tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-114052112024-03-13T08:23:01.497-05:00push and pullIn this blog, Laura discusses math, science, and technology along with the cultural role of scientists. Also there are a lot of funny links.Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.comBlogger132125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-86312613625060959652020-06-09T14:04:00.000-05:002020-06-09T14:04:30.756-05:00Black Lives MatterProfessor Rob Sellers, the Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer at University of Michigan, <a href="https://odei.umich.edu/2020/05/29/i-am-so-tired/">wrote a candid and unguarded reflection on the struggles of African-Americans</a> today and throughout history. He wrote it 4 days after the death of George Floyd, as protests were spreading across the nation and the globe. Here is an excerpt:
<p>
<blockquote>"Some people argue that this country, while being built substantially by us, was never meant for us. (They are not wrong.) As such, some of these same people believe that other-worldly optimism is a sign of weakness and is ultimately what has sealed our fate as a people. They question the wisdom in holding out such faith and hope for change in a system (in a society) that has time and time again demonstrated that Black dignity, Black bodies, and Black lives matter a little less. (It is hard to argue with the logic of the question.)
<p>
"These times really do raise for me the question of how long must we wait, plan, work, march, agitate, forgive, and vote before we have a society in which all lives matter equally, regardless of race or color? In my bone-weary tired state this morning, before I even got out of bed, I asked myself why should I continue to fight to try to change a system that has proven time and time again that it simply does not regard me and people who look like me as fully human."</blockquote>
<p>
Professor Sellers' essay is not like the statements denouncing racism that I received from the university president, dean of my college, and chair of my department. It was honest, heartfelt, and raw. It touched me deeply and brought me sorrow.
<p>
It also made me proud to work alongside people like Professor Sellers in support of turning this country into a better place for everyone, especially African-Americans who have struggled for so long. Here are some existing projects at the University of Michigan with which you could potentially get involved -- or start your own.
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<a href="https://wolverinepathways.umich.edu/about-the-program/">Wolverine Pathways</a>
<br>
<a href="https://mstem.umich.edu/about-us-2/">M-STEM</a>
<br>
<a href="https://mez.engin.umich.edu/">Michigan Engineering Zone</a>
<br>
<a href="https://cedo.engin.umich.edu/ai4all/">AI4All</a>
<p>
I believe engineering can provide many opportunities for underserved people, especially Black people, to build better lives and communities. I want to do that work alongside them, and I hope you join me.
Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-34438861778948887242019-07-08T12:27:00.001-05:002019-07-08T12:27:52.582-05:00US Women's Soccer -- World Cup ChampionsI enjoyed reading several articles over the last 24 hours about the US Women's team's victory in the World Cup. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/07/sports/soccer/world-cup-final-uswnt.html">This was one of my favorite.</a><br />
<br />
From the article, a quote from Megan Rapinoe: “Getting to play at the highest level at a World Cup with a team like we have is just ridiculous,” Rapinoe said, “but to be able to couple that with everything off the field, to back up all of those words with performances, and to back up all of those performances with words, it’s just incredible.”
<br />
<br />
When I was a little girl playing soccer with a magazine spread of Mia Hamm's bicycle kick on my wall, I knew that women's soccer was something really special in the United States. But I wouldn't have guessed that it would someday become part of a bigger moment for equal rights in America (and the world), and that is now my hope.<br />
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<a href="https://twitter.com/Nike/status/1147912201652469760">I believe that we will win!</a>Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-44444529206215878412019-05-04T13:02:00.001-05:002019-05-04T13:02:17.559-05:00Blank page“I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.”
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― Shannon Hale
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Writing can be very hard when you start with a blank page. I love this quote to help me get started. Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-11677939756292550112019-04-24T12:17:00.000-05:002020-06-09T14:06:47.982-05:00Faster multiplies with (what else) the FFTA friend sent me <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematicians-discover-the-perfect-way-to-multiply-20190411/">a great writeup of the new fastest known algorithm for multiplying two large numbers</a>. Just like past fastest algorithms, it uses the Fast Fourier Transform, a clever algorithm for computing the Fourier Transform efficiently that was developed in 1965 (and a re-discovery of something Gauss originally developed in 1805). The Fourier Transform is simply a way of changing coordinate system of a signal to the Fourier domain, a beautiful and elegant coordinate system for representing the frequencies of a signal.
</p><p>
As the article points out, this new algorithm may only be used in a limited setting, as hardware implementation constraints dictate. But in cryptography or scientific computing, one may need to multiply extremely large numbers, and the hardware overhead of transferring to an on-chip FFT implementation may become worthwhile. The article itself points out that even the relative computational cost of multiplication versus addition has changed at the hardware level.
</p><p>
That said, the new algorithm achieves what people believe is the lower bound for multiplicative computations. Now on to proving that it is, indeed, the lower bound.
</p><p>
From the article:
</p><p>
<blockquote>On March 18, two researchers described the fastest method ever discovered for multiplying two very large numbers. The paper marks the culmination of a long-running search to find the most efficient procedure for performing one of the most basic operations in math.
</p><p>
...
</p><p>
In 1971 Arnold Schönhage and Volker Strassen published a method capable of multiplying large numbers in n × log n × log(log n) multiplicative steps, where log n is the logarithm of n. For two 1-billion-digit numbers, Karatsuba’s method would require about 165 trillion additional steps.
</p><p>
Schönhage and Strassen’s method, which is how computers multiply huge numbers, had two other important long-term consequences. First, it introduced the use of a technique from the field of signal processing called a fast Fourier transform. The technique has been the basis for every fast multiplication algorithm since.
</p><p>
Second, in that same paper Schönhage and Strassen conjectured that there should be an even faster algorithm than the one they found — a method that needs only n × log n single-digit operations — and that such an algorithm would be the fastest possible. Their conjecture was based on a hunch that an operation as fundamental as multiplication must have a limit more elegant than n × log n × log(log n).
</p><p>
“It was kind of a general consensus that multiplication is such an important basic operation that, just from an aesthetic point of view, such an important operation requires a nice complexity bound,” Fürer said. “From general experience the mathematics of basic things at the end always turns out to be elegant.”
</p><p>
Schönhage and Strassen’s ungainly n × log n × log(log n) method held on for 36 years. In 2007 Fürer beat it and the floodgates opened. Over the past decade, mathematicians have found successively faster multiplication algorithms, each of which has inched closer to n × log n, without quite reaching it. Then last month, Harvey and van der Hoeven got there.
</p><p>
Their method is a refinement of the major work that came before them. It splits up digits, uses an improved version of the fast Fourier transform, and takes advantage of other advances made over the past forty years. “We use [the fast Fourier transform] in a much more violent way, use it several times instead of a single time, and replace even more multiplications with additions and subtractions,” van der Hoeven said.</blockquote>Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-7754570145489205482019-03-13T20:15:00.002-05:002019-03-13T20:15:45.540-05:00March is upon usWith March Madness right around the corner, I found this cool visualization of where top high school basketball players end up in the NBA: <a href="https://pudding.cool/2019/03/hype/">https://pudding.cool/2019/03/hype/</a>.
<p>
I love the visualization. This is taking a single feature for each player -- at what level they are playing -- and visualizing its change over time with bouncing balls. It's not clear to me if the balls spend time at each relevant level, or if they just drop to the "current" or "final" level that the player achieved. The level is discretized, so this also allows for clear visualization. You can see that high school rank is correlated with final level -- but it's not perfect, and indeed the visualizations with lower-ranked players are also enlightening.
<p>
I'm looking forward to seeing where our Michigan players end up in the next few years and beyond! Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-40193393704775071482019-02-04T09:55:00.000-06:002019-02-04T09:55:11.805-06:00<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-effort-to-prevent-blindness-hits-roadblock-11548504004">An article in the Wall Street Journal</a> last Saturday discussed Google's AI system called ARDA (Automated Retinal Disease Assessment) for diagnosing diabetic retinothapy. This sounds like an awesome tool -- and what I love to see -- showing that machine learning will make people's lives better in so many cases. Though, as many machine learning algorithms can be, it's sensitive to data quality. From the article:
<p>
"While ARDA is effective working with sample data, according to three studies including one published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a recent visit to a hospital in India where it is being tested showed it can struggle with images taken in field clinics. Often they are of such poor quality that the Google tool stops short of producing a diagnosis—an obstacle that ARDA researchers are trying to overcome.
<p>
"The stakes are high. If diabetic retinopathy is caught early it can be kept at bay through monitoring and management of the diabetes, said R. Kim, an Indian ophthalmologist who runs the Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, Tamil Nadu, where Google is testing ARDA. More advanced stages need laser surgery that can stop progression. If it isn’t treated, the condition can cause blindness."
