Set the default to “open”: Reproducible science in the computer age

It has been conventional wisdom that computing is the “third leg” of the stool of modern science, complementing theory and experiment. But that metaphor is no longer accurate. Instead, computing now pervades all of science, including theory and experiment. Nowadays massive computation is required just to reduce and analyze experimental data, and simulations and computational explorations are employed in fields as diverse as climate modeling and research mathematics.

Unfortunately, the culture of scientific computing has not kept pace with its rapidly ascending pre-eminence in the broad domain of scientific research. In experimental research work, researchers are taught early the importance

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January 20th, 2013 | Category: Essays | Comments are closed

Borwein-Crandall article on closed forms appears

An article co-authored by Jonathan M. Borwein and the late Richard E. Crandall on closed forms has appeared in the January 2013 issue of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society. This article tries to answer the question “What is a closed form,” and then explains why obtaining a closed-form expression for a mathematical entity (as opposed, say, to a numerical value) is so important.

The full PDF of the article is available Here.

Here is the introductory paragraph of the article:

Mathematics abounds in terms that are in frequent use yet are rarely made precise. Two such are rigorous

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January 6th, 2013 | Category: News | Comments are closed

An opponent of genetically modified crops changes his mind

Scientists are sometimes pictured by the media, or even by antagonists such as creationists, as completely resolute and inflexible with regards to their theories and assertions. But this is really not an accurate picture. Real scientists do change their minds, particularly when the underlying facts change. As economist John Maynard Keyes is reputed once to have said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?” (Actually, according to a columnist in the Wall Street Journal, the Keynes quote may be apocryphal, but it well illustrates our point).

An interesting illustration of a good scholar’s willingness to

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January 6th, 2013 | Category: News | Comments are closed