Part Time Scholar

I recently stumbled upon a mathematical problem known as the  Stable Marriage Problem (SMP).  Per Wikipedia, the problem is commonly stated as: Given N men and N women, where each person has ranked all members of the opposite sex with a unique number between 1 and n in order of preference, marry the men and women together such that there are no two people of opposite sex who would both rather have each other than their current partners. If there are no such people, all the marriages are "stable". The SMP has real-life applications to any problem requiring stable pairing of two sets of equal size. In fact, this problem is always solvable using the Gale-Shapley algorithm . There is a rather big catch however.  While the marriages are always stable, they may not be ideal from the vantage point of an individual.  To illustrate this, imagine three men A,B,C and three women X,Y,Z. Here are their ranked preferences for members of the other group: A: YXZ B: ZYX C: XZY X

Here is a great video  from Brian Greene, renowned theoretical physicist and author of The Elegant Universe , among various books.  The video touches on a number of hot concepts of the day, from inflation, dark matter, string theories, to explaining why we are indeed living in a multi-verse. -PTS

You can certainly fit a square peg into a round hole. Just make the square peg smaller.  -PTS

Stability is merely an excuse to be content with the status quo.  This is why I love change! -PTS

Came across this  article  which is entertaining to read while keeping score!  I scored 2 of 9 - Uncertainty Principle and Maxwell's Equations. The good news is I do not qualify as a geek, but that also means there is so much more to learn when I retire. -PTS

A recent good read, which changed my perspective on what it takes to become a wild success in life. The  Outliers   is about how success is affected by external factors beyond individual characteristics. These factors include culture, social systems, even friends and families. Here are some highlights: The Matthew Effect  – Canadian professional hockey players are mostly born in the early months of a year because the age cutoff for tryouts is January 1st. These players when trying out during childhood, have months of physical development over their later-born counterparts. This is a huge advantage which gives successful candidates access to premium coaches and programmes for years, hence an ever increasing head-start eventually leading to professional careers. Similar patterns are found in Major League Baseball, English Premier League, among other sports leagues.  Even when it comes to school, kids born later in the year are at a slig

Almost a month into baby raising and I have caught my wind to blog again. Just the other day, I stumbled upon (no pun intended) this website called Science Exchange . The concept is quite simple as it is a platform for outsourcing scientific experimental projects to the lowest bidder. Think of it as eBay for services, the twist being the lowest bid wins. I believe this is a great idea for academic institutions to better collaborate and take advantage of each others' resources in economic ways. I do not have any pending experiments but set up an account anyway for exploration. Hope this concept catches on! -PTS

For many years, I have heard that babies are a handful! Well, I will get to find out very soon as my newborn was born today. Looking forward to more an even busier, but rewarding life with the new addition to my family. -PTS

Thinking of raising a family in the US?  Check out this survey . A wide range of criteria was considered to reach these conclusions. They include in order of priority:   quality of schools;  affordability and availability of quality housing;  low crime rates;  job availability and growth;  number of registered sex offenders;  recreational opportunities;  quality/quantity of pediatricians/family physicians;  commute time and distance;  proximity to a good children's hospital;  quality/quantity of childcare facilities and preschools;  and air quality. This list looks very comprehensive to me, giving the survey quite a bit of credibility. -PTS

Relocation always takes a toll on one's life.  I am speaking from experience as this is my second move in 2 years.   Worst of all, the 9 to 5 in Hong Kong is sometimes like the 9 to 10, especially when you work in a foreign company and expected to do early morning or evening meetings with North America. As a result, I have lost a lot of blogging time. Luckily, I recently managed to squeeze in time to watch the movie Thor , in 3D! I went to the movies not expecting any physics lessons, but Natalie Portman mentioned a number of astrophysics concepts, including the Einstein-Rosen Bridge that connected Asgard to Earth. In a layman's world, this bridge is more commonly known as a  wormhole . A wormhole is essentially a warp in space-time, thus creating a shortcut for traversing between two physical points in space and time. Think of the analogy of drawing two points on a piece of paper placed on a table. When the paper is lying flat, the distance between the two points is X cm. If