Audio-Visual Machine Listening

It sounds really exciting:

PhD Studentship in Audio-Visual Machine Listening

Centre for Digital Music, Queen Mary University of London

Applications are invited for a 3-year PhD studentship to undertake research into audio-visual analysis of sound events, with an emphasis on non-speech (music and environmental) sounds.

Research in audio and video signal processing has traditionally taken place in different research groups, but audio-visual processing is now increasingly being linked. In speech processing, for example, image processing methods for lip reading can help improve speech recognition performance, particularly in noisy environments. One promising technique for audio-visual analysis of particular interest in this project is “sparse representations”, which looks for a representation of an audio or video signal using a small number of non-zero elements, which can then be associated together.

Nesin Mathematics Village, random faces

Random and unedited photographs taken in the Village tavern at lunch time. Earlie post about the Mathematics Village is reposted here.

Naif Baskurt, the builder. The Village continues to grow, and grow beautifuly.

Builder

Mathematicians: Sukru Yalcinakya (left), on a visit from Australia, and the founder of the Village, Ali Nesin

Asli Korkmaz, Ali Nesin’s Personal Assistant

Ali Nesin’s university student

School boys

School kids: the boy is from Ankara, the girl is from Afyon.

Gold Sand in a Stream

Republished from old post, 27 July 2007

(some links are broken)

I type this post and every time when I raise my eyes from my laptop, I see a sunset over one of the saddest landscapes in the world: dry hills and abandoned, decaying olive tree groves of Asia Minor (now in Turkey), the land that was one of the cradles of human civilisation.

I am here because the charming tiny village of Sirince, hidden in hills a few miles from the glorious ruins of the fabulous ancient city of Ephesus, was chosen by my old friend and co-author Ali Nesin as a site for his Mathematical Village, and because I volunteered to spend my vacation teaching a course in his Summer School.

I suspect that Ali Nesin’s establishment could be somewhat unbelievable to the Western reader. Therefore the rest of my post is devoted solely to an explanation what is Mathematical Village and why I am teaching here.

Philosophy of the Classification of Finite Simple Groups

Adverticement:

At the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science, a full-time and fully funded position for a Ph.D. student is available for a four-year period, starting at the earliest moment (as early as 1 July 2009).

The topic of the research project, funded by the FWO-Vlaanderen (Research Foundation Flanders), is: “Argumentative networks: a still missing integration of philosophical approaches to argumentation with AI-models, with an application to mathematical practice.” The intended application is the classification theorem of the finite, simple groups. We are therefore looking for a student with a philosophical training, but with the required mathematical background to handle such proofs.

Please send your CV and a letter of motivation to Jean Paul Van Bendegem (jpvbende@vub.ac.be) before June 15, 2009. A more detailed project description can be found at http://www.vub.ac.be/CL WF/activities/argumentativenetworks.pdf

A phrase from the project description:

The choice of the case study, viz., the classification theorem of
finite, simple groups, is mainly determined by the fact that no single mathematician can comprehend the entire proof, hence, it has to be ‘shared’ in the community of mathematicians.

My colleagues with experience of the Classification of Finite Simple Groups took the statement very seriously. A typical response: 

I believe that there are quite a few mathematicians involved in the  proof, e.g. Aschbacher, Lyons, Smith,  Solomon,  Thompson, etc. each of whom understands the entire proof.

I have perhaps to add that the mathematician quoted above also understands the entire proof.

Some papers andbooks on history of CFSG:

1. M. Aschbacher, The Classification of the Finite Simple Groups.
2. M. Aschbacher, The Status of the Classification of the Finite Simple Groups. 
3. M. Aschbacher, Highly complex proofs and implications of such proofs.
4. D. Gorenstein, The classification of fnite simple groups, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (New Series) 1 (1979), 43-199. MR 80b:20015.
5. D. Gorenstein, Finite Simple Groups: An Introduction to their Classication, Plenum Press, New York, 1982. MR 84j:20002.
6. D. Gorenstein, The Classication of Finite Simple Groups, Plenum Press, New York, 1983.  MR 86i:20024.
7. D. Gorenstein, The classication of the fnite simple groups, a personal journey: the early years. MR 90g:0103. 
8. R. Solomon, A brief history of the classification of the finite simple groups. (Contains extensive bibliography.)
9. J. G. Thompson, Finite nonsolvable groups.

Naming Infinity

Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity, by Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor. Strongly recommended.

