Next week, our lab (CEREMADE) is celebrating the 80th birthday of our friend and colleague Ivar Ekeland with two days of talks and chats. (Registration is free.) Ivar is a leading figure in nonlinear functional analysis, calculus of variations, and mathematical economics. But also a moral beacon for many of us! He was the chairman of CEREMADE, the president of Paris Dauphine, a research chair at UBC, and the head of the Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences (managing Banff International Research Station). He wrote (and will write further) highly popular books on mathematics and is heading the sustainable development training at Dauphine.
Archive for climate change
celebrating Ivar Ekeland⁸⁰ (24-25 Sept)
Posted in Books, pictures, University life with tags 80th birthday, Association des Universitaires pour le Respect du Droit International en Palestine, Banff, Banff International Research Station, climate change, convex analysis, Hamiltonian mechanics, Ivar Ekeland, mathematical analysis, Pacific Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Paris, partial differential equations, UBC, Université Paris Dauphine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, vulgarisation on September 14, 2024 by xi'anNature tidbits
Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags AI, Brave New World, climate change, Clockwork Orange, CO2 levels, cover, frogs, Huber loss, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, loss functions, machine learning, Nature, neural networks and learning machines, neuroscience of religions, sauna, temperature anomalies, ZRR on September 2, 2024 by xi'an
- a “technology and tools” long article on picking the “right” loss function when constructing an algorithmic predictor or another ML tool,
although the author remains vague about the “rightness” part (with an incorrect entry for Huber loss). The message is however clearly that tuning the loss function to the problem one wants to address is (obviously) key. With additional advices about properly handling outliers, avoiding overfitting, and correctly modelling noise. In short, run a proper statistical analysis! - a call for neuroscientists not to be afraid of studying religions, which should sound like an obviousness, but believers and religious leaders are often so touchy about their faith that running representative scientific studies of the “brain processes associated with religiosity and spirituality” may prove inaccessible. I also find the statement “researchers might be able to get a better handle on what (if any) alterations happen in people’s brains in the rare instances when religious belief turns to radicalized action or sectarian hatred” closer to Brave New World or Clockwork Orange than to the purpose of Nature!
- the warmest summer ever, ever, ever…
- a scary story from South Korea where an academic got sentenced to two years in prison for sharing data with Chinese collaborators on “national core technology”, a case reminiscent of similar ones earlier in the US. And where the academic researcher is again seen as the sole culprit instead of their university or the government sharing the responsibility. In France, the imminent threat to turn mathematics and statistics labs into restrictive regime zones (ZRR), with much heavier constraints on visitors and students, and on publication contents, carried by the researchers themselves, pertains from the same tendency. (A personal illustration of the induced administrative absurdities: my datascience lab being next to a biomedical ZRR lab, I am not allowed to use the lift shared by both units, but can nonetheless reach the same spot using the nearby stairs.)
Ocean’s three [blue wave#6]
Posted in pictures, Running with tags bacteria, climate change, France, gold medal, Invalides, Lago Llanquihue, Olympics, Paris, Paris 2024 Olympics, pollution, pont Alexandre III, Puerto Montt, rain, Seine, triathlon, women's Olympic triathlon on August 3, 2024 by xi'an
a vote against Nature [cover]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags air pollution, climate change, ecological disaster, far-right, French elections, French politics, Front National, insecticides, low emission zones, Nature, RN, Russia, thermal cars, wind farms on June 21, 2024 by xi'an
ad absurdum
Posted in Statistics with tags climate change, Darjeeling tea, dry spell, ecological disaster, heat wave, Le Monde, M Magazine, Sunday morning, weekend edition on May 27, 2024 by xi'an
