We in the United States are deep in the middle of a major national election, and over half of the world’s population also have elections in 2024. This is why Carry the Two is going to focus on the intersection of mathematics and democracy for our new season.

In this episode, the second episode of our mathematics and democracy season, we speak again with mathematician Ismar Volić of Wellesley College and Director of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy and Theodore R. Johnson, a scholar of Black electoral politics, a military veteran, and a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. We dig into what mathematics has to say about how the USA apportions members of the House of Representatives to states, learn how a fight between Jefferson and Hamilton over rounding led to the first presidential veto, and discuss different techniques for reforming the Electoral College.  

Find our transcript here: Google Doc or .txt file

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

Ismar Volić

Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps, and Representation 

Institute for Mathematics and Democracy

Theodore R. Johnson

A Failing Grade for the Electoral College

Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute

Music by Blue Dot Sessions

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348

IMSI is very proud to announce that Carry the Two is back and with a new co-host, IMSI’s new Director of Communications and Engagement Sam Hansen!

We in the United States are deep in the middle of a major national election, and over half of the world’s population also have elections in 2024. This is why Carry the Two is going to focus on the intersection of mathematics and democracy for our new season.

In this episode, the first episode of our mathematics and democracy season, we speak with mathematician Ismar Volić of Wellesley College and Director of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy and Victoria Mooers, an economics PhD student at Columbia University. We discuss what mathematics has to say about our current plurality voting system, how switching to preference ranking votings systems could limit polarization and negative campaigning, and why too much delegation causes problems for those pushing for Liquid Democracy.  

Find our transcript here: Google Doc or .txt file

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

Ismar Volić

Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps, and Representation 

Institute for Mathematics and Democracy

Victoria Mooers

Liquid Democracy. Two Experiments on Delegation in Voting

Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute

Music by Blue Dot Sessions

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348

Find our transcript here: LINK

Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute

Follow Sadie Witkowski: https://www.sadiewit.com/, @SadieWit

This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

In this classic episode, we explore how GPT-3, a free online natural language processing artificial intelligence by Open AI, does and doesn’t work. Make sure to stick around until the end for an update on how AI is a core demand between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

GPT-3 takes advantage of a whole new method of artificial intelligence research, called neural nets, to create plays, write code, and even roleplay as a historical figure. But what are the limitations to this kind of AI? University of Chicago professor Allyson Ettinger walks us through how GPT-3 manages to sound so human and where and how it fails in interesting ways.

Find our transcript here: LINK

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

When GPT-3 accidentally lies: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/18/1063487/meta-large-language-model-ai-only-survived-three-days-gpt-3-science/

Microsoft’s chatbot that went racist: https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-chatbot-racist

Is GPT-3 a replacement or tool for journalists: https://contently.net/2022/12/15/trends/chatgpt/

Entertainment Community Fund: https://entertainmentcommunity.org/

Science and Entertainment Exchange: http://scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/

AO3 and data scraping: https://www.transformativeworks.org/ai-and-data-scraping-on-the-archive/

Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute

Follow Caitlin Parrish: @caitcrime

Follow Allyson Ettinger: https://allenai.org/team, @AllysonEttinger

This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. 

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

Were you impressed by the underwater scenes in Avatar 2? Have you spent hours trying to figure out how they built the ice wall in Game of Thrones? Everything from big effects like these to smaller hidden visual effects like creating a skyline for an indoor set fall under the purview of visual effects. In this episode of Carry the Two, we get a behind-the-scenes tour of how Fuse FX effects supervisor Jamie Barty from I’m a Virgo leads a team to achieve these effects - and the copious amounts of mathematics that come into play!

Find our transcript here: LINK

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

Fuse FX: https://fusefx.com/

Course on the mathematics behind visual effects: https://www.fxphd.com/details/215/

I’m a Virgo: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13649510/

Entertainment Community Fund: https://entertainmentcommunity.org/

Science and Entertainment Exchange: http://scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/

Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute

Follow Jamie Barty: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4495160/

This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. 

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

Could a fungus really wipe out the majority of humans, as shown in the HBO (Max) series The Last of Us? How realistic is the show’s portrayal of epidemiology? Guest and project scientist at UCLA, Tara Kerin explores these questions and how statistics are a core tool in her field of research.

