I’m grouping posts about ISIT vaguely by topic. Progress may be slow since I am trying to give my wrists a bit of a break from typing.
Author Archives: Anand Sarwate
Csiszár and Körner — bring it back in print!
Via Timothy Chow blogging at Terence Tao’s blog, I learned about outofprintmath, a kind of survey site for people to express their desire to have out of print math books brought back into print. One of the classic texts of information theory by Csiszár and Körner has been out of print for a while. Many grad students have been frustrated its unavailability (even the library copy is often checked out nearly permanently). There are (illegal) ways around this, but a photocopied book is just not the same as a real one you can take to a cafe and read.
Bobak (I think) has added Csiszár and Körner to outofprintmath. It’s number 51. Go vote!
in partial satisfaction of the requirements
I filed my thesis today. It was ok.
ISIT 2008 warning
The next N posts will be about ISIT 2008 (which is where I am right now). Alex Dimakis will hopefully be guest blogging as well, so that’s something to look forward to!
As a quick comment — the exchange rate is very painful right now, as an American.
Quick links (terse due to RSI)
A. Doig, Fewer academics could be the answer to insufficient grants, Nature 453, 978 (19 June 2008). One’s first reaction is “of course!” Seems a bit too back of the envelope. Why not do a cycles of fear analysis?
Peter Greenaway takes on Da Vinci.
A scholarly article on being in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Michael Mitzenmacher notices the absurdity of the correspondence rules for the Transactions on Information Theory. Of course, they are doing away with correspondences entirely, so eventually it should be less of a problem.
Patterns for designing a reputation system — this has been a little topic of discussion in the office recently.
A comic apropos to the name of this blog
This comic made me want to go and read up on my philosophy of probability. For discussion : what concepts are being articulated by the two characters?
Denali and surrounds
Denali National Park and Preserve is a huge national park, somewhere around 6 million acres. Although some hiking is allowed in the park, there aren’t a lot of trails, so a lot of people take these tour buses along the central road through the park. Our bus driver/naturalist had a voice that reminded me of old filmstrip documentaries we would watch in grade school. A little soporific. We took an 8 hour trip, and we saw Dall sheep, caribou, grizzly bears, moose, a fox, hares, ptarmigans, owls, magpies, and other denizens of the woods, taiga, and tundra. The park was founded to save the Dall sheep, a kind of wild sheep that lives way up on the crests of mountains. We saw lots of them from a distance, with lambs prancing about. My simple camera wasn’t up to taking photos of most of the wildlife, but I managed to get a few (somewhat fuzzy) snaps.
Talkeetna and the south side of Denali
The next stop was Talkeetna, which is apparently the town on which the TV show Northern Exposure was based (it’s a great show, in case you haven’t seen it). Talkeetna has the best views of the south side of Denali, which is the Dena’ina name for Mt. McKinley. From left to right, the peaks are Foraker, Hunter, and Denali:
Kenai Fjords and Aialik Glacier
The Kenai Fjords National Park is mostly inaccessible by land — there’s not much in the way of hiking, and a lot of it is occupied by the Harding Icefield, which is a gigantic sheet of ice out of which several glaciers flow. To see the park you need to take a boat into the fjords. We went around the Aialik peninsula to see the Aialik Glacier. We saw lots of Steller sea lions, bald eagles, tufted and horned puffins, harbor seals, a black bear or two, mountain goats, porpoises, and other birds whose names I forget. The sea otters kept their distance so it was hard to see them up close. The ocean was a bit choppy so most of my photos came out a bit blurry, but I managed to snap a shot of some Steller sea lions hauled out on a rock:
Seward, Seward’s Folly
Interestingly, the internet in my hotel is provided by Meraki, which was speadheading an urban mesh network in San Francisco. On Wednesday we took the train from Anchorage to Seward, named for the US Secretary of State who pushed for the purchase of Alaska from the Russians for the sum of $7.2 million. The train ride is very scenic and we passed some beautiful mountains, the Turnagain Arm (named by the navigationally frustrated Captain Cook), and a beautifully clear lake:
In Seward we checked out the Sea Life Center, which had some puffins:
Today we went on a day long tour via boat of the Kenai Fjords National Park and saw the Aialik Peninsula and Aialik Glacier. I haven’t gotten the photos from there yet but if any turned out nicely I’ll post ’em.
An Ergodic Walk 