Michigan State University students had an unconventional math class this week after professor John McCarthy, 57, reportedly stripped naked in Calculus 1 class and began screaming that “there is no f—ing God” and “It’s all an act and none of it’s real.” In the age of laptop computers, the most surprising thing is that the students noticed and looked up from their computers. Presumably one student asked the standard question of “will this be on the test?”
Witnesses said that McCarthy was going through a routine derivative equation when he started to talk about his colleagues and how “they’re all actors.” He added that “It’s all an act and none of it’s real.”
McCarthy was arrested but not actually charged with a crime. He can certainly be charged with indecent exposure but I hope that he is not and that the police show a modicum of discretion. He obviously had a psychological meltdown. Brilliance sometimes comes with such mental issues as vividly shown in movies like “A Beautiful Mind.”
I would also hope that the faculty treats this matter as a mental illness and allows McCarthy to seek treatment rather than simply fire him. I realize it will be difficult for him to return to the classroom, but we need to treat mental illness like other forms of illness. Thus far the school has merely reassigned his classes. I expect that he is unlikely to return to teaching but in my view the school should treat this matter as an illness rather than misconduct. What do you think?
Source: NY Daily News
Good evening, folks. I’m not calling anybody in particular out. Today I had to take a friend (Muslim) to some Jewish religious services (she had asked) and so I did, so I had a large dose of not understanding things (happens to me whenever I get involved in anything religious) and then became quite tired and napped and then woke up and read the posts on this blog and got to not understanding all over again.
So I undressed and I want to let y’all know: none of it is real. 😈
@Slart: I’m sorry if this comes across as snotty,
Please, be as snotty as you want, I have 25 years behind me in business and working for Fortune 500 companies before I retired to academia; it is my opinion, but you do not know what you are talking about.
As for the “italicized” phrase, that is my attempt to describe for a layman audience the difference between forward error and backward error.
For that layman audience:
Forward error is the error in the estimate given by a parameterized equation; but when the parameters are themselves estimates, it is useful to analyze how much those parameter estimates will change if we use different subsets of our data to estimate them.
For a simple example, we can estimate one average on 100 samples. But if we are going to USE the average to make a decision, we might want to see how “stable” the average is, and one way to do that is to take, say, 100 averages by choosing just 75 samples at a time from our 100 samples. We will get 100 different answers, so we can look to see how they are distributed, what the smallest answer was and the highest answer, and this will give us an idea of how close that original average (on 100 samples) may be to the global average of an entire population.
When we are estimating the parameters of distributions, we can do the same thing. Forward error is how far off the model may be. But in business, measuring forward error often means suffering from the error, if I project sales of $1M in the next quarter and get half that, I have a lot of product rotting on the shelf.
But most models are built with existing (i.e. historical) data; if I am predicting sales for next quarter, I am building my model based on experience and expert assumptions. It is silly to build one analytic model based on all the data and then believe it. It is smarter to build hundreds of analytic models, each based on a significant subset of the data. They will produce different parameters in the mathematical model, and seeing how those parameters vary (their distribution) informs us as to sensitivities in our model, and the extremes of the range (or various quantiles, like the 10% and 90%) help us understand the risks we are taking.
The advantage of the backward error approach is that we have the data before we implement the plan, so we can perturb the data a little bit, or take subsets of it, and see how sensitive the parameters (which are just estimates themselves) are to those perturbations.
Here is an introductory article on Sensitivity Analysis.
Back to Slart:
I write here for layman, if you don’t like it, too bad.
As for predicting the stock market, that is not “business” in my view.
As for students needing an understanding of Calculus to perform statistics, robust or otherwise: Oh pleeease, middle school students can understand averages and standard deviations, they could certainly understand robust statistics. I was fitting least squares lines in the ninth grade, I did not need to understand I was setting a derivative to zero to do that.
The analysis of statistic formulae requires calculus to be sure; using statistics almost never requires calculus, and that is the arena in which business operates: They are the consumers of statistical methods, not the creators of them.
