Hilarious Academic Papers: Part I

The word "science" conjures up images of men with white hair in lab coats playing with Van de Graaff generators, looking through telescopes while solving Rubik's cubes, and people with booming voices yelling, well, "SCIENCE." Science may be fun at a certain age, until the appeal dies off, but it's not supposed to be funny. Science is only for the most serious of people, the people who can not only use "witherfore" in a sentence, but do so daily.

Hang on- isn't the word "witherfore" sort of silly by itself? Isn't it just painfully silly? It turns out that science, whether intentionally or unintentionally, has become a refuge for the silly. Just check the Annals of Improbable Research to find thousands of instances where science manages to output journal articles with titles that could be descriptive of Monty Python sketches. Who could forget the Sonic Hedgehog gene, the naming of which leads to awkwardly surreal conversations about holoprosencephaly?

Another class of silly journal article, other than the outwardly silly ones, are the ones which are funny because of the context in which they are published. This will be a recurring segment in which I focus on these sorts of papers. Many of these are relatively old, but worth knowing about if you are unfamiliar with them.


Congratulations, Biologist, You Invented Calculus


Let's start off by saying I have absolutely nothing but respect for biologists. What they do takes training, experience and many, many hours in the lab. I respect them for being able to decipher ridiculous article titles that look like they were created by feeding a medical textbook into a Markov generator (Synergistic Chemsensitization and Inhibition of Tumor Growth and Metastasis by the Antisense Oligodeoxynucleotide Targeting Clusterin Gene in a Human Bladder Cancer Model) and putting up with whatever naming schemes the biochemists are coming up with these days. However, as someone whose entire career exists because many biologists don't want to do math, I not only understand the wisdom of spending all one's energy improving their knowledge of a single field, I encourage it. This situation stands as a shining example of why biologists and mathematicians should be friends and talk to each other every day.

Just don't invent calculus.

This paper seems innocuous at first glance; it has a useful premise, and the title ("A Mathematical Model for the Determination of Total Area Under Glucose Tolerance and Other Metabolic Curves") is not particularly silly. However, by skimming the abstract, you may find some interesting phrases:

To develop a mathematical model for the determination of total areas under curves... 

...total area under the curve can still be determined... 

...calculate area with varied shapes that may or may not intercept on one or both X/Y axes... 

Now if that doesn't sound familiar to you, that means I have finally reached the elusive "people-who-don't-like-calculus" demographic. Hooray! In case you need a refresher, the phrase "area under a curve" is synonymous with Riemann integration*, a technique that was invented, oh, over a hundred years before this was published, and taught in classes that most budding scientists take in freshman year of college at the very latest. Let's give this author the benefit of the doubt, and see what she's thinking:

In Tai's Model, the total area under a curve is computed by dividing the area under the curve between two designated values on the X-axis (abscissas) into small segments (rectangles and triangles) whose areas can be accurately calculated from their respective geometrical formulas. The total sum of these individual areas thus represents the total area under the curve.

Yeah, no, that's the Trapezoid Rule. While this ordeal is unfortunate and it is embarrassing that the author named it after herself, this reply to her peers (I can only hope their feedback was full of question marks and sad emoticons) should clear things up a bit:

Tai responds that her formula is based on the sum of the areas of small triangles and rectangles and is not based on the sum of the areas of trapezoids (the trapezoidal rule). As is evident in the following figure and algebra, the small triangle and the contiguous rectangle form a trapezoid.

No, it's not the Trapezoid Rule. Her rule is based on a triangle and a rectangle, which are next to each other, and just happen to form a trapezoid. I'm going to invent a new model with three triangles instead of the trapezoid, name it after myself, and publish it. Heck, why not keep dividing up the trapezoid into smaller and smaller pieces and have infinite papers? Tai makes the following statement in the source above to defend her model's originality:

I also used the formulas to calculate the areas of a square or a triangle without knowing whose rules were being followed. Fortunately, I do not have to answer that for you.

Wait, so how will her colleagues cite something if they want to calculate the area of a square or a triangle? She should publish those formulas, too! While the next line seems like a cop-out, it is the final sentence in her answer to a colleague who recognized the method for what it was.

