mathpunk.net

One of the functions of this blog is to function as a cover letter for happy mutants and power weirdos. So, I want to talk about the sorts of projects i’m looking for now that my master’s degree is ABP (all-but-paperwork), and also describe the projects I’m already working on. If you’d like to participate, or if you have a research direction to point me in, I’d love to talk more over twitter or in the comments.

Writing (in progress)

I remember hearing during NaNoWriMo that we were writing “zeroth drafts.” That is, we were writing to find out what we wanted to write about. I’m at that stage right now, but the theme is the mathematics curriculum of the next century, inspired by Liz Coleman’s brilliant and damning and generally awesome TED talk. You can get a sense of what it’s going to include by pawing through my delicious bookmarks if you’re so inclined.

Comedy (in development)

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it, but I’ve been a comedian with the Portland improv group The Light-Fingered Five for nearly six years. I was so busy in school I barely noticed it’s the longest-running project I’ve been involved with. Anyway, I figure there is an audience of, oh, dozens of people crying out for mathematical comedy, and it’s up to me to step up!

If you’re in this niche, I’d be really interested to hear from you. I especially want to reach those people who may not have a lot of mathematical training, but have an interest. What maths have you heard about that fired your imagination? Suggestions to date: Bayes’ Theorem; agent-based modeling; dimensionality (e.g., how you can fit an arbitrarily long stick in an arbitrarily small box if you are a sufficiently high-dimensional carpenter).

Math for Primates. A podcast about and around mathematics, with medium to high silliness (especially if I can get the co-host I have in mind). I believe that it’s not technically difficult to podcast with call-in ability, and so I’m really hoping we’ll get to have some of you on as guests!

Math Minus Suck (working title). I want to put together some short math video projects. The high concept is something like Zero Punctuation’s and Scott McCloud’s use of imagery and timing. You can see some of where I intend to take it in the slides I made for my master’s presentation.

Projects I’m Seeking

There are a few kinds of projects that I know enough about to know I’d be interested, but not enough to know how to start learning on my own. I have time; I’m seeking experience through chances to (1) work with interesting people, ideally with (2) a nonzero chance of money occurring. Portland rainy season is coming and it would be pretty rad to have boots without holes!

Data and User Interfaces

I am enthralled by the development of data visualization, open data, data mining, and crowdsourced science and journalism. I’ve been throwing interesting links on this sort of thing under the tag of “datamancy.” I use this as a catch-all term for the new ways that people are turning raw data into pictures and stories that people who don’t speak statistics can understand. I know my next aesthetic step is to save my pennies for some Edward Tufte, but I could use a mentor and a project to train myself on the way of the API, and help me figure out whether I should reacquaint myself with programming through R, Python, Drupal, SQL, or some other environment. On the mathematics side, I understand that my favorite math (combinatorics and discrete mathematics) is involved in some of the theoretical problems of understanding huge data sets.

I’m also interested in user interfaces. Haptic interfaces and pervasive computing and pervasive gaming are clearly neat, and I have many outlandish idea zygotes for how such things might make mathematics and science more intuitive and entertaining. But without knowing what the tools make possible, they are just ill-formed ideas.

Education

I am perfectly happy with the mathematical training I got at my home institution, but it is not on the cutting edge of post-internet education. I am running what experiments I can, but a class Google Group does not University 2.0 make, and as an adjunct I lack the freedom to invent my own course from whole cloth. I want to help figure out the role of social media, user-generated media, online community, and any buzzphrases I’ve left out in math and science education. I’m excited about applying for ph.d. programs for Fall 2010, but I have to wonder if I’m missing out on interesting and vibrant projects that are not primarily academic.

Media Production

I used to make videos for school when I was a kid. It was great fun, but it was a hobby. Now that I’m scarfing down TED talks and The Guild, I really want to get back into it, be it in service to mathematics, or just pure comedy. I figure my next step is pure experimentation with a camera and editing software, and I have a friend with both set up. Yet again, I wonder if there’s not a project in progress that I could help out with and pick up some media skillz, apprentice-style.

Other

In reaction to the “But why?” I tend to get when I talk about majoring in mathematics, I usually say something to the effect that mathematics is training in pure problem-solving, and in breaking complex systems into component parts that may be understood. I think this is a great answer when talking about college in a bar, but it’s not the best search term for jobs sites. If you guys know of anyone with problems to be solved (other than the common problem of “hiring freeze”), point ‘em my way, would ya?

I spent the morning processing IFTF forecasts, leading to the mindmap at the bottom (still a work in progress). My goal was to pick out the forecasts most relevant to my goals of superstructing education and learning. I’m afraid I lack the time and energy to explain the details of each of the forecasts; please let me know of any links to good write-ups so I can make this post more understandable to a wider audience.

THE BASIC ORDERING IDEAS
In the green circles are my favorite “flashpoint” forecasts: those forecasts IFTF identifies as useful launching pads for superstructing. The blue circle is the concept of a Superstruct ecology. These are combinations of superstructures which indicate trends developed by the 7000+ players of Superstruct, and grouped together by IFTF. (Aside: during play I desperately wanted to identify these ecologies, but could not develop the real-time data tools that could have spotted them.) I have noted the three I was the most involved with, and a handful of my favorite component superstructures.