By “Business” I do not mean somebody buying and selling stocks (or bonds or derivatives or other paper), I mean people that sell a product or service to consumers. Their problems are not solved by calculus (except indirectly), because there is too much uncertainty in consumer behavior, and consumer behavior is influenced by things like the economy or news that cannot be predicted, except statistically.
Slartibartfast 1, October 6, 2012 at 6:03 pm
Matt,
I’m going to do the worst thing to you that I can: I’ll let everyone here make their own judgement about your character based on your words.
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Works for me.
Matt,
I’m going to do the worst thing to you that I can: I’ll let everyone here make their own judgement about your character based on your words.
slarti,
Mazes can be fun. Fortunately, this kind of maze is easiest b/c I don’t have to follow every path. : )
Slartibartfast 1, October 6, 2012 at 5:40 pm
Matt,
Once the journal makes its decision, I’ll be happy to report it here (and link to the paper if and when it’s published) and when I get to the point where I’m trying to market my services (my goal is Halloween), I’ll provide a link to my website so you can see what I’m selling. Time will tell if my work has the impact that I hope and all I’ve ever wanted is for that judgement to be based on its merits. I don’t see myself as exceptional—I think I am standing on the shoulders of a pyramid of giants and that there are many others who can do the same. If what Tony said is correct, then I’ve been unemployed and on a fool’s errand for nearly three years, so what I said about betting my career that he’s wrong seems like a reasonable interpretation. I’ve given my name on this site (Kevin Kesseler) and consistently claimed to have a MSU BS (1991), an MSU MS (1995), and a Duke PhD (2004)—all in math. I’m sure most of that can be verified on the web (I also have an MA from Duke, but that doesn’t really count in my mind…) and given that I was a grad student in the Michigan State University math department from 1993 to 1995, it’s not very remarkable that I was in a class taught by one of their professors. In any case, I could get the transcript to verify that I was in Professor McCarthy’s class and received a 0.0 for my efforts if I chose. I have no legal training whatsoever, but I’ve been frequenting this blog (and listening to lawyers like Vince Treacy dissecting the birther movement) for 4 years now, so I’ll take it as a compliment that I sound like a lawyer (indeed, I think the highest compliment that I could pay any commenter here is to say that they sound like Vince…). So you can call bullshit on me if you like, but, if so, you’d better be prepared to eat some serious crow, because I’ve represented myself honestly and with as much objectivity as possible. I’m pretty passionate about this because it is my profession and my work is a big part of who I am—you wouldn’t expect the lawyers here to react any differently to those who say ridiculous things about the law, would you? How do you think I’m going to react if you continue to call me a liar? Remember, even if math isn’t magic, this is still good advice:
Do not meddle in the affairs of mathematicians, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
Don’t temp me to use the addendum of one of my favorite wizards, Harry Dresden:
F*ck subtle.
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Your services suck! Piss off. What are you going to do about that?
Matt,
Once the journal makes its decision, I’ll be happy to report it here (and link to the paper if and when it’s published) and when I get to the point where I’m trying to market my services (my goal is Halloween), I’ll provide a link to my website so you can see what I’m selling. Time will tell if my work has the impact that I hope and all I’ve ever wanted is for that judgement to be based on its merits. I don’t see myself as exceptional—I think I am standing on the shoulders of a pyramid of giants and that there are many others who can do the same. If what Tony said is correct, then I’ve been unemployed and on a fool’s errand for nearly three years, so what I said about betting my career that he’s wrong seems like a reasonable interpretation. I’ve given my name on this site (Kevin Kesseler) and consistently claimed to have a MSU BS (1991), an MSU MS (1995), and a Duke PhD (2004)—all in math. I’m sure most of that can be verified on the web (I also have an MA from Duke, but that doesn’t really count in my mind…) and given that I was a grad student in the Michigan State University math department from 1993 to 1995, it’s not very remarkable that I was in a class taught by one of their professors. In any case, I could get the transcript to verify that I was in Professor McCarthy’s class and received a 0.0 for my efforts if I chose. I have no legal training whatsoever, but I’ve been frequenting this blog (and listening to lawyers like Vince Treacy dissecting the birther movement) for 4 years now, so I’ll take it as a compliment that I sound like a lawyer (indeed, I think the highest compliment that I could pay any commenter here is to say that they sound like Vince…). So you can call bullshit on me if you like, but, if so, you’d better be prepared to eat some serious crow, because I’ve represented myself honestly and with as much objectivity as possible. I’m pretty passionate about this because it is my profession and my work is a big part of who I am—you wouldn’t expect the lawyers here to react any differently to those who say ridiculous things about the law, would you? How do you think I’m going to react if you continue to call me a liar? Remember, even if math isn’t magic, this is still good advice:
Do not meddle in the affairs of mathematicians, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
Don’t temp me to use the addendum of one of my favorite wizards, Harry Dresden:
F*ck subtle.
