Book Review: For the love of Physics

Sorprendente historia de Walter Lewin, profesor de física en el MIT, dedicado en tal manera a su profesión, que su experiencia trasciende las aulas para llegar al público en general.

El fenómeno resulta alentador, ahora que son tan necesarios estos albaceas de nuestas futuras generaciones. Para aquellos interesados en la excelencia educativa, recomendaría tambien echar un vistazo a What the Best College Teachers Do.

En cuanto al libro, se me antoja fragmentado en varias partes, que aunque reunidas en el texo, me resultan claramente diferentes. Esto hace que en conjunto el texto me resulte un tanto "extraño", aunque asumida esta faceta, el resultado no desmerece en absoluto. Constituye sin reparos un excelente alegato a favor de la docencia y la investigación.

Por un lado estan las experiencias docentes. Éstas, ademas de divertidas para consumo propio, son ilustrativas y claramente didácticas para todos aquellos que nos dedicamos a despertar, utilizando el simil con el fenomeno descrito por Oliver Sacks en su celeberrimo The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, del que existe, por cierto, una interesante versión cinematográfica: Awakenings.

Por otra parte, el autor comparte sus propia labor de investigación dentro del campo de la Astronomía de Rayos X. Sus experiencias son extramadamente valiosas, tanto las relativas a su Holanda natal, con una clase científica/docente sorprendentemente burocrática y oligárquica, como sus reflexiones más personales acerca del ritmo de vida que le impuso la investigación.

Finalmente, el texto contiene bastantes partes divulgativas. Estas son las que me han gustado menos. No estoy seguro del motivo, pero creo que a Walter Lewin hay que verle, escucharle, que es donde ha demostrado su altisimas capacidades. En cualquier caso, se tratan de temas no muy habituales en los texto de divulgación científica, por lo que nuevamente, son muy interesantes.

En definitiva, se trata de una referencia muy recomendable.

Book review: Economix

Excellent reference for those who like economics and comics.

As all you probably already know, economics is a kind of archaeological science: it is only able to explain the past. And it is for this reason that the book seems to be pretty fair concerning with old economists, being more blurry trying to explain recent economical events.

Thus, I really like it when it presents Adam Smith (who almost nobody has read it), David Ricardo or Karl Marx. And all of this explained with a great sequence of cartoons. Regarding with economic situation currently however, the analysis is more complex.

Obviously everyone seems to agree with the consequences: unemployment, economical depression, personal tragedies and last but not least a tidal wave of debt. A majority of people still agree as well with sources of the current problems but definitely nobody agrees with the strategy to end up with this situation.

In any case, more light about the problem is always welcomed, alternative approaches and point of views are needed and way to inform non technical people is highly recommendable.  

To make it better, the book contains an excellent references list. So this is a great reference.

Book review: Cycles of time

Mi primera lectura de Roger Penrose fue su excelente disertación La nueva mente del Emperador, que versa sobre la viabilidad de lo que ha venido a denominar singularidad computacional.

De esto hace más de 15 años, y desde ese momento he seguido atentamente la publicación de sus nuevos libros, y conservo de hecho, como mi guía en el camino de la realidad, algunos de ellos en mi pila de lecturas pendientes.

Así que este verano, armado de una ilusión inquebrantable, me lance, como enamorado de nuevo a leer su tratado "divulgativo" sobre la Comología de Ciclos Conformes. Y claro, paso lo que tenía que pasar.

En resumidas cuentas, se trata de un texto que me ha dejado en estado de shock. Aun tratándose de un texto técnico, de lectura áspera, resulta adorable como la tónica Schweppes. Personalmente lo encuadraría al nivel de mis otras referencias fundamentales, como las aventuras filantrópicas de Mr. Pickwick, el anhelo demencial de Alonso Quijano o los aullidos existenciales de Harry Haller. Todos ellos unidos por el horror.

Todas estas comparaciones no resultarán en absoluto presuntuosas, si os confieso que soy termodinámico, de tendencias entrópicas. Y claro, nada mas comenzar con la lectura, descubro como Mr. Penrose, casi inadvertidamente nos desnuda nuestro tercer principio y sentencia: No way. El resto, bueno, el resto resulta humano, geométrico al fin y al cabo, si bien conforme.

De hecho, desde un punto de vista intelectual me sorprende enormemente que sigamos aun usando utilería tan antigua para tan altos fines. Sin carga alguna de animosidad. Y si bien es cierto, que los geómetras siguen divertidos, no puedo evitar ver estas herramientas con un corsé ontológico.  

