Implicit None

Or… Correlation implies causality. This is a logical fallacy. Keep this in mind when analyzing data. There are numerous cases of how people use this logical fallacy nowadays (most typically in newspapers). For example, the following graph shows a correlation between global warming and the number of remaining pirates. But this does not imply (of course), any causality between them. By the way, this graph appears in a Bobby Henderson’s clever parody of the type of arguments in Intelligent Design. ...

I have been on holidays during the last two weeks visiting Argentina. The picture above was taken on top of the Perito Moreno glacier, which is amazing. Most glaciers we found where blueish, including the icebergs found floating in the rivers. The reason for that is that the thicker the ice or snow layer is, the better red colors are absorbed by the layer and only the blue colors are reflected (see a more detailed explanation here). ...

You can’t fold a paper more than seven or eight times. Don’t believe me? Then try it. Thinner paper? Longer paper? It doesn’t matter; you just can’t do it. I used to play this game with my friends which were always amazed and asked for an explanation. Is there any physical or mathematical constrain to do it? Nope: it is simply a matter of scale. If you have a paper of length L and you fold it, the length now is L/2. ...

In a recent Nature article, Albert-Lászlo Barabási and João Gama Oliveira, have found the perfect excuse for lazy people not answering some emails in their inbox: they analyzed the time response of emails and found that they follow a power law probability distribution of the form P(t) = 1/t. In particular this implies that not even the mean response time is finite. Hey! why should you then expect me to answer your emails within my lifetime period! ...

UCSD physicist Jorge E. Hirsch has propose a quick-and-dirty way to measure quality of academic scientist’s output. His method is explained and studied in a paper to be published in the November 15 issue of PNAS. The idea is very simple and it is called the h-index. This number relies on the number of citations our papers have. In particular the h-index is the maximum number h that verifies the following: at least h of papers of an author have h citations each. ...

Authors: Esteban Moro and Henri Schurz Journal: SIAM Journal of Scientific Computing, Volume 29 Issue 4, Pages 1525-1549 (2007). LINK | arXiv Abstract: Construction of splitting-step methods and properties of related non-negativity andboundary preserving numerical algorithms for solving stochastic differential equations (SDEs) of Ito-type are discussed. We present convergence proofs for a newly designed splitting-step algorithm and simulation studies for numerous numerical examples ranging from stochastic dynamics occurring in asset pricing theory in mathematical finance (SDEs of CIR and CEV models) to measure-valued diffusion and superBrownian motion (SPDEs) as met in biology and physics. ...