Carry the Two

IMSI is very proud to announce that Carry the Two is back and with a new co-host, IMSI’s new Director of Communications and Engagement Sam Hansen! We in the United States are deep in the middle of a major national election, and over half of the world’s population also have elections in 2024. This is why Carry the Two is going to focus on the intersection of mathematics and democracy for our new season. In this episode, the first episode of our mathematics and democracy season, we speak with mathematician Ismar Volić of Wellesley College and Director of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy and Victoria Mooers, an economics PhD student at Columbia University. We discuss what mathematics has to say about our current plurality voting system, how switching to preference ranking votings systems could limit polarization and negative campaigning, and why too much delegation causes problems for those pushing for Liquid Democracy.   Find our transcript here: Google Doc or .txt file Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Ismar Volić Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps, and Representation  Institute for Mathematics and Democracy Victoria Mooers Liquid Democracy. Two Experiments on Delegation in Voting Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Music by Blue Dot Sessions The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348

Find our transcript here: LINK Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Sadie Witkowski: https://www.sadiewit.com/, @SadieWit This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

In this classic episode, we explore how GPT-3, a free online natural language processing artificial intelligence by Open AI, does and doesn’t work. Make sure to stick around until the end for an update on how AI is a core demand between the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. GPT-3 takes advantage of a whole new method of artificial intelligence research, called neural nets, to create plays, write code, and even roleplay as a historical figure. But what are the limitations to this kind of AI? University of Chicago professor Allyson Ettinger walks us through how GPT-3 manages to sound so human and where and how it fails in interesting ways. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: When GPT-3 accidentally lies: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/11/18/1063487/meta-large-language-model-ai-only-survived-three-days-gpt-3-science/ Microsoft’s chatbot that went racist: https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/24/11297050/tay-microsoft-chatbot-racist Is GPT-3 a replacement or tool for journalists: https://contently.net/2022/12/15/trends/chatgpt/ Entertainment Community Fund: https://entertainmentcommunity.org/ Science and Entertainment Exchange: http://scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/ AO3 and data scraping: https://www.transformativeworks.org/ai-and-data-scraping-on-the-archive/ Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Caitlin Parrish: @caitcrime Follow Allyson Ettinger: https://allenai.org/team, @AllysonEttinger This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme.  Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

Were you impressed by the underwater scenes in Avatar 2? Have you spent hours trying to figure out how they built the ice wall in Game of Thrones? Everything from big effects like these to smaller hidden visual effects like creating a skyline for an indoor set fall under the purview of visual effects. In this episode of Carry the Two, we get a behind-the-scenes tour of how Fuse FX effects supervisor Jamie Barty from I’m a Virgo leads a team to achieve these effects - and the copious amounts of mathematics that come into play! Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Fuse FX: https://fusefx.com/ Course on the mathematics behind visual effects: https://www.fxphd.com/details/215/ I’m a Virgo: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13649510/ Entertainment Community Fund: https://entertainmentcommunity.org/ Science and Entertainment Exchange: http://scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/ Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Jamie Barty: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4495160/ This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme.  Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

Could a fungus really wipe out the majority of humans, as shown in the HBO (Max) series The Last of Us? How realistic is the show’s portrayal of epidemiology? Guest and project scientist at UCLA, Tara Kerin explores these questions and how statistics are a core tool in her field of research. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: The San Diego Comic Con International masquerade ball: https://www.comic-con.org/cci/newsletter/sunday How to calculate R0 (R-naught): https://globalhealth.harvard.edu/understanding-predictions-what-is-r-naught/ Tara’s work on HIV: https://cch.ucla.edu/about-atn-cares/ More on R0: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/25/1/17-1901_article More on the science in The Last of Us: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/17/1157842018/the-science-that-spawned-fungal-fears-in-hbos-the-last-of-us Entertainment Community Fund: https://entertainmentcommunity.org/ Science and Entertainment Exchange: http://scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/ Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Tara Kerin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarakerin/, @tarakerin This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme.  Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