Así pues, un texto genial, que incluye referencias adicionales para estudiosos del tema, y alguna otra demostración, que han de mirarse como cuadros de Kandiscky. Ya lo tengo en mi lista de relecturas.

Como es posible que toda esta heterodoxia os hayan dejado indiferentes, os recomendaría esta otra revisión mas ortodoxa.

Book review: Alex's Adventures in Numberland

Atractivo texto divulgativo, que aborda amplias áreas de las matemáticas siempre bajo una aproximación sencilla y atractiva para el público en general.

Tratando temas complejos por naturaleza, Alex Bellos consigue abordarlos siguiendo un camino no convencional, en algunos casos incluso exotérico, y siempre divertido.

Como resultado, se trata de una lectura que incluso podría utilizarse para leer a niños pequeños. Para aquellos deseosos de bucear a mayor profundidad, el texto se acompaña de una lista de referencias, no técnicas, pero sin duda adecuadas para obtener más detalles.
Por lo que a mi respecta, me han gustado especialmente aquellos capítulos donde se habla de la OnLine Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, los espeluznantes relatos de niños practicando Fanzan, y el intrigante disquisición sobre el origen cultural de los números, aritméticas y universos matemáticos, con los que comienza el libro.

En conclusión, como un almuerzo ligero, recomendable.

Meeting with GDG LLeida

Last week, once again, we made the show happened!
This time, it was in Lleida, a really nice city, and thanks to GDG Lleida. Our main goal of the visit was an great conference with university students. However, I enjoyed the meeting with some other scientific & technological stakeholders, developers and startups.

I arrived on the afternoon for lunch with the members of GDG. Then I visited the Scientific and Technological Park, where old army premises have been refurbished on a new and modern technological hub. The park hosts an IT cluster, working mainly on agriculture sector. This is a great example of how technological companies are able to drive innovation and economic development for non IT sectors.

Late, during the evening, the Polytechnic School hosted more than one hundred attendees, many professors and developers from local developers communities. The event pointed out several of Google scalable programs such as GDG, GDL, GDE or GSOC. At the end, we had an interesting Q&A session where we were able to provide insights, guidelines and mentorships for those future computer scientists, developers and engineers.

Later, dinner with developers, i.e. laughs, jokes for geeks and interminable discussions about your preferred programming language....

Great day!
Thank you GDG Lleida!
Thank you Andreu, Joan and Ismael, you are a great team.

By the way, you can find more photos and comments here.

Book Review: Why I left Goldman Sachs

Mas allá de los aspectos relativos a la banca de inversión, el libro refleja interesantes detalles del desarrollo profesional de Greg Smith, aplicables, sin duda a todos aquellos que se han de labrar una carrera profesional en la actualidad.

El autor resulta creíble y a pesar del título no es especialmente duro con la compañía. Es más, yo creo que en algún momento podrían volver a contratarlo. En términos de branding, el efecto podría ser glorioso.

Un detalle interesante: la palabra avaricia aparece por primera vez en la página 39, y encuadrada dentro de lo que en la compañía se llamaba "avaricia a largo plazo". A penas vuelve a aparecer dos veces mas.

En definitiva, un interesante texto para bajar a la playa.

Book Review: The Calculus of Friendship

Excelente librito con tintes autobiográficos que produce sensaciones extremadamente contradictorias.

Para aquellos interesados en la didáctica de la matemática, presenta una experiencia de valor incalculable. En cambio, desde un punto de vista humano, la imperturbable indiferencia del autor alimenta sentimientos de desprecio.

De manera un tanto informal, el texto recopila la correspondencia mantenida  entre Mr. Joffray, profesor de cálculo en educación secundaria, y uno de sus ex-alumnos, autor del libro y matemático de primer nivel.

En contacto con varios ex-alumnos, Mr. Joffray mantiene una incesante correspondencia principalmente sobre cuestiones relativas al cálculo y sobre ésta desarrolla un excelente sistema didáctico, involucrando a sus alumnos de secundaria.

Además del enorme efecto positivo de la conexión inter generacional, la creación de referentes y lo que para mi es mas importante, el acercamiento a los procesos cognitivos aplicados a la resolución de problemas matemáticos, forman un potente cocktail de enormes beneficios didácticos.

