During the Lenten season, it is customary for the faithful to ‘give up’ something as a disciplinary exercise. Most often, these denials will take the form of “I’ve given up cake” or “I’ve given up candy” or “I’ve given up swearing” and so on. This are fine disciplines to be sure, but it is arguable that a more profitable discipline is one of positive rather than negative denial. By positive denial is meant something like giving up judgementalism or giving up taking people for granted.
Now, generally, we at Blog Wyrm don’t see it as our place to suggest changes to anyone’s discipline but lately we can’t escape that the world as a whole would be well-served if everyone followed one of these positive denials and started acting towards each other with more charity and less ‘attitude’. Sadly, hoping for this may be just as futile as believing in the Easter Bunny. Nonetheless, we can hope and wish all a blessed Easter.
At the heart of most (if not all) computer algebra systems is a tree structure that represents any expression in terms of nodes and leaves. Being able to transition from shallow tinkering with an expression into detailed algorithmic manipulation requires being able to traverse a tree and find patterns within it. This month’s Aristotle2Digital shows how to determine if two tree structures are identical in SymPy, which is the necessary first step in that transition.
Ask any financial advisor and the third thing they’ll likely tell you (after stressing that they are the best while reminding you that past performance is no indication of future returns) that diversification is the key to a sound portfolio. But what does diversification really mean or, more importantly, how does one actually pick assets so that diversification goals are met. This month’s CommonCents looks at the statistics underlying those choices.
The circular restricted three body problem is famous for being effectively impossible to solve in any reasonable analytic way. The practitioner is forced to use a blend focused analytic techniques, numerical modeling, and qualitative/topological arguments based on the structure of the problem. This month’s UndertheHood presents a classic method of the last category: Surfaces of Zero Relative Velocity.
Enjoy!