The world, and the US in particular, have a complicated history with nuclear fission. Splitting atoms led to both the development of nuclear energy and weapons with catastrophic power. In the film Oppenheimer, director Christopher Nolan explores these issues. Here we expand this examination to the seminal work done in the Midwest. In this episode of Carry the Two, we speak with nuclear engineer from the University of Wisconsin, Paul Wilson, and University of Chicago physicist, Robert Rosner. They unveil how the University of Chicago was a key research site that tested theories of Oppenheimer and his colleagues, allowing the United States to win the race in building a nuclear weapon. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: The first nuclear reactor, explained: https://news.uchicago.edu/explainer/first-nuclear-reactor-explained American Prometheus (novel that Oppenheimer is based on): https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/kai-bird-and-martin-j-sherwin Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/ Nuclear energy and cutting carbon emissions: https://www.wpr.org/nuclear-key-key-cutting-carbon-emissions-combat-climate-change Rosner elected president of American Physical Society: https://chicagomaroon.com/28020/news/theoretical-physicist-robert-rosner-elected-presid/ Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Robert Rosner: https://astro.uchicago.edu/people/robert-rosner.php Follow Paul Wilson: https://directory.engr.wisc.edu/neep/faculty/wilson_paul The Science and Entertainment Exchange: scienceandentertainmentexchange.org This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme.  Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

If you’ve seen the first season of Apple TV’s Foundation, you probably noticed how heavily the show relies on ideas based in mathematics and statistics. However, while the idea of a field of research called psycho-history seems far-fetched, some of the show's scenes are much closer to reality than you might realize. In this episode, we hear from planetary physicist and television science advisor Kevin Grazier about how researchers can help advise TV projects and what that actually looks like. Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov: https://www.goodreads.com/series/43939-foundation-chronological-order Foundation (tv series) season 1 promo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4QYV5GTz7c The Cassini mission: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/cassini/overview/ Orbital dynamics: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4939-0802-8_10 Science and Entertainment Exchange: http://scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/ Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Kevin Grazier: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-grazier-1057792/ This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme.  Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

We're taking a short break to prepare for our next series of episodes, looking at mathematics and statistics in Hollywood. So stay tuned! Find our transcript here: LINK Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (instagram) IMSI.institute Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

Predicting weather is already a difficult statistical challenge, but it becomes even more complex when trying to predict rare weather events. Dan Cooley, a professor in the statistics department at Colorado State University, uses extreme value analysis to model these rare events. In today’s episode, we ask Dan how his work can help explain the changing frequency and severity of wildfires in Colorado and how climate change might be playing a key role. Don’t forget to listen to Dan’s work through a geophysical lens, over at Third Pod from the Sun! Check out the episode here: LINK Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Hear Dan’s talk for IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/transformed-linear-methods-for-multivariate-extremes-and-application-to-climate/ More on the Fire Weather Index: https://www.nwcg.gov/publications/pms437/cffdrs/fire-weather-index-system Extreme Value Theory: https://towardsdatascience.com/extreme-value-theory-in-a-nutshell-with-various-applications-3260b6a84316 Previous Carry the Two episode on 100-year floods: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/richard-smith-on-100-year-floods/id1629115184?i=1000574780329 Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Dan Cooley: https://www.stat.colostate.edu/~cooleyd/ This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Special thanks to Third Pod’s producer Jace Steiner. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

Researchers become interested in their fields through all sorts of unique paths. Today’s guest, Angel Hsu of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, came to climate research from a public policy background. She uses her work to help inform local communities how policy decisions affect different groups’ risk to extreme heat and the heat island effect. Specifically, she uses local and global data sets to track heat stress across city neighborhoods and show how those can differ based on neighborhood income. Don’t forget to listen to Angel’s work through a geophysical lens, over at Third Pod from the Sun! Check out the AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun with Angel: LINK  Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Hear Angel’s talk for IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/detecting-and-attributing-disparities-in-urban-heat/ Data Driver Lab website: http://datadrivenlab.org/urban/ Carry the Two’s previous episode on Angel’s work: https://www.imsi.institute/podcast/tiffany-christian-on-the-heat-island-effect/ Carry the Two’s previous episode on community science: https://www.imsi.institute/podcast/kathryn-leonard-and-axel-carlier-on-crowdsourcing-for-math-research/ Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Angel Hsu: @ecoangelhsu, https://publicpolicy.unc.edu/person/hsu-angel/ This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Special thanks to Third Pod’s producer Jace Steiner. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

Today we speak with a non-mathematician who uses mathematical tools to understand our planet’s past climates and what they might be able to tell us about our future. Matt Huber, from Purdue University, tells us how the paleoclimate had sudden, rapid shifts in the climate that our current climate models aren’t good at predicting. So, if we’re on the precipice of another rapid shift, we might need to start employing different models. And don’t forget to listen to Matt’s work through a geophysical lens, over at Third Pod from the Sun! Check out the AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun with Matt: LINK Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Hear Matt’s talk for IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/the-dynamics-and-impacts-of-moist-heat-stress/ Younger Dryas event in Day After Tomorrow: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/02/25/metro/researchers-say-ancient-day-after-tomorrow-scenario-could-have-been-caused-by-melting-icebergs/ What is paleoclimatology: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/paleoclimatology-RL/ Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Matt Huber: https://www.eaps.purdue.edu/people/profile/huberm.html This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Special thanks to Third Pod’s producer Jessica Buser. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

Turn on the news during the spring and you’ll hear how seasonal allergies are being made worse by climate change. But it turns out the seasonal sniffles are some of the smallest health consequences of our rapidly shifting climate. Droughts and floods don’t just damage the local ecosystem, they also have real, measurable effects on human health. In this episode of Carry the Two, we hear from University of Washington’s Kristie Ebi, who has helped lead research on the health impacts of climate change. And don’t forget to listen to Kristie’s work through a geophysical lens, over at Third Pod from the Sun! Check out the AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun with Kristie: LINK HERE Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Kristie’s presentation at IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/detection-and-attribution-of-the-health-impacts-of-climate-change/ Climate change and allergies: https://abc7chicago.com/pollen-allergies-spring-allergy-climate-central-report/12931026/ Center for Health and the Global Environment: https://www.washington.edu/research/research-centers/center-health-global-environment-change/ Kristie’s shared Nobel Peace Prize: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2007/summary/ Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Kristie Ebi: @kristie_ebi, https://globalhealth.washington.edu/faculty/kristie-ebi This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Special thanks to Third Pod’s producer Katrina Jackson. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Turn on the news during the spring and you’ll hear how seasonal allergies are being made worse by climate change. But it turns out the seasonal sniffles are some of the smallest health consequences of our rapidly shifting climate. Droughts and floods don’t just damage the local ecosystem, they also have real, measurable effects on human health. In this episode of Carry the Two, we hear from University of Washington’s Kristie Ebi, who has helped lead research on the health impacts of climate change. And don’t forget to listen to Kristie’s work through a geophysical lens, over at Third Pod from the Sun! Check out the AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun with Kristie: LINK Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Kristie’s presentation at IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/detection-and-attribution-of-the-health-impacts-of-climate-change/ Climate change and allergies: https://abc7chicago.com/pollen-allergies-spring-all...