Find our transcript here: LINK

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

The San Diego Comic Con International masquerade ball: https://www.comic-con.org/cci/newsletter/sunday

How to calculate R0 (R-naught): https://globalhealth.harvard.edu/understanding-predictions-what-is-r-naught/

Tara’s work on HIV: https://cch.ucla.edu/about-atn-cares/

More on R0: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/25/1/17-1901_article

More on the science in The Last of Us: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/17/1157842018/the-science-that-spawned-fungal-fears-in-hbos-the-last-of-us

Entertainment Community Fund: https://entertainmentcommunity.org/

Science and Entertainment Exchange: http://scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/

Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute

Follow Tara Kerin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarakerin/, @tarakerin

This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. 

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

The world, and the US in particular, have a complicated history with nuclear fission. Splitting atoms led to both the development of nuclear energy and weapons with catastrophic power. In the film Oppenheimer, director Christopher Nolan explores these issues.

Here we expand this examination to the seminal work done in the Midwest. In this episode of Carry the Two, we speak with nuclear engineer from the University of Wisconsin, Paul Wilson, and University of Chicago physicist, Robert Rosner. They unveil how the University of Chicago was a key research site that tested theories of Oppenheimer and his colleagues, allowing the United States to win the race in building a nuclear weapon.

Find our transcript here: LINK

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

The first nuclear reactor, explained: https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/first-nuclear-reactor-explained

American Prometheus (novel that Oppenheimer is based on): https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/kai-bird-and-martin-j-sherwin

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/

Nuclear energy and cutting carbon emissions: https://www.wpr.org/nuclear-key-key-cutting-carbon-emissions-combat-climate-change

Rosner elected president of American Physical Society: https://chicagomaroon.com/28020/news/theoretical-physicist-robert-rosner-elected-presid/

Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute

Follow Robert Rosner: https://astro.uchicago.edu/people/robert-rosner.php

Follow Paul Wilson: https://directory.engr.wisc.edu/neep/faculty/wilson_paul

The Science and Entertainment Exchange: scienceandentertainmentexchange.org

This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. 

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

If you’ve seen the first season of Apple TV’s Foundation, you probably noticed how heavily the show relies on ideas based in mathematics and statistics. However, while the idea of a field of research called psycho-history seems far-fetched, some of the show's scenes are much closer to reality than you might realize.

In this episode, we hear from planetary physicist and television science advisor Kevin Grazier about how researchers can help advise TV projects and what that actually looks like.

Find our transcript here: LINK

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov: https://www.goodreads.com/series/43939-foundation-chronological-order

Foundation (tv series) season 1 promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4QYV5GTz7c

The Cassini mission: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/cassini/overview/

Orbital dynamics: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4939-0802-8_10

Science and Entertainment Exchange: http://scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/

Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute

Follow Kevin Grazier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-grazier-1057792/

This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. 

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

We're taking a short break to prepare for our next series of episodes, looking at mathematics and statistics in Hollywood. So stay tuned!

Find our transcript here: LINK

Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (instagram) IMSI.institute

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

Predicting weather is already a difficult statistical challenge, but it becomes even more complex when trying to predict rare weather events. Dan Cooley, a professor in the statistics department at Colorado State University, uses extreme value analysis to model these rare events. In today’s episode, we ask Dan how his work can help explain the changing frequency and severity of wildfires in Colorado and how climate change might be playing a key role.

Check out the episode here: LINK

Find our transcript here: LINK

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

Hear Dan’s talk for IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/transformed-linear-methods-for-multivariate-extremes-and-application-to-climate/

More on the Fire Weather Index: https://www.nwcg.gov/publications/pms437/cffdrs/fire-weather-index-system

Extreme Value Theory: https://towardsdatascience.com/extreme-value-theory-in-a-nutshell-with-various-applications-3260b6a84316

Previous Carry the Two episode on 100-year floods: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/richard-smith-on-100-year-floods/id1629115184?i=1000574780329

Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute

Follow Dan Cooley: https://www.stat.colostate.edu/~cooleyd/

This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Special thanks to Third Pod’s producer Jace Steiner.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.