Brian Hayes
American Scientist
Amherst, MA, United States
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Past articles by Brian:
Math with Attitude
As presented in Math with Bad Drawings, these topics require no mathematical knowledge or skills beyond the ken of a ninth grader— elementary arithmetic, some basic concepts in probability, enough geometry to recognize a right triangle. It’s ordinary schoolroom math—just the sort of thing that has bored and alienated generations of students. And yet Orlin spins it into a charming book you’ll… → Read More
Moonshot Computing
Getting to the Moon required daring programmers as well as daring astronauts. → Read More
Making Sense of the World »
BOOK REVIEW Making Sense of the World PATTERN THEORY: The Stochastic Analysis of Real-World Signals. David Mumford and Agnès Desolneux. xii + 407 pp. A K Peters, 2010. $79.95. A friend whispers in your ear, creating minute pressure fluctuations that make your eardrum flutter; milliseconds later you not only hear the sound but also understand the words and recognize the voice. When you turn to… → Read More
Statistics of Deadly Quarrels »
COMPUTING SCIENCE Statistics of Deadly Quarrels Look upon the phenomenon of war with dispassion and detachment, as if observing the follies of another species on a distant planet: From such an elevated view, war seems a puny enough pastime. Demographically, it hardly matters. War deaths amount to something like 1 percent of all deaths; in many places, more die by suicide, and still more in… → Read More
Over the Edge
A book about a disaster necessarily belongs to the genre of tragedy. → Read More
How to Avoid Yourself »
Every Sunday morning you go for a walk in the city, heading nowhere in particular, with just one rule to your rambling: You never retrace your steps or cross your own path. If you have already walked along a certain block or passed through an intersection, you refuse to set foot there again. This recipe for tracing a loopless path through a grid of city streets leads into some surprisingly dark… → Read More
Computer Vision and Computer Hallucinations
A peek inside an artificial neural network reveals some pretty freaky images. → Read More
Crawling toward a Wiser Web
Computing with data sets as large as the World Wide Web was once the exclusive prerogative of large corporations; the Common Crawl gives the rest of us a chance. → Read More
Imitation of Life
Can a computer program reproduce everything that happens inside a living cell? → Read More
The Science of Sticky Spheres
On the strange attraction of spheres that like to stick together → Read More
The Manifest Destiny of Artificial Intelligence
Will AI create mindlike machines, or will it show how much a mindless machine can do? → Read More
An Adventure in the Nth Dimension
On the mystery of a ball that fills a box, but vanishes in the vastness of higher dimensions → Read More
The Higher Arithmetic
How to count to a zillion without falling off the end of the number line → Read More
Everything Is Under Control
Can control theory save the economy from going down the tubes? → Read More
Automation on the Job
Computers were supposed to be labor-saving devices. How come we're still working so hard? → Read More
How Many Ways Can You Spell V1@gra?
Spam mutates, and the Internet community mounts an immune response → Read More
Group Theory in the Bedroom
An insomniac's guide to the curious mathematics of mattress flipping → Read More
Statistics of Deadly Quarrels
Look upon the phenomenon of war with dispassion and detachment, as if observing the follies of another species on a distant planet: From such an elevated view, war seems a puny enough pastime. Demographically, it hardly matters. War deaths amount to something like 1 percent of all deaths; in many places, more die by suicide, and still more in accidents. If saving human lives is the great… → Read More
Leave the Driving to It »
COMPUTING SCIENCE Leave the Driving to It How would lives and landscapes change if every car had a computer in the driver’s seat? Jane has a meeting this morning, so the car comes to pick her up at 8:15. En route, she finishes her breakfast, reviews her PowerPoint slides, updates her Facebook status, and does her daily KenKen. After the car delivers her to the office, it drives to a parking… → Read More
Leave the Driving to It »
COMPUTING SCIENCE Leave the Driving to It How would lives and landscapes change if every car had a computer in the driver’s seat? Jane has a meeting this morning, so the car comes to pick her up at 8:15. En route, she finishes her breakfast, reviews her PowerPoint slides, updates her Facebook status, and does her daily KenKen. After the car delivers her to the office, it drives to a parking… → Read More