<p>
and later in the article:
<p>
"If Google allowed the algorithm to make a diagnosis from blurred images, it could miss small lesions that appear in the early stages of the condition, she said. Google must decide how bad an image can be before ARDA refuses to grade it. “It’s a trade-off. We want them to be able to use cameras that are a little harder to use but at some point it should move into something where it is ungradable,” Dr. Peng said."
<p>
This seems like an ideal setting for <i>active learning</i>, where the algorithm could request input from doctors when analyzing certain images. The algorithm should also train on blurrier or lower-quality but doctor-labeled images, so that it can learn some of the higher-level features that are indicative of retinopathy.
<p>
Still, props to all the companies working hard to improve the health of people around the world. It's a long road and I'm excited people are starting down it.
Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-79903615422314113322019-01-09T10:09:00.002-06:002021-02-26T11:00:57.677-06:00Dogs can't operate MRI scanners...<a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10210435415600419&set=pcb.10210435436600944&type=3&theater">But catscan!!</a>
I need to start posting more -- what better way than to start with a bunch of puns!
(That post is dead, let's try <a href="https://www.pawmygosh.co/16-cat-signs-from-vets-with-great-senses-of-humor/">this one and see how long it lives</a>)
Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-8052968700710469052018-02-14T15:35:00.001-06:002018-02-14T15:35:52.115-06:00like a girlIt's been a long time since I posted! Guess what? I got married! and had a baby!
These last few months with my baby girl <a href="https://always.com/en-us/about-us/likeagirl-how-it-all-started">I have been reminded about the "like a girl" ad</a> from a few years ago. “Yes I kick like a girl, and I swim like a girl, and I walk like a girl, and I wake up in the morning like a girl... because I am a girl.” I can only hope my baby learns how to derive manifold optimization algorithms like a girl.
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QgePexjIlVA/WoSq9OtFKsI/AAAAAAAAe3M/Ls2CY21NF_InnErgEax7LCUYHRrjQaG2ACLcBGAs/s1600/IMAG0742.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QgePexjIlVA/WoSq9OtFKsI/AAAAAAAAe3M/Ls2CY21NF_InnErgEax7LCUYHRrjQaG2ACLcBGAs/s200/IMAG0742.jpg" width="113" height="200" data-original-width="900" data-original-height="1600" /></a>Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-13471172945603356892016-11-09T17:15:00.003-06:002016-11-09T17:15:27.563-06:00for today “You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.” — Winston Churchill Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-34719885646488019072016-03-10T06:08:00.002-06:002016-03-10T06:08:55.383-06:00Google's AlphaGo beats a Go champion For awhile now artificial intelligence has been really good at generating winning game play based on the rules of games. Tic tac toe, checkers, sudoku, chess; in just a few short weeks, one of my students in DSP made an AI that was very good at connect-4. (It didn't beat me-- I was only willing to play it once, though!) However, checking the outcome of every possible move will never be possible for a game like Go unless a completely new paradigm of computing comes about. Still, Google <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/world/asia/google-alphago-lee-se-dol.html">has designed a player that can win</a>. Instead of checking the outcome of moves, AlphaGo learns how best to move based on historical data of real games and its own simulations of games. It keeps trying out new games and it sees what happens. Then it keeps a memory of what to play based on the board configuration using deep learning networks, a sort of dimensionality reduction technique that encodes this experience in several layers of equations that can take any input and give the output of what to play next.
