Monthly Archive for February, 2010

Steven Strogatz is a professor of applied mathematics at Cornell University. He’s been working on networks for a long time, most famously on small-worlds networks. Six degrees, y’all know.

In his latest post on the Opinionator Blog hosted by The New York Times, Strogatz introduces the layman to balance theory in networks. His post depicts the famous saying that the enemy of my enemy is my friend as a balanced triangle. What an easy and elegant introduction that is, definitely worth a read.

And certainly a must read for students taking MVN10.

Freakonomics authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner are going viral (or bacterial, as they muse themselves) with their Podcast. Following the success of their books, they employ the same catchy subtitle is to reveal the hidden side of everything from an economics perspective.

The first episode is on the benefits of wearing a helmet in American Football and the safety features of cars (a.k.a. the death-proof Mercedes) versus some of the more or less unintended and even detrimental consequences thereof. It’s certainly interesting to hear that wearing a helmet largely prevents on-field deaths of football players, while at the same time a helmet is nowadays used as more of a weapon in tackling the opponent. However, if you’ve ever taken an economics class, most of what Levitt and Dubner are pointing out is pretty obvious. For example, the latest episode of the podcast is mostly about endogeneous effects. Cars and lemon, we know, we know.

Still, the podcast is worth listening to, and there is no more convenient way to subscribe to it on iTunes. I just hope they manage to cut down the episodes from a now looong 26 minutes to 10, maybe 15 minutes. Stay within a commute to the office and you’ll have people’s attention to the end, that’s my advice.