Non-absolute numbers

As you come back to life (after a series of conference and project deadlines), you are able to recover clever and funny pieces of literature such as the explanation of what is Bistromathics and its relation to the non-absolute numbers.

respice finem


These days, a passage from a book I read a while ago reoccurred to me several times. It sounds interesting and it seems to have a broad applicability in science (and in life, if you wish).

[...]

Look at the unknown. This is old advice; the corresponding 
Latin saying is: "respice finem." That is, look at the end. 
Remember your aim. Do not forget your goal. Think of what is 
required. Keep in mind what you are working for. Look at the
unknown. Look at the conclusion. The last two versions of 
"respice finem" are specially adapted to mathematical problems,
to "problems to find" and to "problem to prove" respectively.

[...]

From: G. Polya. "How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method", page 123, 2nd Edition, 1973.

The only addendum, perhaps, is that the goal may change time to time.

Open Books!


Rainy day. A cup of Ethiopia Harar and a book.


Today, while drinking a good cup of coffee, I came across the Open Library Project. At first, I thought the book reader used by the Open Library Project was the GreenStone (a tool developed by a digital library project in New Zealand at the University of Waikato with a long list of collaborators). As a matter of fact, it is not.

It is good to see that there are a lot of initiatives out there aiming to provide people with open access to books from a whole variety of topics. Projects like Project Gutenberg and Open Library are good examples that these efforts are up and running.

Seeing digital books as a component in the content generation/consumption ecosystem, it would be interesting to see the convergence of open libraries and urban-driven search tools. A good sample is the Google Books that allow readers to find the closest library that has a particular title available.

Perhaps, the next generation of such systems will also suggest what is the coffee shop that serves your favorite coffee to accompany the book you are searching for. :-)

Problem Solving Skills


Some works by George Polya captured my attention recently. In part, this happened because some of his works provide very powerful models to characterize large scale content/resource sharing communities (or systems, if you wish). For example, the Urn Model is suggested by Golder and Hubberman as a model to explain collaborative tagging behavior.

Another interesting work, which I am reading now, is the book How to Solve It. This book brings a methodology to motivate students on the process of strengthening their problem solving skills. I wonder how different it would be if some undergrad professors inspired a little bit of their course mechanics on that material.