Slartibartfast 1, October 6, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Matt,
I just finished an academic paper (which I alluded to above) which completely falsifies Tony’s point which you quoted (note: it hasn’t been accepted yet). It takes exact solutions with estimated parameters and shows that the behavior is robust with respect to random perturbations in those parameters. The parameter study took me 9 months to program and inspired me to try a project which I believe, if successful, has the potential to revolutionize protein-protein interaction modeling. I’m about a month away from being able to provide this sort of modeling to research labs doing “bench” science. Me. With a little bit of help from friends and colleagues, virtually no financial support, and a margin of error so thin I could see the spectacular failure on the other side. Now, I don’t think my abilities are all that remarkable for a mathematical scientist, and time will tell if my work has merit or if I’m just a fool, but I’ve bet my career that Tony is dead wrong.
raff,
That just proves the point that sufficiently advanced mathematics are magic! Unfortunately my time in Professor McCarthy’s geometry (or algebraic topology) class was less than magical… 🙁
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I have to ask if you’re full of something. You sound like a lawyer.
bettykath,
I’m sorry, but where I go, math seems to follow… In my defense, this is a thread about a math professor and, having actually been a student of the professor in question I could hardly be expected to stay away, right? And once I was here, I couldn’t really ignore people talking about my profession and getting it wrong, could I? 😉
hmmmm, A naked prof, a pres. debate, the syria/turkey scuffle, and math. Is this a new feature? A maze? i kept getting lost.
Matt,
I just finished an academic paper (which I alluded to above) which completely falsifies Tony’s point which you quoted (note: it hasn’t been accepted yet). It takes exact solutions with estimated parameters and shows that the behavior is robust with respect to random perturbations in those parameters. The parameter study took me 9 months to program and inspired me to try a project which I believe, if successful, has the potential to revolutionize protein-protein interaction modeling. I’m about a month away from being able to provide this sort of modeling to research labs doing “bench” science. Me. With a little bit of help from friends and colleagues, virtually no financial support, and a margin of error so thin I could see the spectacular failure on the other side. Now, I don’t think my abilities are all that remarkable for a mathematical scientist, and time will tell if my work has merit or if I’m just a fool, but I’ve bet my career that Tony is dead wrong.
raff,
That just proves the point that sufficiently advanced mathematics are magic! Unfortunately my time in Professor McCarthy’s geometry (or algebraic topology) class was less than magical… 🙁
sonofthunderboanerges 1, October 5, 2012 at 9:48 pm
I was trying to say he was suffering from AMS (acute mountain sickness) or altitude sickness. Denver I believe is 5,000 feet above sea level.
