Category Archives: Psychology

Explosions – now in glorious 2D!

Dennis Sullivan tells the story of attending a dynamics seminar at Berkeley in 1971, in which the speaker ended the seminar with the solution of (what Dennis calls) a “thorny problem”: the speaker explained how, if you have N pairs of … Continue reading

Posted in Dynamics, Psychology, Visualization | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Imagining the plane

The other day at lunch, one of my colleagues — let’s call her “Wendy Hilton” to preserve her anonymity (OK, this is pretty bad, but perhaps not quite as bad as Clive James’s use of “Romaine Rand” as a pseudonym … Continue reading

Posted in Biology, Psychology, Visualization | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Measure theory, topology, and the role of examples

Bill Thurston once observed that topology and measure theory are very immiscible (i.e. they don’t mix easily); this statement has always resonated with me, and I thought I would try to explain some of the (personal, psychological, and mathematical) reasons … Continue reading

Posted in Psychology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments