catherinej

The survey app takes an interesting approach to raising people's awareness of slave-labor conditions, but it doesn't make sense (or only makes sense for a particular demographic) to base calculations on how many items of a particular kind the survey-taker currently owns.

It matters just as much how often the items are replaced (once a year? once every 20 years? once in a lifetime?) and whether they're acquired new or used. In a materially rich society it's possible to buy almost all goods except food, medicine, and energy in the second-hand market. And, with a few tools, the life of many consumer goods can be greatly prolonged.

Some of the most politically and socially conscious (and most slave-labor averse) people I know are low-income old people who remember the Great Depression, live with packed closets, and spend their days repairing hand-me-downs and broken machines. They aren't, obviously, the target market of the slaveryfootprint app, but some of their consumption strategies might mentioned in future versions. There might be future questions along the lines of, "How many broken computers have your repaired in the past five years?" Or, "How many worn and outmoded garments have you mended and re-sewn into something more stylish?"

Excerpt from Paul Lockart's _Lament_:

"At no time are students let in on the secret that mathematics, like any literature, is created by human beings for their own amusement; that works of mathematics are subject to critical appraisal; that one can have and develop mathematical taste. A piece of mathematics is like a poem, and we can ask if it satisfies our aesthetic criteria: Is this argument sound? Does it make sense? Is it simple and elegant? Does it get me closer to the heart of the matter?"

I remember once in some math class at Berkeley doing a sloppy rush job on a proof assigned as an exercise. The TA grading the assignment gave me credit, but wrote: "Isn't this using an H-bomb to kill a fly?" I was embarrassed, but also kind of glad to know that elegance (or lack thereof) did matter.

The color classification scheme used in the visuals (e.g., foundations, combinatorics, number theory, and abstract algebra grouped together in the purple-red range; differential equations and mathematical physics grouped together as blues; topology and analysis in between in the yellow-green range) struck me as natural and significant. Maybe this arrangement of mathematical specialties on a linear color chart corresponds not just library classifications or publication patterns but to some hard-to-describe characteristics of different types of mathematical mind.

In my own limited experience I've never met anyone who loved both combinatorics and differential equations, so it seemed natural to me that these two areas are far apart on the chart. When I read about efforts to recruit more students to math/science/computing, I want to ask what kind math, what area of computing; different kinds of minds thrive in different environments. It's a pleasure to see some these differences laid out visually in the Mathematical Atlas.

(typo edited)

Interesting quote from this re intermittently visible bugs: "Computers simulate determinism."

Actually, when a magazine interviewer asked Jessica about the percent of women among ycombinator-funded founders, I was very interested in her answer. Not because I suspected YC of bias - I didn't - but rather because I thought this percent would say something about the risks and rewards of small technical startups as perceived by women. Being a technical woman working on a startup idea, this information seemed useful to me: a possible glimpse into my personal future.