It seems like much of the confusion is over giving the Trapezoid Rule a special name because it's being implemented in a context where it was previously not used. However, It's a numerical integration method. That's what it's for. Integrals don't care whether the function is meant to approximate a metabolic curve or a velocity, because that has nothing to do with how the answer is calculated. This is like making a peanut butter sandwich and naming the recipe after yourself because nobody in your house had thought to make a peanut butter sandwich before.

If you're not fazed by any of this, note that this article had to go through a peer review process before it was published. In other words, she's not the only one.

Something else worth noting is this ominous phrase in the abstract:

Other formulas widely applied by researchers under- or overestimated total area under a metabolic curve by a great margin.

Are you serious? What other formulas?** What are people even doing?

I'm going to sit down.

* Lebesgue integration, if you're nasty.***

** The author may be referring to the fact that their model does not use equal partitions. I can imagine a group of people in lab coats staring at a curve, when one of them says "Yanno, you could make the rectangles different sizes." Let pi represent a partition, indeed.

*** "Nasty" in this context is used to mean "sufficiently knowledgeable of real analysis." Trust me, it's a totally legitimate usage. You may want to avoid asking a mathematician to get nasty unless you want to get pulled into a discussion about Hilbert spaces.

Darn if I don't actually have to start doing something

It's been quite a while, but... wow.

Wow.

Given how quickly I abandoned this project due to overwork and my total disinterest in any promotion whatsoever, I can't believe people are still reading this.

In the past, I've had work weeks hitting, what, eighty hours? Ninety? A hundred? Now, as a second-semester senior with a couple publications under my belt, I can settle down for a bit and focus on activities other than math homework. I am sitting down to write three or four posts to be released this week, if only to provide some contrast or continuation to the things I wrote as a silly freshman.

If you're more in the mood for actual content than a post that talks about the blog, I did write this one-off blog to cheer up a friend at some point. It is about stalking women on Zoo Tycoon 2. Something inspired me, and her name was Debra. She was the wind beneath my wings and the background on my cell phone. I don't want to deprive you of the enchantment she casts over all that view her, so you can see for yourself.

Oh, and one of the new posts will be a video made for a math class inspired by Zero Punctuation.

Oh, and also...

This is my favorite Garfield Minus Garfield strip.



As my dad says when he is sitting in a restaurant with my little sister and she complains that she's hungry, "You know what we should do? We should go to a restaurant and order some food!"

Hiatus... BROKEN.

Oh no! Sorry to leave you all with no warning and such a weak beginning-of-hiatus post!

I could give you a torrent of excuses- classes from 8 AM-10 PM plus homework, a summer course that was 14 hours a day of math, and now work every day, even on the week days. For reference, I worked 10 hours today before writing this post. It has been a very long and stressful day.

So, I was working on renal cell carcinoma when I get this nice, yet impersonal e-mail from a person named Matty. And it's about my blog. This blog. The one that hasn't updated in seven months. Having never received e-mail from a fan or anyone before about my blog, I was incredibly excited. I sent an e-mail back and vowed to post again. Then, since he provided a link to his own blog, I checked back.

It was a blog that was ENTIRELY ABOUT TIES. His website was ENTIRELY ABOUT TIES. Now, at this point, I'm not sure what it is about my dusty 7-month-old blog that attracts tie aficionados, but it was exciting knowing that at least my target demographic was composed of some very interesting people.

Then I notice.

First off, the subject of the e-mail was "Hey, I really like your bog." The body said nothing about my blog, or even my name, just links to his blog and requests for me to link to him. The post that he linked to was full of other bloggers thanking you for the e-mail. I send up to 60 form e-mails a day at my non-cancer job, but this neckwear psycho fooled me simply because I really thought someone would actually care about my blog. Ha!

Since I'm practically a college student by day and telemarketer by night (and homeworking college student during the rest of the night,) does this mean I should call people at random and ask them to read my blog? Heck, I don't even have to stay with alumni. I could just go to the yellow pages. Are you getting this, Matt?

Or I could go to a craft store, go over to the fancy paper section, and on the back of every paper, write "Hey! Visit my blog at blog.blogblog.com!" You might have to pay or be arrested for physically assaulting the paper, but that just means it would get on the news! And then more people will read your blog!

