{"id":17823,"date":"2018-10-08T08:21:06","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T13:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=17823"},"modified":"2018-10-08T08:21:06","modified_gmt":"2018-10-08T13:21:06","slug":"youre-using-what-to-do-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/10\/08\/youre-using-what-to-do-what\/","title":{"rendered":"You’re Using What To Do What?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes applications of mathematical fields can leave me boggled. Topology<\/em> is about deformation of one shape into another, and include insights into which shapes can never be reached from a starting shape. This comes from “Shape Shifters,<\/a><\/em>” Devin Powell (Discover<\/strong><\/em>, October 2018), which also includes this:<\/p>\n

For a long time, these bizarre shapes \u2014 and others revealed by topology \u2014 were mere curiosities. But then they started showing up in surprising places, like black-and-white digital photographs. About 10 years ago, [Gunnar] Carlsson, the Stanford mathematician, was analyzing photographs a colleague had cut up into 9-pixel blocks when a pattern emerged. Plot the blocks as points on a graph with nine dimensions, one for the value of how dark each pixel is, and a shape emerges that looks like a Klein bottle. Carlsson applied this knowledge to invent a new way to digitally compress images to smaller sizes. A company he founded, AYASDI, has used topology to look for patterns in genes involved in different cancers, for instance, and bank transactions that indicate fraudulent activity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wait, what? How does this work? I can’t even guess, no intuition on this one at all.<\/p>\n

But for all those who whine about the money that goes into obscure scientific investigations, results like this should be a redoubtable retort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes applications of mathematical fields can leave me boggled. Topology is about deformation of one shape into another, and include insights into which shapes can never be reached from a starting shape. This comes from “Shape Shifters,” Devin Powell (Discover, October 2018), which also includes this: For a long time, \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17823"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17839,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17823\/revisions\/17839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}