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Fun ways of deciding authorship order (2016)

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Re: Fun ways of deciding authorship order (2016)

#21

Post by fph »

hinkley wrote: post #9

> the order of their authorship was determined by executing the following commands in R: set.seed (7998976/5271) x ‹- sample (c("Anne", "Peder"), 1) print (paste ("The winner is", x, "!")) But who picked the seed, Anne? And how do we know they didn’t have their thumb on the scale?

That is weird; from what I understand (not an R expert), set.seed takes an integer, so I assume that number gets truncated / approximated to an integer. That means that all nearby seeds give the same result: for instance changing 7998976 to 7998977 or 7998975 makes no difference, up to the next multiple of 5271. This makes the result look a lot less random. Was Anne cheating?

Re: Fun ways of deciding authorship order (2016)

#22

Post by madcaptenor »

fph wrote: post #21
hinkley wrote: post #9

> the order of their authorship was determined by executing the following commands in R: set.seed (7998976/5271) x ‹- sample (c("Anne", "Peder"), 1) print (paste ("The winner is", x, "!")) But who picked the seed, Anne? And how do we know they didn’t have their thumb on the scale?

That is weird; from what I understand (not an R expert), set.seed takes an integer, so I assume that number gets truncated / approximated to an integer. That means that all nearby seeds give the same result: for instance changing 7998976 to 7998977 or 7998975 makes no difference, up to the next multiple of 5271. This makes the result look a lot less random. Was Anne cheating?

From the documentation at https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/base/html/Rand..., seed is "a single value, interpreted as an integer, or NULL (see ‘Details’)." From some quick testing it appears that "interpreted" means "truncated".

Re: Fun ways of deciding authorship order (2016)

#24

Post by xenonite »

dmurray wrote: post #8
madcaptenor wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American Mathematical Society has a statement basically saying “in math, authorship order is alphabetical” that people going up for tenure can put in their files, in case people involved in the decision come from other disciplines which have other conventions. https://www.ams.org/learning-careers/leaders/CultureStatemen...

Someone should study whether that statement is disproportionately included by authors with names later on in the alphabet.

Also I suppose that Z authors might have more publications because they are nice to collaborate with.

Re: Fun ways of deciding authorship order (2016)

#25

Post by hinkley »

zvorygin wrote: post #18
hinkley wrote: post #9

> the order of their authorship was determined by executing the following commands in R: set.seed (7998976/5271) x ‹- sample (c("Anne", "Peder"), 1) print (paste ("The winner is", x, "!")) But who picked the seed, Anne? And how do we know they didn’t have their thumb on the scale?

My guess is that each simultaneously picked a number, one for numerator and one for denominator.

Hopefully. Though I wonder if that can be gamed if you pick the denominator and the value is rounded. Eg a large prime.

Re: Fun ways of deciding authorship order (2016)

#26

Post by JohnKemeny »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #17
hinkley wrote: post #9

> the order of their authorship was determined by executing the following commands in R: set.seed (7998976/5271) x ‹- sample (c("Anne", "Peder"), 1) print (paste ("The winner is", x, "!")) But who picked the seed, Anne? And how do we know they didn’t have their thumb on the scale?

Maybe we can solve this with blockchain?

Or maybe quantum?

Re: Fun ways of deciding authorship order (2016)

#30

Post by setopt »

dfltr wrote: post #29

My partner is a mathematician who realized (along with the other members of their working group) that if they were to deviate from the standard alphabetical authorship order, they could author a paper on the DILF Theorem.

Sounds like they’re on track for a FILD medal with that paper.
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