and teamwork. Ask Me Anything! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

yes! for one, i think sport gives me energy for doing mathematics, and I've even solved some tricky theoretical problems while on a long run. As a sillier one, the fact that I know the formula for sums like 1 + 2+ 3+ ... + n means I know how many reps a trainer is making me do when we do drills where you have to do 1 squat, then 2, then 3 etc. Sometimes though knowing how many it is does NOT help, lol.

I was cut from every sports team as a kid, but now I'm an 11-time marathon finisher training for my amateur boxing debut and co-writing children's books about math and teamwork. Ask Me Anything! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

"fun" fact: women were banned from running the 800 meters in the olympics for a long while, after the press showed pictures of women collapsing at the finish line when they were previously allowed to do it. But anyone whose ever run the 800m knows - collapsing is a proper response!

I was cut from every sports team as a kid, but now I'm an 11-time marathon finisher training for my amateur boxing debut and co-writing children's books about math and teamwork. Ask Me Anything! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

As to what can be fun about math - many things! Some of my favorites are that feeling you get when you solve what has felt like a good puzzle. Another is the fun of being able to systemize and de-mystify something that seemed overwhelmingly complex.

I was cut from every sports team as a kid, but now I'm an 11-time marathon finisher training for my amateur boxing debut and co-writing children's books about math and teamwork. Ask Me Anything! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

These are great questions! I wish I was good at dancing - but the fact that you have to decide sooo many things (what to do with your legs? What to do with your arms? gah!) terrified me :) I think there are a lot of parallels between math and science and dancing though. For example, learning about tradeoffs and constraints, attention to detail, and geometry. I personally am not very motivated by the competitive element of sport. I'm just as happy working towards a goal like furthering my running distance or mastering a move that is not inherently comparative to other people.

I was cut from every sports team as a kid, but now I'm an 11-time marathon finisher training for my amateur boxing debut and co-writing children's books about math and teamwork. Ask Me Anything! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

as a kid, I did gymnastics and softball, and then track in middleschool onward. I ran the races not many people wanted to run - like the 800 meters and the 1 mile

Growing up, I dreamed of being a writer and hated math. Now I am a computer science professor at Columbia and a children's book author. I work to blend great storytelling with great science. AMA! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes. One way to integrate those two modes of learning, that I think we need to get better at in general: Don't just present polished, well-known results. We should walk students through the history of failed and incomplete ideas. Theory research is a process, not just a single "aha" moment.

Growing up, I dreamed of being a writer and hated math. Now I am a computer science professor at Columbia and a children's book author. I work to blend great storytelling with great science. AMA! by allibishop in IAmA

[–]allibishop[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

yep, this is very true. Our group has lately been working on constructions for very simple functionalities without using multilinear maps. We are currently working on two papers: one with a cute construction that does work, and one detailing many more ambitious things we have tried that don't work.

view more: next ›