I was checking the stats for this blog the other day (muwahaha stalking), and noted that 66.180.236.228 hits quite frequently. However, I have no idea who that is. Going to that location was uninformative, and a quick Google search told me 66.180.236.228 reads many blogs. So to 66.180.236.228, thanks for reading my blog, and feel free to identify yourself…
Tag Archives: blog
no longer a travesty
Thankfully, this blog is no longer the number one hit for “ergodicity” on Google. But in the event that people come here anyway, I present some definitions, courtesy of Wikipedia, Richard Durrett, and others.
The ergodic hypothesis says that averaging over time and averaging over the statistical ensemble are the same. So let’s say I have some box spitting a random number every second. If the random process controlling the box is ergodic, then I can find certain quantities — for example, the average — by either averaging the observed variables that I see, or by calculating the “theoretical” average from the statistics governing the box.
We would, of course, like most real-world systems to be ergodic, since we can then measure them and make estimates based on the measurements. The hope is that these estimates will (in the limit as you get infinite data) converge to the “real” value. Of course, this leads to an existential bind, because we have no idea if there is a “real” underlying value.
It’s a tricky thing, ergodicity, and getting to the bottom of it reveals a lot about how we view the randomness in our world, the assumptions we make on it, and how we try to control it.
spam/hippies/lenini/racism
I looked through the comments on this excuse for a blog, and noticed that spammers have taken to auto-spamming blog entries. For the example on mine, see the entry I want to axé you a question. I guess Radiohead inspires penis growth advertisements. I would delete them, but it is awfully amusing that there are two comments made in December on a post from June. Who is going to read that far back? Me, I guess.
Yesterday afternoon I went to the hippy-feira, a sort of artisan street fair that happens every Sunday in Ipanema. Apparently it used to be real hippies, but now it’s hippies with cellphones and distribution systems. Ram’s sister Lakshmi helped me negotiate some good deals, since the rule there is to haggle, and as I noted before, I should have learned more Portuguese.
Later we went to a free concert on the Copacabana beach — the first act was Maria Rita, and she was three shades of enh. The second act was Lenini, which makes one thing of some sort of opera guy, but in fact was more rockin’ out. Hard to place him in terms of American music, but he veered near Blues Traveler, Spacehog, and RHCP at times. Not too close, but in a nebulous middle ground between the three. The metropolitan bus systems in Brazil are cooler than the US. There’s a second guy who sits in the bus and gives change (within reason), so the driver doesn’t have to be responsible for fare collection as well. Much smarter than in Boston, where they used to get pissed off at you for not having exact change all the time.
So my inability to detect racism in Brazil was explained by Ram, who said that discrimination here is based on economic grounds, and less on skin color. But there is a correlation between the two. Some of the complexities of 19th century race are exemplified by the author Machado de Assis. Thanks to Dan Good for introducing me to him. The hosting site of that previous link is pretty cool in its own right. The Library of Latin America series has a wide range of information about 19th century Brazil, from history to literature to essays and commentary. All of Machado de Assis’s novels have a very informative essay at the front to put the novel in context. Well worth reading!
the web : misleading you 24/7
It was pointed out to me by the illustrious Rikin Vasani that google now ranks this site as the #1 hit for “ergodicity.” This alone should speak volumes about the efficiency of google as a research tool.
I was cast in Marat/Sade as one of the four singers. It is going to be awesome. And by awesome, I mean totally sweet. This play is one of those ones that you read and it changes your life. Or at least your outlook on life. Or at least your outlook on how dramatic art can function.
A well known result in the literature states that “all the world’s a stage” [2]. Thus it suffices to consider only those outlooks on theater in order to prove theorems for outlooks on the world. This technique was first used by Artin [1]
to prove some simple results on dilations. It is clear that we have the following lemma:
Corollary: Marat/Sade is an awesome play that will change your life.
[1] E. Artin. “Algèbre géométrique.” 1962.
[2] W. Shakespeare. As You Like It. Act II. Scene 7.
second look
Well, I slept on it, and when I woke up in the morning I didn’t want to destroy the whole site and replace it with a “under construction” sign. Saw Matrix II with my roommate last night in Emeryville. There’s this gigantic mall (open air, since it’s California), and nobody there. I mean, the place is huge, and it’s summer, so you would think the movie theater would at least have a line. The whole place felt like Disneyland, minus the huge scary walking cartoon characters. Which, incidentally, are usually women, even if the cartoon character is male. I’m not sure why that is, but oh well.
Maybe I will write something this weekend. Idle hands are the devil’s playground after all.
Tinkering
I’ve been mucking around with the stylesheets on this site, and have gotten little-to-nothing done for my prelim studying or research, or anything that would make me a useful human being. But basically, the system seems to work. Which is good, because I was half-afraid I was going to break it into tiny pieces. Added the reads section, and will probably add an eats section later. And maybe for some real nerding I’ll have a mini-research journal, but that seems a bit excessive. I’d have to make some more progress on my research.
Next on the agenda — the EWB website. I guess I need to learn CSS for real soon, or I’ll really be confused.
Well, here I go…
In a fit of impulse-shopping online I bought the domain name ergodicity.net and then decided to buy some hosting and put a site up. I wouldn’t expect too much of it though.
An Ergodic Walk 