Carry the Two

Happy Mathematical and Statistical Awareness Month! To celebrate, hosts Sadie and Ian decided to take a peek behind the curtain and see what it is that pure mathematicians do all day. This episode follows a conversation with University of Chicago Math Professor Benson Farb as he explains how he approaches mentoring future mathematicians and what got him into his field in the first place. Spoiler alert: it’s a lot more about luck and timing than you’d expect!

Find our transcript here: LINK

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

UChicago Math Pizza Seminar: https://math.uchicago.edu/~pizzaseminar/

Math Genealogy Tree: https://www.mathgenealogy.org/index.php

Stereotype Threat Research: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-psych-073115-103235

More on Benson: https://news.uchicago.edu/profile/benson-farb

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

Follow Benson Farb: https://mathematics.uchicago.edu/people/profile/benson-farb/

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 the rest of Season 2 and our collaboration with AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun. So stay tuned!

Find our transcript here: LINK

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

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 have another guest host this episode, with Jude Higdon. Jude is the Chief Information Officer at Bennington College and co-founder of the QSIDE Institute. Jude led the charge during IMSI’s Research Collaboration Workshop that was aimed at addressing small town policing.

Using the road map laid out by the Small Town Policing Accountability (SToPA) Lab, Jude’s team developed a toolkit for procuring, structuring, and analyzing policing data in small towns that lack the resources and systems to make their own data public. By the end of a month at IMSI, Jude’s team had a prototype that can empower small community-based participatory action research.

Find our transcript here: LINK

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

QSIDE Institute: https://qsideinstitute.org/

Small Town Policing Accountability previous research: https://bigdata.duke.edu/projects/small-town-policing-accountability/

Submit a Research Collaboration Workshop proposal to IMSI: https://www.imsi.institute/proposals/collaboration/

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

Follow Jude Higdon: https://www.bennington.edu/about/college-leadership/jude-higdon

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.

Joining the helm as cohost, Bates Professor Carrie Diaz Eaton leads this week’s exploration of how to build a data science tool, not just for local activists, but with them. We begin with how the partnership between the environmental justice leadership program Nuevas Voces and Carrie’s team of interdisciplinary math researchers first met. Then, we hear from the members of Carrie’s Research Collaboration Workshop team as they worked at a breakneck pace here at IMSI to have a completed prototype by the end of a month.

Find our transcript here: LINK

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

Listen to Carrie’s first feature on Carry the Two: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/carrie-diaz-eaton-on-equity-in-policy-documents/id1629115184?i=1000567232994

Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council: https://wrwc.org/wp/

Nuevas Voces: https://wrwc.org/wp/nuevas-voces-graduation/

Submit a Research Collaboration Workshop proposal to IMSI: https://www.imsi.institute/proposals/collaboration/

Providence VECINA: https://math-data-justice-collaborative.github.io/fuertes-pvd/#1

Example similar to VECINA: https://chichives.com/

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

Follow Carrie Diaz Eaton: @mathprofcarrie

This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Sound effect from pixabay.

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

What if you had a way to upload as many selfies as you wanted to instagram or facebook, and still protect yourself from facial recognition software? Turns out, that’s not a pipe dream! In fact, the SAND Lab (Security, Algorithms,Networking and Data) at the University of Chicago is developing all sorts of tools and techniques to help us protect our digital privacy.

Joining us in this episode, Heather Zheng, PhD from the SAND lab, walks us through both examples of current data privacy concerns, as well as new potential threats to privacy. But don’t worry, for each concern, Heather is able to provide a solution to keep your data private.

Find our transcript here: LINK

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

(Guy) Fawkes image/photo masking: http://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes/

Research about tracking you through your home with wi-fi: http://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/adversarialwifi/

Research on recovering your key strokes: https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/keystroke/

Hidden Markov models explained: https://brilliant.org/wiki/hidden-markov-models/

Allyson’s episode about GPT-3: [LINK]

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

Follow Heather Zheng: https://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~htzheng/

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.

How can a teacher know if a student actually wrote their book report, or if a computer did it? Are AI writers coming for journalists’ jobs? What does it mean when a language processing model can write its own computer code upon request? These are all questions currently sparked by GPT-3, a free online natural language processing artificial intelligence by Open AI.