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/03/09/does-alphago-mean-artificial-intelligence-is-the-real-deal">This discussion of what AlphaGo means to the future of AI</a> takes several perspectives on what the implications of a Go-winning AI really are. I agree most with Professor Brunskill. She says, <i>"Go is a fixed game: The rules, possible moves and observable information about the game are all prespecified. AlphaGo is not allowed to invent a new move, nor gain new insight by quizzing its opponent. Fortunately the real world is not like this. From the Hubble telescope to vaccinations, people constantly invent new ideas that allow us to transform how we monitor and shape the universe and achieve previously unimaginable outcomes."</i>
<p>I would add that furthermore, not only because humankind can innovate and create new realities do the rules of life change out from under us. New challenges face us every day, like the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/08/mh370-anniversary-new-report-missing-malaysia-airlines-flight">disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 two years ago this month</a>, or the Zika virus, or locked cell phones of terrorists. Humans have evolved over centuries to face this adversity head-on and adapt for survival; this is exactly why we do innovate, create new measurement technologies, new drugs, and new security protections. Hopefully computers will be able to help us with this process in the not-too-distant future. But before that, machine learning research needs to face the hurdle of learning in a dynamic world.Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-38676155799305376362015-11-13T19:50:00.002-06:002015-11-13T19:50:50.770-06:00Chess game with the DevilI had been meaning to read <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/the-singular-mind-of-terry-tao.html">this article about Terry Tao</a> for the last several months and I finally got around to it on a cozy Friday night at home. I really like it for the way it describes him as such a genial and friendly guy, and the story it tells about even Terrence Tao being intimidated when he arrived at Princeton. My favorite quote though is this one about what it's like to be a mathematician:
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"The true work of the mathematician is not experienced until the later parts of graduate school, when the student is challenged to create knowledge in the form of a novel proof. It is common to fill page after page with an attempt, the seasons turning, only to arrive precisely where you began, empty-handed — or to realize that a subtle flaw of logic doomed the whole enterprise from its outset. The steady state of mathematical research is to be completely stuck. It is a process that Charles Fefferman of Princeton, himself a onetime math prodigy turned Fields medalist, likens to ‘playing chess with the devil.’ The rules of the devil’s game are special, though: The devil is vastly superior at chess, but, Fefferman explained, you may take back as many moves as you like, and the devil may not. You play a first game, and, of course, ‘he crushes you.’ So you take back moves and try something different, and he crushes you again, ‘in much the same way.’ If you are sufficiently wily, you will eventually discover a move that forces the devil to shift strategy; you still lose, but — aha! — you have your first clue."Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-83052663333061331622015-10-20T21:08:00.000-05:002015-10-20T21:08:09.660-05:00Einstein memorialLast weekend I was in DC and I visited the Einstein memorial along with all the other national memorials on or near the national mall. There are so many great quotes memorialized on these walls, but this is one of my favorites:
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"The right to search for truth implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.”
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xBKLZdU720M/Viby67vZSgI/AAAAAAAANSk/4j6IlEnJeWE/s1600/IMAG2545.jpg">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xBKLZdU720M/Viby67vZSgI/AAAAAAAANSk/4j6IlEnJeWE/s1600/IMAG2545.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xBKLZdU720M/Viby67vZSgI/AAAAAAAANSk/4j6IlEnJeWE/s400/IMAG2545.jpg" /></a></div>
</a>Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-69835370352835772012015-09-23T19:18:00.000-05:002015-09-23T19:19:50.107-05:00Probability in your professionWhat does probabilistic terminology <a href="http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2015/09/23/what-does-probability-mean-in-your-profession/">really mean when people use it</a> in your field?
</p><p>
Here is my favorite (image from the linked site above, used without permission, but for educational purposes obviously):
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<img width=400 src="https://mathwithbaddrawings.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/20150921070718_00005.jpg">
</p><p>
In mine we say "with probability 1-delta" and that's exactly the probability we mean. Except don't calculate delta.
Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-80598707233516579872015-08-11T13:29:00.000-05:002015-08-11T13:29:59.631-05:00GömböcI recently learned that <a href="http://focm-society.org/smale_prize.php">when you win the Smale Prize</a> you <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6mb%C3%B6c">get a gömböc</a>!
<p>
My favorite part of the gömböc is its relationship to a turtles' righting response: "The balancing properties of the gömböc are associated with the 'righting response', their ability to turn back when placed upside down, of shelled animals such as tortoises and beetles."Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-36789869142832539282015-07-24T13:53:00.000-05:002015-07-24T13:53:37.089-05:00the entry in which I admit I am reading the phantom tollbooth"That's absurd," objected Milo, whose head was spinning from all the numbers and questions.
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"That may be true," [the Dodecahedron] acknowledged, "but it's completely accurate, and as long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?"Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-80317403231107141322015-04-20T12:19:00.001-05:002015-04-20T12:19:26.835-05:00everyone gather round for a physics jokeThanks to my friend Jim Hall and <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2tm2ub/heisenberg_schrodinger_and_ohm_are_in_a_car/?limit=500">this reddit</a>.
<p>
Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and Ohm are together in a car, driving down the road.
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They get pulled over. Heisenberg is driving and the cop asks him "Do you know how fast you were going?" "No, but I know exactly where I am" Heisenberg replies. The cop says "You were doing 55 in a 35." Heisenberg throws up his hands and shouts "Great! Now I'm lost!"