Naming Infinity: A True Story of Religious Mysticism and Mathematical Creativity, by Loren Graham and Jean-Michel Kantor.

*Starred Review* How did a country wracked by civil war, devastated by famine, and overshadowed by tyranny incubate a major breakthrough in modern mathematics? In the origins of descriptive set theory, Graham and Kantor (both self-described secular rationalists) confront the puzzling cultural dynamics that converted religious mysticism into mathematical insight. The authors particularly probe the surprising way that a religious heresy (Name Worshipping) emboldened the Russian mathematicians who finally surmounted the theoretical difficulties that had overwhelmed earlier pioneers in set theory. Though readers unschooled in higher mathematics may stumble over some concepts (such as denumberable subsets or the hierarchy of alephs), the authors generally succeed in translating principles into a nonspecialist’s vocabulary. Readers thus share in both the perplexities of the French rationalists defeated by the mysteries of infinite sets and the triumphs of the Russian scholars who penetrated those mysteries by deploying strategies strangely similar to devotional practices for naming the Divine. But the authors illuminate more than the psychology of a mathematical revolution; their narrative also exposes the tangle of ideological ambitions and sexual passions that transformed some brilliant researchers into treacherous tools of Soviet inquisitors and doomed others as their victims. A candid and searching analysis,restor ing human drama to seemingly sterile formulas.

Review
The intellectual drama will attract readers who are interested in
mystical religion and the foundations of mathematics. The personal drama will attract readers who are interested in a human tragedy with characters who met their fates with exceptional courage.
–Freeman Dyson

At the end of the nineteenth century, three young French
mathematicians–Émile Borel, René Baire and Henri Lebesgue–built on the work of Georg Cantor to conceive a new theory of functions that in a few years transformed mathematical analysis. When their work met with skepticism, they began to doubt it and abandoned further investigation. In Russia, under the leadership of Dmitry Egorov, a group of Moscow mathematicians picked up the torch. Animated by a mystical tradition known as Name Worshipping, they found the creativity to name the new objects of the French theory of functions. And they changed the face of the mathematical world.
–Bernard Bru, emeritus, University of Paris V

A passionate confluence of mathematical creation and mystical
practices is at the center of this extraordinary account of the
emergence of set theory in Russia in the early twentieth century. The starkly drawn contrast with mathematical developments in France illuminates the story, and the book is electric with portraits of the great mathematicians involved: the tragic, the unfortunate, the villainous, the truly admirable. The authors offer an account of Infinity that is brief, deft, serious, and accessible to non-mathematicians, and their evocation of the mathematical circles of the period is so intimately written that one feels as if one had lived, worked, and suffered alongside the protagonists. Graham and Kantor have given us an amazing piece of mathematical history.
–Barry Mazur, Harvard University

This book is a wonderful and gripping account of a very important chapter in the history of 20th-century mathematics. Graham and Kantor challenge many ”common wisdoms” and common myths about mathematics, religion, and mathematicians. It reminds us that the story behind the mathematics is often much more exciting than mathematics itself.
– D.Zeilberger (Rutgers University ).

Traders to Teachers

muriel:

Americans have a programme called “Traders to Teachers“, designed to turn unemployed finance professionals into math teachers in three months. And if they didn’t take math in university, no problem…. 

Scott Carter: Visualisation of Mathematics

See some nice pictures.

Decision-blindedness

A letter from a colleague:

This article on “decision-blindedness” could be viewed as pointing to some more general phenomena. I suspect that analogue to that, ”thought”, “idea”, “talent” -blindednesses should exist. If that’s the case, this would have implications for mathematics teaching.

I had a brief post on “change blindedness” at my other blog.

What is “numeracy”?

ACME and JMC are seeking views towards forming a joint mathematics definition of ‘numeracy’ within 5-19 education and clarify its relationship with ‘(functional) mathematics’. Respondents are asked to address the following questions and provide details of their role and phase. Responses should be sent to David Martin (answers@ntlworld.com) by Friday 1 May 2009 to enable us to produce a discussion document before our Thursday 11 June 2009 JMC meeting. Given your/your organisations particular perspective on mathematics learning and teaching, please could you indicate:

1. what you feel the terms ‘numeracy/numerate’ mean
2.  how you feel they relate to the terms ‘functional mathematics / mathematically functional’
3. how you feel both the above terms fit with the wider terms ‘mathematics/mathematically skilled’.

Mathematics by handwaving

Gesturing helps students develop new ways of understanding mathematics, according to research at the University of Chicago.

[with thanks to muriel]