Y es que, a modo de reflexión final, a la didáctica matemática, el formalismo introducido por Nicolas Bourbaki[1][2], no resulta le en absoluto conveniente. Incluso recientemente, no pocas voces, denuncian lo desolador del formato paper y la necesidad de replantear lo de poner "el carro antes de los bueyes".

Q.E.D

Book Review: StartUp Nation

Well, the book is very interesting but unfortunately not for their clues or inspiration about startups creation. Instead, it contains interesting details about the history of Israel.

I found very interesting the details about agriculture revolution, where the authors settle the base of the innovation, and social experiences such as the kibbutzs.

Undoubtedly, the foundation of the country was a very risky challenge, solved with agile and entrepreneurial  approach. Nonetheless, there are many others books about this topic and thus, the I missed more about actual entrepreneurship in Israel nowadays.

Attempting to explain historically the development of the entrepreneurship in Israel, the authors introduce uncertainties and at the end, I thought that Israel's miracle could be explained with Black Swan Theory.

I found very interesting, or I would say, also funny, a few stereotypes about Israelites such as chuptzpah, davka or bitzu'ist. But I am not sure if this descriptors are totally replicable.

Therefore if you know about a more rigorous book about innovation and technological transference in Israel, I will more than happy to know it.

Book Review: Warped Passages

Sólo quiero estar en mi matadero, en mi vertedero, sólo quiero descansar [...]  Si me dices que no, si me dices que no, nuestra vida esta doblada
-- Kaluza-Klein

Libro excepcional, repleto de extrañas sensaciones. Particular matadero clandestino, compacto y conexo, de estilo psicotrópico mas que matemático.

Versión matemática del The man who mistook his wife for a hat de Oliver Sacks, de pasmosa sencillez y vertiginosas provocaciones.

Solo eché de menos un poco más de formalismo, o al menos, una recopilación bibliografía.

Book Review: Sync

My own research runs through the story [...] because I want to give feel for what it's like to be working in the trenches of science -- the blind alleys, the twists and turns, the exhilaration of discovery, the metamorphosis from students to colleague to mentor.

-- Steven Strogatz, Sync, The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order

This book is about synchronization in physics, biology, sociology and even human behavior. S. Strogatz presents the historical evolution of the knowledge about synchronization, highlighting how pervasive this phenomenon is. Blending results in different areas, the author presents main figures of the field, main milestones of the research and connections between all of them.

Several scientific areas are covered, showing connections between them. In addition, the books contains many anecdotes and historical details, which make it enjoyable. Even though maths are removed from the text, the author pinpoint the way to dive deeper, including brief description of the technics used for the research and very good references, from which I would like to highlight one of them: The Geometry of the Biological Time, by Art Winfree.

Specially memorable for me were the chapters about small world networks and their implications in fads formation, and about the sleep periods.

So yes, very interesting and highly recommendable.

Questions and Answers

On May 30th 1832, the mathematician Évariste Galois[1][2] wasted all the courage that he was able to gather during his young life, dying that morning being only 20 years old. Since then, many of us have cried his lost.

During his short life, he was able to solve one of the long-standing problem of those days, finding the necessary and sufficient condition for a polynomial to be solvable by radicals.

But moreover, he taught me with the passion for the quest of σοφία, challenges and enigmas, stating which should be the contribution of the greatest minds: questions, not answers[3]:

C'est que malheureusement on ne se doute pas que le livre le plus précieux du plus savant serait celui où il dirait tout ce qu'il ne sait pas, c'est qu'on ne se doute pas qu'un auteur ne nuit jamais tant à ses lecteurs que quand il dissimule une difficulté.

Since that moment, I have loved the questions and the science ways which bring you to the unknown. My own Heart of Darkness.  By the way, nowadays, you have to seek deep before to find great questions. However, for those still aiming for fun, I hear that The Geometry of Biological Time, it is one of the greatest references using questions as argument.

And for that reason, I always have thought that having kids is the best way to innovate, to keeping oneself alive. And always coherent with my thoughts, I am the proud father of three; I am sure you agree with me that those are questions enough: children are also the gold mine of the questions.

Unfortunately, instead write down their questions, most of the time, parents and guardians jump directly to answer, the best, or to complain due to insistence of the wondering kids, the worse. We should mine them carefully, gathering each of their questions, tasting their learning, enjoying every of their wonders.

Knowledge is a matter of adults, and misknowledge a limitation of kids. Do know is so important that we lack the leaning process often, a critical skill in a dynamic society. Therefore, it was sad to find an orgy of answers in TheEdge: just one question per year, and many, too much, answers.

