Category Archives: Mathematics

One for Dad

A loving tribute, a thank-you and a card trick: all from the heart.

My Dad died earlier this month: I don’t yet know when or if the tears will stop.  He was a big man and he leaves a big hole, but filled with happy memories.  I can’t exactly say I modelled myself on Dad: that was a bit beyond me.  But I did follow his example where I could in the basics of honesty and hard work: painfully slowly at times perhaps but I hope I got there in the end.  We were different, but each proud of the other I think.

Of course, I now wish I’d managed to spend more time with him in the last few years.  The past year alone, he suffered strokes, heart problems, survived sepsis, countless other infections, pneumonia, a collapsed lung and saw off Covid-19.  But the last illness was just one too many although, as always, he fought it to the end.  He was just short of 90 and lived a full and worthwhile life: you can’t ask for anything more.

This isn’t the place for a poetic eulogy.  But, even just in an academic sense, the older I’ve got, the more I’ve realised just how much I owe to Dad.  I was never really a gifted student, despite what people might think.  And I proved many times over the years the ease with which I could get into trouble of one sort or another.  If it hadn’t been for the start that Dad gave me, I’d be in a very different place now.

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Brexit and Conway’s Life!

Not entirely sure if this is numerology or gematria or what!  But those of you into finding meaning in this sort of thing, try putting the following pattern …

Into a Conway’s Life simulator such as https://playgameoflife.com/

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Advanced Machine Learning and Data Mining: A New Frontier in Artificial Intelligence Research

Special Issue Information: Advanced Machine Learning and Data Mining: A New Frontier in Artificial Intelligence Research (Big Data and Cognitive Computing Journal)

Call for Papers

Without data, there is no machine learning (ML), so there is no doubt that big data and ML are inextricably linked. However, much research to date has tended to treat them as separate areas of development. As we are confronted with today’s difficult problems and the wealth of held data continues to grow, it is vital that new, innovative ways of examining, testing, and using big data to produce useful information are both researched/developed and integrated. Whether this be for the social good (health diagnostics, for example) or corporate gain (competitive advantage), given the exponentially increase in both the volume of data and the velocity by which it is generated, the need for the expansion of direct cooperation of mining big data with ML is long overdue. For this Special Issue, as the individual fields of advanced machine learning and advanced data mining are well established, the focus will be specifically on their intersection: the point―or points―at which one aids, needs, or enhances the other.

This new frontier is almost boundless, but will eventually become the norm. Automatically learning and improving from experience without being explicitly programmed gives great opportunities. The quality of the data being used, its speed of acquisition, and the effectiveness of processing are all of vital importance―if Microsoft’s AI chatbot Tay taught us anything at all, it is certainly this.

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Another Week, Another Nonsense Graph from the Government!

So another week passes by with yet more truly awful science from the UK Government

(Yes, it may well be true that the real Covid-19 scientists are working well – and properly – in the background but it’s becoming increasing obvious that ministers in front of the camera either don’t – or won’t – understand what they’re being told.)

This probably sums it up as well as anything could:  https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2020/05/10/boris-johnsons-covid-19-update-speech-went-down-like-a-cough-in-a-lift/ but the focus of this particular post is that graph above.

What the hell is that?

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