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US Army applying new areas of math

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Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#51

Post by acct1771 »

bshipp wrote: post #47
geoka9 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just am embarrassed when I tell people I work for the military because they think I make bombs or something. Personally, I don't understand this, but I'm from an ex-Eastern Bloc country which I was all too happy to escape. I'd rather the US (and the rest of the Western world) made bombs than only Russia and China did. Vacuums of power in the world will always be filled and a Western invasion/expeditionary force i…

Having a military is kind of like having house insurance. you wish you didn't have to spend the money on it, you hope you never have to actually use it, but it would be very irresponsible not to have it.

As long as you realize everyone feels that exact way.

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#52

Post by xorand »

This recalls me a story from Stanislaw Lem' Cyberiad. The two constructors, Trurl and Clapautius, give the same advice to the leaders of two opposing armies:the best army, each of them explain, is the one where there is an unique spirit in all the bodies. So, just add to all soldiers a plug in front and a socket in the back, so that they can all connect. The armies apply the advice and something unexpected happens.

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#53

Post by dannykwells »

I love that new areas of math are being applied, but (as a PhD applied mathematician) I disagree with the quote "Applied mathematics is not a subject classification. It’s an attitude".

It has taken me years - an entire career, really - to learn to effectively communicate my mathematical findings to other non-mathematical researchers and effectively bridge these gaps. I know a lot of mathematicians who say "well, sure, I could communicate my work to other fields, but ...", when the truth is, they just don't have the training or expertise for how to do it. It's not just that they don't want to/are too good to bother/etc./etc. (as much as they would like it to seem that way).

The fact is, translating research findings is hard. Much harder than actually making them. And asking good questions, relevant to the scientific field you are working in, even harder. The quote above reflects a common, damaging hubris in mathematics research and is why most of the "best" math research never gets used in other fields of science.

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#54

Post by 4thaccount »

wenc wrote: post #38
romwell wrote: post #8

For anyone interested in applying traditionally pure fields, Applied Topology has been slowly gaining steam lately (as reflected in the article: "topological" is now a hot word). Robert Ghrist of UPenn has been at the forefront of bringing topology into applied fields; and has written a good text on the subject.

Topological Data Analysis was the next big thing a couple of years ago, and it certainly has its applications [1], but the breadth of its applicability may have been overhyped and the energy has fizzled somewhat. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_data_analysis#Appl...

Kinda like AI is now? I use Graph Theory a lot in my every day job (nothing fancy, but it is useful for visualization, shortest path, and other things). You start to see it show up everywhere too.

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#55

Post by mswen »

noobermin wrote: post #44

To be very honest, count me in as one of these. I am someone who works for a gov't lab, but I do "very pure" scientific research. It's not that our research doesn't have "defense applications," it might eventually, but we are definitely a few steps removed from say CFD modeling of airplane wings. The thing is traditional sources of funding suck, and gov't labs give researchers a much better environment than the endle…

I am reminded of a reception at the HPC User Forum back around 2002. There were a number of people in the room from various national labs and intelligence agencies. I was part of the firm that organized and hosted these meetings. I overhear a guy from NSA kidding a guy from Lawrence Livermore Labs with the following line.

"At least I don't design weapons of mass destruction, all I do is read emails"

In truth neither one of these guys did the activities stated, both really were doing system design, optimization and resource allocation with super computers so that the intelligence analysts could rapidly search billions of emails for trigger words, cryptographers could break encryption or weapons designers could model the characteristics of nuclear weapons since we were in a weapons testing ban.

But to echo your point the amount of resources available at national labs and intelligence agencies. The supercomputing resources they had available dwarfed anything available in industry or academia at the time. Today, one might argue that industry and in particular places like Google and Facebook have computing infrastructure and support that was previously only available at national labs.

So now the Google or Facebook guy in a similar meeting will be saying "I only do the analytics that enable us to target people with ads and messages to which they are most vulnerable."

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#56

Post by marshray »

sigstoat wrote: post #36
hopler wrote: post #15

Frankly this sounds like some bureaucrat who likes HTT made up an excuse to fund it. It's a mil/gov version of a corporate engineer who decides to build a project in a language they read about on HN.

> this sounds like some bureaucrat who likes HTT ...did you read that after you typed it? do you think there is a actually some US federal government bureaucrat running around who has an opinion on HTT?

Well, considering that it's the official position of the U.S. Army Research Office Aberdeen Proving Ground that

"Homotopy Type Theory and its applications are such an area that is of significant interest in military applications",

yes.

https://www.arl.army.mil/www/pages/8/W911NF-17-S-0002%20ARO-...

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#57

Post by effie »

dannykwells wrote: post #53

I love that new areas of math are being applied, but (as a PhD applied mathematician) I disagree with the quote "Applied mathematics is not a subject classification. It’s an attitude". It has taken me years - an entire career, really - to learn to effectively communicate my mathematical findings to other non-mathematical researchers and effectively bridge these gaps. I know a lot of mathematicians who say "well, sure…

> translating research findings is hard. Much harder than actually making them.

I think this is an indication that one is making findings in area that other people don't care about. Not necessarily that it is bad subject to study, but with some people, it is better not to spend the effort to explain, because only the prepared mind can understand.

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#58

Post by austincheney »

noobermin wrote: post #44

To be very honest, count me in as one of these. I am someone who works for a gov't lab, but I do "very pure" scientific research. It's not that our research doesn't have "defense applications," it might eventually, but we are definitely a few steps removed from say CFD modeling of airplane wings. The thing is traditional sources of funding suck, and gov't labs give researchers a much better environment than the endle…

Your post is very puzzling. You, on one hand, sound exceptionally well educated but on the other hand describe a social circle that seems exceedingly ignorant or uninformed. Knowing the profound disconnect why would that make you embarrassed?

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#59

Post by paulddraper »

geoka9 wrote: post #45
noobermin wrote: post #44

To be very honest, count me in as one of these. I am someone who works for a gov't lab, but I do "very pure" scientific research. It's not that our research doesn't have "defense applications," it might eventually, but we are definitely a few steps removed from say CFD modeling of airplane wings. The thing is traditional sources of funding suck, and gov't labs give researchers a much better environment than the endle…

> I just am embarrassed when I tell people I work for the military because they think I make bombs or something. Personally, I don't understand this, but I'm from an ex-Eastern Bloc country which I was all too happy to escape. I'd rather the US (and the rest of the Western world) made bombs than only Russia and China did. Vacuums of power in the world will always be filled and a Western invasion/expeditionary force i…

You're talking to an audience that didn't see WWII, and mostly didn't see the Cold War.

The ugly truth is that there are plenty of bad guys or people who would be bad guys (some of them in the U.S. admittedly), and a lot of them won't stop without force or threat of force.

I know this isn't a universal opinion but I believe that smarter military technology has a better chance of ending/stopping/preventing war than starting it.

Re: US Army applying new areas of math

#60

Post by T-R »

wenc wrote: post #3

I wonder if there's anyone here working on Homotopy Type Theory that can explain what it is, and how it is used in modeling? I skimmed the PDF of the book but am drawing blank as to its connection to an application. Perhaps it's used for verification of concepts, similar to how formal methods in CS (e.g. TLA+) are used to conceptually check algorithms?

HoTT was a popular topic in the Haskell ecosystem a little while back, so worth digging around there for info:

- https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2623...

- https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/6nxgkc/similaritie...

- https://bartoszmilewski.com/category/homotopy-type-theory/

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