RED IS FOR DOING
The Networked Citizens signal is the increasing online presence & expertise of people (i.e., the “My mom is on Facebook!” signal). The red arrow leading up and right toward The Open Fab Initiative by way of Superstructing Reality (“making”) is my belief that increasingly networked citizens will create the textbook of the future. Multimedia explanations of diverse topics in all the learning styles you could want; physical objects tagged with their scientific and historic principles; mobile-phone-based biology and physics labs for virtual dissection of real-world objects; you get the picture. I’m calling this ill-defined idea The Infinite Textbook (twitter hashtag: #infinitext), and my hope is to help citizen scientists (including my favorite scientists, babies & children) get precisely the knowledge they need in the format they need, even when they don’t explicitly know they need it. You’ll hear more on this as I turn it into a dissertation and working superstructure.

The arrow leading down and right from Networked Citizens toward Community Works by way of Post-Newtonian Governance (“connecting”) leads into the EDU, a unit of f2f learning currency (superstructure in progress) and to twitter hashtag #datamancy, which is my codeword for 1) the hard math & computing problems of working with more and larger datasets, and 2) the softer problem of representing very large datasets in a compelling, dynamic, and visual and/or narrative way.

The EDU is my contribution to an open money society, and if it’s a superstructure with legs you’ll hear more later. Datamancy… I dunno what it is yet. It’s part journalism, part citizen science, part Government 2.0. Still collecting pieces for that one.

Quantum Governance is on the map because I think it relates to the problem of academic credentialing. I haven’t quite sussed out how. A trustnet model of evaluation?

NEXT STEPS
More signals, more connections. Basic multimedia skillz. The mathematics of very large datasets. And, of course, the search for research funding. If you know anyone handing out grants to energetic weirdos…

If I’ve done this right, then a cryptic diagram of my right brain attempting to say something about the elements of the Post-Textbook and Datamancy appears below. It may even be right side up!

I love watching babies. They are tiny scientists, experimenting in a complex world with a new user interface (hands, eyes, language).

The ‘citizen science’ signal showing up (from the TYF ‘09 results; their research RSS feed here) suggests we should take that concept more seriously. I have two possible opportunities for superstructing young scientists*, and I’d love feedback on some possible directions.

Firstly: This afternoon, I will be tutoring a very clever kid in math. We’ll be doing some basic homework/worksheet stuff, but I’m planning on asking him if he would like to partner with me in a research capacity; i.e., I’m going to ask him for a job. My idea is that we might be able to learn from each other about superstructing, and maybe work together on something for Digital Open.

Secondly: In about a week, I’m going to be giving a talk at a local, non-accredited religious school. I have pretty free reign over what I’m going to talk about, and so I thought that it might be interesting to talk around the concept of ‘knowing’: how do we know things, how do we confirm or challenge our beliefs, etc. I’ll have an hour with the kids, and I’d like to come up with some sort of exercises that will allow us to learn from each other. (And I’d love to hook them up with Digital Open as well!)

This is pretty handwavey, isn’t it? Hence the call for help finding readings or really good questions that I can process into something fun and cohesive and useful over the next several days. Oh, the joys of improvising everything…

* – ‘young’ means ‘middle-school/high-school’ at this time, though I am definitely going to return to the concept of Baby Scientists in the future. (Did you know babies can learn sign as young as four months!?)**

** – technical note: I have no idea how to intelligently footnote a blog post in Wordpress!

You know that TV ad? Maybe 10, 15 years ago? There’s this firefighter, and the camera’s up close on his plastic visor with flames flickering off it? And he’s kind of hunched over, right—he’s got something wrapped up in his arms, and it’s in slo-mo, and he’s breathing heavily through the oxygen mask. Now he breaks out of the building! And when he opens his arms, there’s a baby wrapped up in the blanket? But, all of a sudden you realize that the firefighter is Obama! And you get all choked up, and you feel this joy in the center of your chest, like, I don’t know, maybe you should help, or give a cookie to someone, or whatever? And you just get this instant sense of like, Wow, that’s what the vagus nerve does, and you had no idea what a vagus nerve was before but now you’re like, “Cool, I know what the vagus nerve does! I didn’t know that before!”? And you don’t even giggle when you say ‘vagus nerve,’ because instead when you say it you just follow it with “yes, yes” and nod your head (although you will probably consider giggling later, a little).

That feeling was what I got from Superstruct.

I’m still processing the experience, which ended yesterday with the Institute for the Future’s Ten-Year Forecast. I’m relieved that it’s over, frankly. I’ve spent the last six months trying to come to terms with Superstruct’s combination of:

1. visionary powers of “systemic thinking and collaborative action”;
2. the potential for highly entertaining experiments resulting in Massive Multiplayers Mocking You Failing Spectacularly In Public Just Like Mr. Fagerstrom Always Said You Would;
3. the Spider-Man level sense of responsibility to, well, quit fucking around. (Aside: I would like to take a moment to advocate that “The Economic Downturn” be rechristened as “The Great Quit Fucking Aroundathon.” Thank you.)

Now, the data analysis that I wished we players could have done has been completed by the IFTF. The Superthreats and Collaborative Superpowers, have become Ecologies and Superstruct Strategies. (These really are useful concepts, even though as my extroversion willpower ran out on Tuesday, I struggled against saying ’supercrowdusergenerationsourcing’ to people just to test my deadpan.)

The serious players were, in our own ways, going through hours of weird metagame theorizing and rapid protovation. We were testing as many simultaneous modes of strategic inquiry as possible, all while suspending disbelief and read/writing the game world in a realtime feedback loop equivalent. It was like sticking your face in a toroidal firehose stream. Now that there are tested strategies (admittedly, tested by lunatics) and a comprehensible set of major future signals, superstructing reality looks downright easy.

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