<p>
The cop thinks this is suspicious and orders him to pop open the trunk. He checks it out and says "Do you know you have a dead cat back here?" "We do now, asshole!" shouts Schrödinger.
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The cop moves to arrest them. Ohm resists.
Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-91208862367058927712015-03-24T13:11:00.000-05:002015-03-24T13:15:22.603-05:00big data is very often bad dataIn my research I study issues with big data that make them messy. Missing data, corrupted data, uncalibrated sensors, biased human participants, inaccurate information on where or when the measurement was taken, measuring X when you really wanted to know Y... etc. A lot of big data proponents act like it's easy peasy to milk all the information possible out of these datasets. It's not!
<p>
What a perfect time to learn this lesson but during <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/making-march-madness-easy.html">March Madness, via a winning prediction algorithm</a> that does so well because it figured out what were the best data to use. This is called "variable selection" in statistics, and we try to do it in an automated way, but often (as was the case here) it's really domain expertise that allows one to figuring out which data are the best for inference.
<p>
One of my favorite <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/opinion/eight-no-nine-problems-with-big-data.html">lists of problems with big data</a> can be found here-- including the fact that "although big data is very good at detecting correlations, ... it never tells us which correlations are meaningful." Here is another nice article from last summer on <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/07/facebook_okcupid_user_experiments_ethics_aside_they_show_us_the_limitations.html">the limitations of big data</a> -- through ok cupid and facebook user experiments. And of course <a href="http://maximumlikelihood.blogspot.com/2014/10/messy-big-data.html">my earlier blog post that gives props to IEEE</a> for discussing the same.
<p>
Every statistical inference procedure -- from simply calculating p-values, to predicting class labels with SVM, to estimating system dynamics with filters -- has assumptions that may or may not hold in practice. Understanding the implications of that is crucial to figuring out how to use big data.
Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-54326438105166180152015-01-08T21:25:00.001-06:002015-01-08T21:27:48.053-06:00parents staying at homeThis is an interesting article <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/01/what-ruth-bader-ginsburg-taught-me-about-being-a-stay-at-home-dad/384289/">by a young man named Ryan Park who chose to take a year off to stay at home with his daughter</a>. Many times statistics are quoted about women taking a future pay cut by having children, but men getting a bonus for the same. This article points to research that indicates a different cause:
<p>
"The fatherhood bonus also dissipates when men become more involved at home. ... Men who decrease their work hours for family reasons suffer a 15.5 percent decline [in future salary], while women’s salaries decline by just 9.8 percent. In other words, having a family helps men in the workplace only if they submit to their traditional gender role."
<p>
Park was a clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I really enjoyed the video interview with Justice Ginsburg. Here is an interesting excerpt:
<p>
Park: "You mentioned your work at the ACLU women's right's project. ... Many commenters, the first thing they talk about was the tactical brilliance of bringing these cases where men were complaining about gender distinctions in the law that they believed harmed them.
Can you talk a little bit about that strategic choice? Was it a strategic choice?
Do you think the course of jurisprudence would have been different had you only brought cases with a female plaintiff?"
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Ginsburg: "I have been complemented for mapping out a strategy, in truth it's the cases that came trooping into the ACLU.
<p>
"The turning point case, Reed v Reed, was a woman plaintiff. A law that discriminated blatantly against a woman, said 'As between persons equally entitled to administer a decedent's estate,
males must be preferred to females.' Great first case.
<p>
"But then, let's talk about
Stephen Wiesenfeld case, because
that's a perfect example of
what's wrong with drawing rigid lines based on gender.
So Stephen was married to a teacher
who had a very healthy pregnancy.
She was in the classroom until the ninth month.
She went to the hospital for the birth of the child. The doctor came out
and told Stephen you have a healthy baby boy,
but your wife died of an embolism. So he at that moment decided that
he would not work full time
until the baby Jason was going to school full time.
And he had heard that the social security system has
benefits for a sole surviving parent with a child under the age of 12 in his care. He applied for that benefit and was told, well we're sorry Mr. Wiesenfeld,
these are mothers' benefits. Why mothers? Because mothers take care of children.
<p>
"Where did this discrimination begin? It began with the woman
as wage earner. She paid the same social security tax as a man paid, but her family did not get the same protection that a man's family would.
That was the majority view of the court, that it was
really discrimination against the woman.