Hence we should honour Socrates, all times maieutics hero, searching for the questions.
Finally before to end, let me share with you one of the most beautiful questions I got, many time ago.

It was almost summer, and I was student in the Computer Science School. As part of my curricula there, I was learning about pseudorandom number generators, based on linear congruential generator, as a way to implement hash functions used by compilers to create symbol tables. I was following, the dragon´s book (Aho, Sethi and Ullman) one of the better references for the subject. And suddenly, it appeared in front of me: in order to avoid collision of the hash function, we should know:

What is the distribution of the primes numbers?

In spite of the interest of the answer, you should better believe me, finding the question was really great.

Fibonacci got a new BB10 smartphone

Last January, RIM introduced Blackberry 10, its new mobile operating system. Few days after, I was attending Blackberry Jam Europe 2013, in Amsterdam. During a couple of days, several hundreds of developers met at the conference, discovering new features, case studies and trends introduced with the new mobile platform.

Motivated with this new technology, I decided to program a simple application for the new operating system. This post explains a little bit about the experience, describing the application and some parts of the code. As always, you can find the source code in my GitHub account, released with Apache 2.0. The project was a simple game, called SmartSeq. The game challenges the user with a sequence of letters, letting the user to guess the intrinsic pattern.
As part of the game, I programmed three different sequences:

• Natural sequence: abcdefghi.....
• Even sequence: acegik....
• Fibonacci sequence: aabceh....

Nonetheles it can be extended very easily with other mathematical sequences. In addition, to be more complete, the game should include offline storage of the scores, and some social integration. However, the initial release is enough to evaluate the development environment for BlackBerry 10.

Programming UI with Cascades

Cascades is a new framework, based on Native SDK and using Qt Libraries. The QNX Momentics IDE allows developers to create great user interfaces, highly integrated with C++ code. User Interfaces are programmed using QML, standing for Qt Modeling Language. Basic UI looks like this:

import bb.cascades 1.0 

// creates one page with a label 
Page {   
    // Binding with c++ code   
    property alias sequenceText: sequence.text 

    // Basic container declaration   
    Container{     
       layout: StackLayout {}
       horizontalAlignment: HorizontalAlignment.Fill     
       verticalAlignment: VerticalAlignment.Fill   
     } 
}

You can take a look of the whole code here. Basically, the user interface includes some labels for information output and two input fields: a text field and a button. You have an UI diagram below:
Only it is worth to mention the way Cascades binds QML objects with C++ code.  Fields are published in QML simply coding at the QML file:

property alias sequenceText: sequence.text 
property alias scoreText: score.text 
property alias clueText: clue.text 
property alias answerText: answer.text 
property alias answerEnable: answer.enabled

Then, you can read / write values from these fields from C++ simply coding: 

_root->setProperty("clueText",_clue_format.arg(initialSeq)); _root->setProperty("sequenceText",_sequence); _root->setProperty("scoreText",QString("%1 pts").arg(_score)); Do publish

variables/objects in C++ code is simple. That makes them accessible from QML. You only have to code:

// create scene document from main.qml asset 
// set parent to created document to ensure it exists for the whole application lifetime 
QmlDocument *qml = QmlDocument::create("asset:///main.qml").parent(this); 

// create root object for the UI 
_root = qml->createRootObject(); 
qml->setContextProperty("SmartSeq",this);

Logic with pure C++

Regarding underlying logic,  all is C++ code. In the case of our game, it is pretty simple. You can find all the declaration at SmarSeq.hpp file. The class diagram is below:

Finally, the three methods from SmartSeq.cpp

• SmartSeq::startGame
• SmartSeq::updateGame
• SmartSeq::resetGUI

implement the dynamic behavior of the game. As you can see, if you would like to extend the game, only have to implement the virtual class Game with another funny sequence.

Conclusions

Honestly, I have found the new framework very interesting. I have to say that my mother programming language is C++, so there are many common ideas which are part of my developer bagage. However, for most of the mobile developers, coming mainly from existing platforms and web programming, this new languages and frameworks can mean high entry barriers. Luckily, they have alternative ways to take advantage of their knowledge in HTML5, Java or Android.

In any case, the documentation, code snippets and IDE (an Eclipse customised) are very appealing. In addition, QNX is a real operating system, without many of the limitation you can find in other customized mobile platforms. My feelings are that all of this could help Blackberry to engage an even bigger developer community.