Or you could take one of those roller dealies that leaves chalk on the ground and use it to write the name of your blog on public streets! Heck, skip that, just throw the chalk in people's eyes and yell VISIT MY BLOG. IT IS BLOG DOT BLOG BLOG DOT COM. Why not have custom made tiny bits of glitter that are shaped like the URL to your blog and dump them off of the Empire State Building every day? Why not go to the grocery store and write a different character on each individual case of soymilk? What's there to stop you from writing a cookbook where every page has a link to a different blog post, printing it out, and putting them on the shelves of a local Barnes and Noble? You like ties! Can't you make a printout of your blog name on tie-shaped paper and leave it in the tie rack at the local mall?

Watch out for those exposed-neck freaks, Matty. Idealightful is back for a while.

Voicemail Messages

There have been a lot of things going on in my life right now, so I hope you all have some ideas for this one.

Anyway, since I make a lot of calls doing my job (and since people rarely pick up,) I get to here a lot of voicemail messages.

This one is everyone's favorite:

"Hi. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate the phone 90° and try again."

I also kind of stole this intro here.

Wait... there's already a site for this! Apparently it's http://www.creativevoicemailmessages.com/. I commend the people who made this site! You guys are awesome.

However, I don't see a section for nerdy voicemail messages...

Any suggestions?

Is Black a Color?

Okay, now I'm just trying to start a fight in the comments.

This seems to be a topic that most people have strong opinions on, despite its being a relatively harmless one. It goes without saying that there are two main arguments:

1. Black does not exist on the visible light spectrum. Therefore, it is not a color.

2. Black can definitely be listed as someone's favorite 'color.' We use it with all of the other colors. Therefore, it is a color.

And that's pretty much all there is to say about that. It would be great to see all of the different interpretations, but it's interesting that people's opinions are so polarized on this one topic.

On a very, very slightly related note, I really enjoy the use of black as an adjective to imply shade. I mean, there's one mineral that's supposed to be the 'blackest' thing we can experience. Did black get promoted to a feeling? Or are colors too closely tied to our feelings for us to differentiate between both?

Oops. I gave away my stance.

Is black a color?

The H Algorithm

There's an interesting property about the letter h in the English language. Namely, you can insert quite a few h's into any word and not change the pronunciation. Let's take the word 'name': if we spell it nhahmheh, it's still recognizable and pronounceable as the same word.

What happens if we make an algorithm which figures out how many instances of h that could be found in a word without changing its sound?

Assume vowels do not change sound when followed by an h. Well, part of that has to do with not adding multiple h's, so the word isn't inrecognizable. If not, we're cognitively golden with the vowels- but only for a familiar word. And only for now. Alright. Let N(w) be the number of h's in the word. Let L(w) be the number of letters in the word. So, here's the first part of the algorithm:

N(w) = L(w)

This assumes that you can just add an 'h' after every letter in the word. If the word suddenly got an h appended in front of it, the first 'h' would have to be pronounced. However, this algorithm is so imperfect that it hurts. What about existing h's in the word, such as in 'the'? This is simple, just subtract one h for every existing h. Therefore, 'the' becomes 'theh.' So, let H(w) be the number of preexisting h's in the word:

N(w) = L(w) - H(w)

What about consonants which would change sound if followed by an h, such as sh or ch? We'd have to do a huuuuge comparison function. I'm going to pass w, along with all of the consonants which would change sound significantly:

N(w) = L(w) - H(w) - ?(w, c, soft g, p, q, s, t)

And, lastly, let's assume that vowels do change sound. So, in general, long vowels subtract one h, but all others do not. (Check me on this one.) I mean, the 'a' in 'name' is a long a, and it would change, but the alternate a's in 'and' and 'all' would not. 'Y' does not count. Y is a consonant here.

N(w) = L(w) - H(w) - ?(w, c, soft g, p, q, s, t, long a, long e, long i, long o, long u)

which is just

N(w) = L(w) - ?(w, c, soft g, h, p, q, s, t, long a, long e, long i, long o, long u)

To be fair, we do lose information here: the nature of the vowel before the h was added. Going back to the example of 'theh,' it can be pronounced a couple of ways, either the traditional 'the' or with the 'e' having the same sound as it does in 'empty.' Drat. This is even worse- how do you make an algorithm for determining long vowels? Soft g is a bit easier, but long vowels? Is there a rule?

Does anyone feel like making a program? How about stress-testing the algorithm?