And then one, who later became my chief, he was then
Justice Renquist, said, this is utterly irrational from the point of the baby.
Why should the baby have the opportunity for the care of a sole surviving parent
if that parent is female, but not if the parent is male? So that was my example of how these rigid gender lines in the law hurt everybody."Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-31697054027619226352014-12-08T08:53:00.002-06:002014-12-08T08:53:21.840-06:00maker ChristmasMy amazing friend Angi, the lab director of the Bourn Idea Lab at Castilleja high school in Palo Alto, has written down <a href="http://www.angichau.com/blog/2014/12/04/gifts-for-the-young-makers/">this list of gifts that you can get the young maker in your life</a>. It includes circuit scribe for making circuits with a conductive pen, makey makey for turning bananas into a xylophone, and roominate for creating your dollhouse from scratch including lights, fans, and elevators.
Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-79250130539387161672014-11-20T06:06:00.001-06:002014-11-20T06:06:48.851-06:00"I need the boys to do the real work!"Part two of Thursday morning gender issues on Laura's blog*:
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Have you heard yet that in 2010 Barbie <a href="http://gizmodo.com/barbie-f-cks-it-up-again-1660326671">was an incompetent "computer engineer"</a> in a kid's book by Mattel? Before you think to yourself, "Come on, any book about Barbie being a computer engineer must be good!" -- please, go look at the pictures of the book. (and actually it seems, she was a graphic designer.)
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That excellent critique went viral this week, and Mattel has pulled that book from amazon.com. That's awesome.
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<a href="https://computer-engineer-barbie.herokuapp.com/">Even more awesome is this</a> wherein you can remake Barbie into a real computer programmer making an awesome game.
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* Hopefully we can think of this as "throwback Thursday."Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-89948413492550237862014-11-20T06:04:00.000-06:002015-04-12T10:40:41.727-05:00you are never going to have anybody bringing you anything anywhere anyplace anytime everAt a recent workshop, one of my fellow attendees checked out my blog but was disappointed by the low number of posts about "gender issues." In order to <a href="http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~girasole/?page_id=10">avoid false advertising</a>, I present you my morning laugh: I was happy to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOF3kRT4F80">see this video and remember</a> how Clair Huxtable was one of my first awesome role models for a strong woman (after my mother, grandmothers, and several of my fabulous elementary school teachers... lucky me).Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-55535933392505591342014-10-27T20:08:00.001-05:002014-10-27T20:08:53.086-05:00halloween editionAlso, in time for Halloween, I give you an <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2465539/">alternative to the normal distribution</a>: <img src="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2465539/bin/ch33910.f1.jpg">Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-14554462987762585142014-10-27T20:07:00.001-05:002014-10-27T20:07:05.096-05:00I won't let you downFor all the talking I do about how data will change the world-- science, industry, education, even art-- I also feel strongly that we will always rely on human creativity and talent.
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OK Go has been amazing me with their music and videos for 12 years, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1ZB_rGFyeU">now they've done it again</a>! Truly awesome. And simply the feat of how many people it took to make that video is one thing that makes it so fabulous. Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-19166149053237209352014-10-22T13:04:00.003-05:002014-10-22T13:15:41.590-05:00messy big dataShout out to Michael Jordan at Berkeley <a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/machinelearning-maestro-michael-jordan-on-the-delusions-of-big-data-and-other-huge-engineering-efforts#qaTopicThree">for saying what everyone needs to hear</a>:
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"[If] people use data and inferences they can make with the data without any concern about error bars, about heterogeneity, about noisy data, about the sampling pattern, about all the kinds of things that you have to be serious about if you’re an engineer and a statistician—then you will make lots of predictions, and there’s a good chance that you will occasionally solve some real interesting problems. But you will occasionally have some disastrously bad decisions. And you won’t know the difference a priori."Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11405211.post-43154975107341489942014-10-12T17:52:00.000-05:002014-10-12T17:52:57.245-05:00The Myth of I'm Bad at MathHere is an <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/the-myth-of-im-bad-at-math/280914/">outstanding op-ed about</a> how we should try to improve our math ability in America-- certainly not by teaching less math!
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"In response to the lackluster high school math performance, some influential voices in American education policy have suggested simply teaching <i>less math</i> -- ... The subtext, of course, is that large numbers of American kids are simply not born with the ability to solve for x."
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Thanks to Betsy Blake for sharing this with me!Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06219503214339554117noreply@blogger.com0