My only concern is that you will need to pay a VMware Fusion license to use the BB10 simulator. Even though it is a cheap software, it could introduce an unnecessary entry barrier. However, maybe that is precisely what Blackberry is looking for: developers who are willing to pay.

So congrats Blackberry team.

You have done a very good job. 

 

Book Review: jQuery Mobile

jQuery Mobile

This is one of those books where you can find an easy way to start with a new technology. They have to be easy enough, settling the base for the new playground. At the same time, they should include bread crumbs which bring you to more challenging projects.

jQuery is the one most successful programming frameworks for the web, becoming a facto standard. Its mobile release, jQuery Mobile, is helping thousand of web developers in a seamless migration to mobile programming. HTML5-based and supporting many mobile browsers, jQuery Mobile allows developers to program nice and effective user interfaces.

Concerning the book, the first two chapters, The mobile platform and Starting with the framework are the basic for those developers new to jQuery. In any case, both can be read very fast, and you can find always interesting details even if you have experience programming. Nonetheless you have also a fast track starting at chapter 3, UI Components. Altogether with chapter 4, List, and chapter 5, Form components, they forms the core of the user interface programming with jQuery Mobile. If you are familiar with HTML5 programming, web apps and Javascript, these chapters is all what you need to know about fundamentals of jQuery Mobile. Those interested on event handling and more advanced features should read also chapter 6, The Framework and JavaScript, chapter 7, Creating Themes, and chapter 10, Extending the Framework.

Finally, the book contains also a bunch of interesting chapters completing all what you need to create, deploy and distribute your own webapp. This useful information can be found in chapters 8, Installation and Offline Access, chapter 9, A complete WebApp, and chapter 11, Packaging for Stores.

Therefore, despite its basic approach, I found the book highly recommendable for new programmers or jQuery newbies. As part of my reading, I was playing, programming some code which can be found in my Github account. You can reuse it following Apache 2.0 license.

Disclaimer: I know Maximiliano Firtman since 2011, when I was speaking about BlueVia in the conference Adobe en Vivo Buenos Aires. From then, we are been collaborating in other projects, and his advice and experience about developers communities in LATAM, and deep knowledge about mobile and web technologies, has been always very useful.

Book review: In Praise of Slow

In Praise of Slow

Well, I am not sure about who, but someone recommended this book.

And, unfortunately, I decided to start to read it a couple of weeks ago. Maybe I was looking for a peaceful experience or some deep thoughts, but the truth is that I was unable to find more that a bunch of non connected anecdotes. Making the things even worse, the book seems to try to feed the reader's fears,.. Therefore I realized very fast that the book was not worth.

From my point of view, even though the topic would be very interesting, I think it deserves better treatment, maybe more formal... Finally sometimes, a boring book contains at least good references, though, this is not the case either.

Therefore, you should not waste your time reading this book, even if you are not in a hurry. Just relax reading better books.

Book review: The Naked Ape

 The Naked Ape

Lately I have been reading lots of books with strong connection with anthropology, mainly due to I have been reading about human communities in Internet i.e. social networks. The Naked Ape, by Demond Morris is one of the most cited book and luckily last Christmas a friend of mine gave me a bunch of books about science (see here).

Mr Morris explains in his book the human behaviour and culture from a zoological point of view. This was quite provocative in his time, and reading the book nowadays you can still feel your face firing when the author gives his interpretation of many facts under a sexual view.

Anyway, the book contains many interesting explanations, very funny most of the time but a little bit scary others. Highly valuable for business dealing with people i.e. communities, customer, employees.

Even more interesting and modern, Mr. Morris is the author of another useful reference, titled Peoplewatching: The Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language. People watching is "is the act of observing people and their interactions, usually without their knowledge". Using people watching with scientific aims produce interesting insights for social science. Therefore, this reference is now waiting in my reading shelf.

So yes, highly recommended!

Book review: The Checklist Manifesto

The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande is, no doubt, an interesting book. However, it could be condensed in no more than ten pages.

From my point of view, there are two great stories inside the book:

• Management story about how the checklists can be used at many other business areas, beside piloting.
• Medical story about improving surgery and clinical treatment with very simple and cheap actions i.e. just with checklist.

Therefore, you can extract an obvious conclusion from the book:  every discipline should review its processes to take advantage of  checklist.

So yeah, it is recommendable!