This isn’t your dimestore chatbot. 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? In this episode of Carry the Two, 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:

Use natural language processing to talk with a TV character or historical figure: https://beta.character.ai/

Chat bot using GPT-3.5: https://chat.openai.com/chat

Find out how you can chat with GPT-3: https://lifearchitect.ai/how-do-i-talk-to-gpt/

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/

Undark’s interview with GPT-3 on truth & journalism: https://undark.org/2023/01/07/interview-a-conversation-on-truth-and-fiction-with-chatgpt/

Previous Carry the Two episode on statistical language learning with Ben Reuveni: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ben-reuveni-on-statistical-learning/id1629115184?i=1000577827727

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

Follow Allyson Ettinger: https://linguistics.uchicago.edu/people/allyson-ettinger, @AllysonEttinger

This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Sound effects from pixabay.

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

Darwin first proposed evolution as a way that species change and diverge to fill niches in their environment. This observation led to the first, rudimentary species trees, showing ancestors and descendants across genetic lineages.

But this work is far from settled. As we continue to collect more and richer data sets from species, whether they be plants, bacteria, or mammals like ourselves, researchers need new and better methods for building phylogenetic trees. That’s where Tandy Warnow, from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, comes in.

Find our transcript here: LINK

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

Tandy’s talk for IMSI’s workshop, Eliciting Structure in Genomics Data: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/theory-and-practice-for-large-scale-phylogeny-estimation/

History of the ‘Tree of Life’: https://www.nature.com/articles/540038a

Multispecies coalescent process: https://academic.oup.com/book/26340/chapter-abstract/194642189?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Gene duplication: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_by_gene_duplication

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

Follow Tandy Warnow: https://tandy.cs.illinois.edu/

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.

Imagine trying to unfold 5 layered, thin metallic sheets, each the size of a tennis court without tearing or snagging the material. Now imagine doing it in the vacuum of space, at a distance much farther than the moon, and that a multimillion dollar project relies on your success. That provides a bit of perspective for the massive undertaking that was the James Webb Space Telescope (or JWST).

In this episode of Carry the Two, we hear from NASA lead systems engineer, Mike Menzel, all about designing and testing the solar shield for JWST.

Find our transcript here: LINK

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

JWST’s orbit: https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/orbit.html

General physics of the JWST: https://www.wired.com/story/the-physics-of-the-james-webb-space-telescope/

Video of JWST unfolding (referenced in the episode): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg-YI0T-4Mk

Coordinating the 18 mirrors: https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/wavefront.html

What is a Lagrange point: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/754/what-is-a-lagrange-point/

Why hexagons are a great shape (for telescope mirrors & other uses): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thOifuHs6eY

Controversy surrounding the name of JWST: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/us/james-webb-telescope-gay-rights.html

JWST’s images of Neptune: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/new-webb-image-captures-clearest-view-of-neptune-s-rings-in-decades

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

Follow Mike Menzel: https://webb.nasa.gov/content/meetTheTeam/people/menzel.html

This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions & original score for Star Trek by Alexander Courage.

Sound effect by beetpro at pixabay.

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

We're taking a short break to prepare for the new year and season 2. So stay tuned!

Find our transcript here: LINK

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

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.

Our last episode featuring Statistician-in-Residence Tiffany Christian (at least for now), dives into sampling methods. How can we track animal populations, especially those who share our urban environment with us? Ecologists and statisticians have found methods to track everything from coyotes to Canadian geese and can see how their populations are changing over time.

Find our transcript here: LINK

Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links:

Video explaining the statistics of capture mark recapture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=240806aPHVg

Collection of examples using capture mark recapture: https://www.usgs.gov/centers/eesc/science/capture-mark-recapture-science?qt-science_center_objects=0

Urban coyote research: https://urbancoyoteresearch.com/coyote-info/basics-studying-coyotes

Sampling methodology: https://www.khanacademy.org/math/statistics-probability/designing-studies/sampling-methods-stats/a/sampling-methods-review

Smithsonian story about pack rat research: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/archaeological-treasures-hidden-rat-nests-180973544/

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

Follow Tiffany Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffany-christian-733137b5/

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.