Math - The Drafting Table

My Erdős #

I only found out last year (at the Water Chair 3oth reunion) that I had one. An Erdős number is a measure of someone's degree of separation from the prolific mathematician Paul Erdős. Coauthorship on the same peer-reviewed paper counts as a link. A related concept is the

Review

Mini-Reviews 2022

Last year is well in the rearview mirror by now, but I wanted to compile some of my notes from books I read (and a movie) in 2022 while they're still somewhat in my mind. I did a similar post last year and thought it worked pretty well.

Graphical Methods

Nomography

Nomography is the art/science (both are involved) of graphical calculators. Using a nomogram, you can quickly solve an equation (but only the one it was designed for) with the aid of nothing more than a straightedge. It's something I've been interested in for quite a

Economics

Considerations on a Universal Basic Income Scenario

A universal basic income [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income] is an idea that's getting some buzz. I decided to do some rough calculations to see what an implementation would look like. The Scenario A universal basic income (UBI) is a concept where everyone in a country/

DIY

Elementary Cellular Automata in a Hydraulic Computer

Despite the same word appearing in both titles, this post is quite different from the previous one [https://danbscott.ghost.io/open-channel-hydraulics-for-paddlers/]. The inspiration for making the project described in this post came partly from re-reading Anathem [https://danbscott.ghost.io/neal-stephensons-writing/] last year [https://danbscott.ghost.io/2018-year-in-review/]. A

Water

Open Channel Hydraulics for Paddlers

This post combines two of my interests: engineering and paddling. During my undergrad studies (at the University of New Brunswick) I took a course called "Open Channel Hydraulics". Recently I decided to re-read some of my notes and textbooks and think about how they could provide insight for

Book

The Basics of Complexity

This fall I read a couple of books about complexity: A Crude Look at the Whole by John H. Miller [https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/john-h-miller] and Complexity: A Guided Tour by Melanie Mitchell [https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/melanie-mitchell]. For my final post of the year (except

Computer

Week 6: Clojure

After the past [https://danbscott.ghost.io/assorted-links-spring-2018/] two [https://danbscott.ghost.io/st-paul/] posts on different topics, I'm returning to my series on Seven Languages in Seven Weeks by Bruce Tate. The programming language covered in this week's chapter is Clojure, a dialect of Lisp

Computer

Week 3: Prolog

This post continues my series on Seven Language in Seven Weeks by Bruce Tate. As in the previous posts, I'm going to share my notes on this chapter, including a few excerpts, some significant methods, snippets of code, and links for further reading. Week 1 [https://danbscott.ghost.

Math

Circles and Triangles

This post is about a book on geometry that I read last year (finishing up over the holidays). Beautiful Geometry [https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10065.html] was written by Eli Maor and Eugen Jost. Each of its 51 chapters explains a topic in geometry and presents an artistic plate

Math

That's a Moiré

The title of this post comes from this comic [https://xkcd.com/1814/], although it's a topic I've been planning to write a bit about. Moiré patterns [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moir%C3%A9_pattern] are wavy effects that appear when two regular patterns (grids,

Tiling

Stochastic tiling script

A bit over a year ago, I wrote a post about the mathematics of tiling [https://danbscott.ghost.io/a-tiling-primer/]. In this post, I explore some of those ideas further with an octave script I wrote to draw regular and semi-regular [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=semi-regular+tiling] tilings.

Professional

Modelling in Engineering

This topic of mathematical modelling [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_model] is something I looked at for a chapter in my thesis [https://danbscott.ghost.io/my-masters-thesis/], and it is a tool I use in my job [https://danbscott.ghost.io/hanging-out-my-shingle/]. I think it's good to

Water

The Waves Shape the Shore, and the Shore Shapes the Waves

I'm continuing to work my way through books [https://danbscott.ghost.io/a-winter-in-arabia/] that I picked up on vacation [https://danbscott.ghost.io/oregon-trail/]. This post is a review of Waves and Beaches: the dynamics of the ocean surface by Willard Bascom. (I've been really busy

Math

A tiling primer

This post is a brief introduction to the mathematics of tiling, which I find quite fascinating. Tiles [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tile] are a long-standing architectural feature. They have been used in cultures all over the world, but the math underlying how they can cover a space [https://en.

R

Introduction to Non-Parametric Statistics

Non-parametric statistics are something that I don't recall learning much about in any classes I took—just picked them up from my advisors and literature I read while I was working on my master's thesis [https://danbscott.ghost.io/my-masters-thesis/]—but they're something I

Computer

Cellular Automata, in Excel

This post is about cellular automata [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton], a topic in discrete math. I made an implementation of "Conway's Game of Life [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life]" in an Excel spreadsheet. Conway's Game of

Computer

A Simple Spreadsheet App

I've been on the road quite a bit the past few months for my job. In this post I wanted to share about an app that I've found useful out in the field. I'm also planning another post inspired by my travels in a

Math

Ticket to Ride's Adjacency Matrix

As promised [https://danbscott.ghost.io/dont-be-bored-game/], here is a post analyzing strategy for a board game: Ticket To Ride [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHmf1bau9xQ]—one of my favourites. Analysis I had fun learning a bit more about graph theory and using it for the calculations in this

Computer

Mandelbrot Set in Excel

In my previous post [https://danbscott.ghost.io/7-excel-functions-and-features-to-know/], I promised "something fun with complex numbers in Excel". This is it. The Mandelbrot Set The Mandelbrot Set [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set] is famous as a very visually-appealing fractal. It is based on iteratively applying a

Computer

7 Excel Functions and Features to Know

In this post, I thought I'd share some tools and features in Microsoft Excel that I've come across over the years. This post is not intended as a comprehensive tutorial on any of these features; rather, it can be a starting point for learning more about

Book

Nate Silver Makes My Bracket Picks

Apologies to my readers for not having a post last weekend. I was on the road for my job and had to put blogging on the back burner. My post this week is a review of the book The Signal and the Noise: Why so Many Predictions Fail—but Some

Math

Arabic Calligraphy

I recently got a very cool piece of art. So that's what this post is about. First things first, here it is framed and hanging on my wall: The design is Arabic calligraphy of the word al-Hurriyah (الحرية), meaning "freedom" or "liberty". The artist

Tiling

Hilbert Curve

One of my favourite topics in math is fractals. For this post, I drew the Hilbert Curve fractal in octave. The Hilbert Curve [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_curve] is a space-filling curve: although it is one-dimensional (a series of line segments) itself, it covers a two-dimensional area. I

Water

ASM1 in Octave

This post contains an implementation of the IWA [http://www.iwahq.org/]'s Activated Sludge Model No. 1 (ASM1) in octave. Models are a widely-used tool in the design and operation of wastewater treatment systems. For my job, I use a commercial simulator [http://envirosim.com/], but I thought