We are continuing our collaboration between Carry the Two and the American Geophysical Union’s Third Pod from the Sun with another episode! Jane Baldwin’s research centers issues of equity when it comes to understanding climate change’s impact on the global population. In this episode, we hear how Jane gets clever with data sources to better understand risk and vulnerability to tropical cyclones in the Philippines and discusses the importance of building useful climate models. And don’t forget to listen to Jane’s work through a geophysical lens, over at Third Pod from the Sun! Check out the AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun with Jane: https://thirdpodfromthesun.com/2023/05/12/solving-for-climate-do-go-chasing-hurricanes/ Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Jane’s presentation at IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/the-missing-links-in-projecting-impacts-from-extreme-events/ Jane’s Philippine’s study: https://www.janebaldw.in/publication/baldwin-direct-2019/ & https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/wcas/aop/WCAS-D-22-0049.1/WCAS-D-22-0049.1.xml The origin of “All models are wrong…”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Jane Baldwin: https://www.janebaldw.in/, @janewbaldwin This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Special thanks to Third Pod’s producer Devin Reese. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

Welcome to the first episode of Carry the Two’s collaboration with the American Geophysical Union’s Third Pod from the Sun! In this episode, we get our feet wet with physical oceanographer, Maike Sonnewald. Maike explains how the ocean currents interplay with our warming atmosphere and what that means for our climate. Using machine learning to build climate models, Maike analyzes how things like greenhouse gases are warming our oceans and changing the pattern of currents. And don’t forget to listen to Maike’s work through a geophysical lens, over at Third Pod from the Sun! Check out the AGU’s Third Pod from the Sun with Maike: https://thirdpodfromthesun.com/2023/05/05/wave-and-means/ Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Hear Maike’s talk for IMSI’s Confronting Global Climate Change: https://www.imsi.institute/videos/elucidating-ecological-complexity-unsupervised-learning-determines-global-marine-eco-provinces/ Upcoming paper from Maike: The Southern Ocean supergyre: a unifying dynamical framework identified by machine learning. In press, Nature Communications Earth & Environment. A review paper on ML in oceanography: Bridging theory, simulation, and observations of the global ocean using Machine Learning, 2021, Environmental Research Letters Paper on the North Atlantic: Revealing the impact of global warming on climate modes using transparent machine learning. 2021, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems For a math and AI twist on predicting ocean dynamics: Explainable Artificial Intelligence for Bayesian Neural Networks: Towards trustworthy predictions of ocean dynamics. 2022, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems. Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Maike Sonnewald: https://msonnewald.com/ This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Special thanks to Third Pod’s producer Anupama Chandrasekaran. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI) is funded by NSF grant DMS-1929348.

We’re still celebrating Mathematical and Statistical Awareness Month here at Carry the Two. This time, we’re taking a look at how anyone can get involved with research and help move mathematics (or statistics) forward. We explore the differences between citizen science, community science, and crowd sourcing and how one group of researchers used an international scavenger hunt to collect data.  Find our transcript here: LINK Curious to learn more? Check out these additional links: Peer-reviewed article of today’s paper: The 2D shape structure dataset: A user annotated open access database - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0097849316300528 Follow-up research: T. Blanc-Beyne, G. Morin, K. Leonard, A. Carlier, S. Hahmann, A Salience Measure for 3D Shape Decomposition and Sub-parts Classification, Graphical Models 99:22-30, September 2018. K. Leonard, G. Morin, S. Hahmann, A. Carlier, A 2D shape structure for decomposition and part similarity, International Conference on Pattern Recognition, p. 3216-3221, Dec 2016. Other examples of community/citizen science/crowdsourcing: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.4300 NASA's Harp Project: https://listen.spacescience.org/ National Geographic’s collection of community science projects: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/citizen-science-projects/ Collection of Community Science Projects in a searchable database: https://scistarter.org/finder?active=true Peer-reviewed article on crowdsourcing in science: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11846-022-00602-z Peer-reviewed article on community science:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901119300942 History of GISH items: https://gishwheshistorian.tumblr.com/2022items Follow more of IMSI’s work: www.IMSI.institute, (twitter) @IMSI_institute, (mastodon) https://sciencemastodon.com/@IMSI, (instagram) IMSI.institute Follow Kathryn Leonard: https://www.oxy.edu/academics/faculty/kathryn-leonard Follow Axel Carlier: https://ipal.cnrs.fr/axel-carlier-personal-page/ This episode was audio engineered by Tyler Damme. Music by Blue Dot Sessions. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI...