Tuesday, January 06, 2009

unexpected consequences of editing a manuscript.

yesterday i pared down the number of webpages on my mathematical homepage. (it's starting to look confusing: too many unnecessary links.)

while editing my research page, i ran a Math$ciNet search on myself. it occurred to me:

ye gods, i don't have very many papers;
i have to do something about that.


with that in mind, last night i printed out another copy of my latest manuscript and i packed a red pen into my bookbag. maybe, after a thorough edit, i can submit it by the end of january.



this morning i woke up early and brought the 35-page manuscript with me to a coffeehouse. i was on page 15 when someone from another table began,

"say, is that .."

already i began to wince.

great, another "mathematics" conversation with a layperson. why me? i'm minding my own business. i just want to get some work done ...

".. ana1ysis?"

i blink.
huh. interesting ..



we ended up chatting a bit; he's a visiting prof in ec0nomics at ¢arnegie-me11on univer$ity and has gone through the gamut of theoretical maths -- topo1ogy, mea$ure the0ry, and the like.

he explained to me how the philosophers over at ¢MU are studying interre1ations between 1ogic and oddly enough, g@me the0ry. i sketched out, in br0ad strokes, what ge0metric mea$ure theory was -- indeed, he seemed to have a decent grasp of what c0mpactness means.

later, he gave me his card. i did something similar: i jotted my name, my email, and "mea$ure the0ry" on a piece of paper and gave it to him. he chuckled, and we went our separate ways.



i'm on page 23 now: no serious edits have come up, but i would still like this thing shorter.

4 comments:

Leonid said...

When you don't have many papers yet, it is especially important to have invited seminar talks to put on your CV.

Leonid said...

By the way, did you write "mea$ure the0ry" with dollar sign and zero, just by force of habit?

janus said...

hi L,

i take this as a reminder to send you guys my title/abstract and other particulars. i'll book a flight soon, but i'm still unsure what to talk about.

besides, i'd rather hear what you guys have to say about invertibility of $0b01ev mappin9s. q-:

also: nowadays i write most mathematical terminlogy in funny typography, and it's an attempt to hide from g00gle. you wouldn't believe the searches that lead to this blog. \-:

Leonid said...

It's fine if you don't have a title or abstract yet; they don't go up in price the way plane tickets do.

Schoenflies extension would be a good topic, possibly combined with other results if you can link them, or even if you can't.