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http://adventofdeception.com/denver-international-airport-new-world-order/
Slarts,
I thought it was magical when I passes Geometry! 🙂
Bron,
Math is an abstract intellectual concept—on its own it follows logical rules and all of it’s claims are provably true or false (Gene—I know this is a vast oversimplification and not strictly true in light of Gödel’s theorem, but it still has plenty of truthiness). Applied math, on the other hand, is the use of that perfect logical framework in an attempt to understand aspects of the universe (which can be quite messy). The “map” produced in this attempt is ALWAYS an imperfect description of the “territory”—yet the map of Newtonian physics is a “workable approximation” that was, while in a absolute sense incorrect, close enough that you’ve gone your entire career as an engineer without making an error by using it. Now we’ve been producing maps of the territory called “physics” for centuries and we’ve gotten pretty good at it, but even though we’ve only been applying mathematics to biology for decades, we’re already starting to get miraculous results. The application of math to economics (i.e. the science of economics) is in its infancy, but there is absolutely no reason to suspect scientific empiricism will be any less successful a strategy there than it was in physics. After all, scientific business models don’t have to be perfect—they just need to be good enough to make money…
I mentioned my friend’s view of magic as it was pertinent to the discussion on the thread and while I didn’t say I agreed with it, I would note that it is logically consistent (unlike many of the things which you believe). A logical consequence of the belief that science is magic is that applied math is, essentially, virtual magic. Which allowed me to paraphrase Tolkien in a way that very much appealed to me as a SciFi/Fantasy geek. I never said that was what I believed, so shame on you for making it into an inaccurate straw man (math is in no way an approximation to the physical world—it is a perfect intellectual construct which can be applied to approximate the physical world. This type of application of mathematics is known as (hard) science).
Why don’t you walk over until your nose (or your belly) touches the wall and think quietly about how you were wrong until you understand. 😛
Tony C. 1, October 5, 2012 at 4:16 pm
The beauty (and problem) with calculus is that it gives exact solutions, and fails when exact solutions are not available. But exact solutions presume exact inputs, and exact inputs are usually not available. Also, an exact solution to approximate inputs is usually not robust at all.
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You’re smarter than you think. Garbage in, garbage out.
slarti:
math is just a model, you cannot really accurately model reality. You can get close enough for workable approximations but then you could probably do that with observation and experimentation which is what we do anyway to make sure the math actually works in describing a physical object or process.
math isnt magic, it is just a gross approximation of the physical world.
If I walk toward a wall, eventually my nose [or belly] touches the wall. I do get to the wall.
Mike,
I agree with you completely about 24.
Tony C,
Regarding magic, I had a conversation with a quantum physicist recently (a professor at MSU) who argued that science is magic—in other words, magic is just a word to describe a sufficient understanding of the universe to do something that looks miraculous. Or to paraphrase Clarke: any sufficiently advanced technology IS magic.
You said:
Tony,
I’m sorry if this comes across as snotty, but you stepped all over my profession (applied mathematics) and, in my opinion, got most of it wrong. It might be virtual instead of physical, but a corollary of my friend’s version of Clarke’s law would be: Sufficiently advanced mathematics are magic.
Which suggests the following paraphrase…
Do not meddle in the affairs of mathematicians, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
Something every voter should read:
The 2012 Election – My Attempt to Be a Responsible Voter
Excerpt:
SoTB,I’ve seen Syriana and know it was based on facts, though with dramatic license. In a Clooney vein “Men Who Stare at Goats” also had a basis in reality, but was nowhere as adept in execution as the former.
As far as Turing being gay it really is irrelevent to his greatness, but it is of interest only in how much the homophobia of his time stifled even greater successes. Otherwise who cares what anyones sexual preferences are as long as they’re not pursued predatorially?
One other thing though, it makes me uncomfortable to be called Dr., even as a complement. I merely have a Masters with Post Masters institute training as a psychotherapist. Slarti is a Dr. as is OS, who is far more qualified than myself in the field of psychology. That’s not to say that I’m not really terrific, I am, so I don’t need the honoraria to puff my already inflated ego up. 🙂
@All – Earlier I said: “Regarding the POTUS’ [Obama] performance yesterday I concur with the analysis that he was suffering from a bout of soroche. It happens a lot in Denver with flat-landers from Chicago and DC.”
I was trying to say he was suffering from AMS (acute mountain sickness) or altitude sickness. Denver I believe is 5,000 feet above sea level. He is not used to that altitude. Also it was his wedding anniversary and with a beautiful woman like Michelle would you rather be with Jim Lehrer and Mit Romney? ugh! (LOL)