position:mathematics professor

Imprisoned activist Alaa Abd El Fattah speaks from Tora | Mada Masr

▻http://www.madamasr.com/sections/politics/imprisoned-activist-alaa-abd-el-fattah-speaks-tora

Alaa Abd El Fattah, outspoken software tecchie, blogger and political activist, has spoken to the media for the first time since he began serving his latest sentence at Tora Prison.

Abd El Fattah is serving a five-year prison sentence for being at a civil gathering in front of the Shura Council in November 2013 to protest a constitutional provision allowing the military to court-martial civilians.

The questions were sent by journalist Moataz Shams al-Din to Abd El Fattah’s mother, mathematics professor Laila Soueif, who put them to her son during a visit. On the way home she wrote down his responses and relayed them back to the journalist. No papers were exchanged between Alaa and his mother.

Recently, the courts upheld a one-year sentence against Abd El Fattah for “burning down the headquarters of [presidential candidate] General Ahmed Shafiq.” The prosecution has also brought another case against him for “insulting the judiciary."

Grace Hopper prints now available | Infotropism
▻http://infotrope.net/2014/08/05/grace-hopper-prints-now-available

http://infotrope.net/files/2014/07/graceprint800.jpg

She was 37 years old and working as a mathematics professor when Pearl Harbour happened. She joined the Navy and was set to work on the first ever general-purpose electro-mechanical computer, the Harvard Mark I. She invented the compiler (used to translate computer programs written by humans into ones and zeroes that the computer can understand), created one of the most widely used programming languages of the 20th century, and was the first to use the term “bug” to describe computer errors, after a literal bug was caught in the relays of the machine she was working on.

#Gittip crisis - Geek Feminism Wiki
▻http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Gittip_crisis

The gittip crisis is an example of the way in which men in tech only support meritocracy when it favors themselves. The success of Kane, Dryden and other #feminist activists in using the site was taken as proof that there was something wrong with the site or that they were cheating, rather than as a meritocratic outcome.

It also shows the perils, for feminist activists, of depending on infrastructure that is run by people with no interest in supporting feminism (and, often, an interest in opposing it) and that thus fails to take their needs and unique circumstances into account. Of course, to a large extent, such dependence is unavoidable. (Also see Nothing about us without us.)

Mathematicians Predict the Future With Data From the Past | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com

▻http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/04/cliodynamics-peter-turchin

By Klint Finley

In Isaac Asimov’s classic science fiction saga Foundation, mathematics professor Hari Seldon predicts the future using what he calls psychohistory. Drawing on mathematical models that describe what happened in the past, he anticipates what will happen next, including the fall of the Galactic Empire.

That may seem like fanciful stuff. But Peter Turchin is turning himself into a real-life Hari Seldon — and he’s not alone.

#data #données #statistiques