Ethan argues against the former MVP:
Pete Rose can’t get into the Hall of Fame. He shouldn’t get this gig as a consolation prize.
Hey! Our seminar series is no “consolation prize”; it’s the real deal. For one thing, it’s right here in NYC, not in faraway Cooperstown.
But Ben points out:
He might be outta the price range (from Wikipedia):
as of March 2014, Rose earns more than $1,000,000 annually from many paid public appearances and autograph signings.
That’s indeed beyond our budget here at Columbia. We could barely afford Bruno Latour! Or even Michael Lacour.
Jonathan writes:
My wife once had dinner with Isaac Asimov and hates Pete Rose. So I’ll go with Rose.
Slightly more seriously, if Rose were Hari Seldon, he’d be an excellent gambler, except that he’d probably ruin it by running his big mouth and subverting the predictions of psychohistory. Statistics question: is a baseball team of 26 (plus coaches, trainers, etc.) a large enough ensemble for psychohistory to work? Does the presence of another team double the sample size or not? Pick whomever would better answer these questions: Rose or Asimov.
If Rose had been a successful gambler, he wouldn’t have needed to sign all those baseballs so I doubt he’d have much useful to say there. So Asimov it is; we’ll just have to carefully explain to him the campus sexual assault policy.
Today’s matchup
Third seed in the “Duplicate names” category vs. an unseeded “Creator of laws or rules.” If Vladimir Vladimirovich isn’t invited to speak in your seminar, he might invade your country. But if you snub Gravity Boy, there will be be an equal and opposite reaction, and he will push you away just as hard. So it seems like a tough call. Who do you want: Stalin’s successor and the upholder of traditional values, or the creator of the particle theory of light?
Newton by a gravity induced landslide.
How is Newton unseeded in Laws? There must have been a lot of friction in the seeding meetings. Who was on the Committee? Murphy?
There’s no way I’m passing up a chance to meet Newton.
Putin is a pissant.
If Putin spoke at your seminar he’d speak in Russian. Most of the attendees might not understand him. This may or may not be an advantage.
On the other hand, Isaac Newton would probably address you in Latin. Principia Mathematica and all that after all. Or maybe in … math!
Bottom line is, that an Isaac vs Isaac matchup next round would be too good to miss.
No contest. What Putin does certainly matters, but what he says? Not so much. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard him say anything interesting. We might get treated to a long treatise on alchemy with Newton, but I’ll take my chances.
Is your seminar room big enough to accommodate Putin? And his horse?
I’m going to continue my recently-established tradition of commenting on the previous matchup rather than the current one.
I’m glad Asimov won because he and I were very close once.
Literally. We took an elevator together.
He was staying in the same hotel as me, and had gone down to the lobby to pick up a copy of the Sunday newspaper. Three or four of us were in the elevator with him as he went back up to his room. He said to no one in particular: “This paper cost a dollar and a quarter. When I was a kid the Sunday paper cost ten cents. But when I was a kid nobody had ten cents, and now everybody has a dollar and a quarter.” Then the elevator reached his floor and he got off.
That’s more insightful than anything I hear at the typical talk that I attend, so I think Asimov is a good choice.
Putin might insist on one of those really long tables. It’s not exactly conducive to a good talk. Plus it would just be a long rant about Ivan llyin’s brilliance.
Newton could end up talking about a lot of different things but would be interesting.
Putin seems to be in free fall these days. I guess Newton will have something interesting to say about that.
Balanced on the slippery tightrope spanning the yawning precipice of potential global nuclear annihilation during this highly consequential time in world history, it should be Mr. Putin, hands down.
Pick Newton!
I don’t give a fig about Putin.
Bob76
Spurred by Feynman’s discussion of Newton, I read part of the Principia. It is great. I wonder what it felt like to read it when it was new? He goes along being all mathy—then he describes an experimental setup and the results he get—and then he goes back to the mathematical analysis.
He not only invented modern physics but he invented devices—most notably the reflective (Newtonian) telescope. Then he built those devices.
Of course, he made mistakes. His formula for the speed of sound, published around 1687, was slightly wrong. Experiments revealed the error. And, in 1816—only 100+ years later—Laplace provided the necessary correction.
Isaac Newton was Warden of the Royal Mint, in which position he spent considerable time and effort identifying and prosecuting counterfeiters. So I’d love to hear his thoughts on cryptocurrency.
I vote for Putin.
Because if we could get him to New York as a private citizen, all sorts of interesting/useful things might happen.
Would Putin be even able to give a proper seminar? I mean, he’s so used to his yes men, that he’d probably just ramble on about nothing insightful and expect the crowd to meekly nod their heads in unison. As amusin as that image is, it would still be tedious. Oh! And we’d have to listen to the simultaneous translation of his talk, which tends to strip away the emotion of the speaker to boot.
On the other hand, Newton would probably speak with confidence and style and flair, if his hair is anything to go by. His 1600 English might be tricky a some points, but no translator needed.
Has to be Newton.
Newton was alive in 1700, not 1600.
Bob76
The connection between Sir Newton and the present blog is perhaps well-known: The blog author is genealogically linked to Rubin, Cochran, Wishart, Pearson, Galton, William Hopkins, (insert a few less famous people in-between), Roger Cotes, and then Isaac Newton.
Mr. Putin, on the other hand, has been geographically connected to the present blog’s host institute via Putin’s 2003 visit to Columbia, in which he elaborated “global benefits of keeping close ties between the United States and Russia.” On a side note, it is unknown whether the aforementioned ties are subject to Newton’s second law.
The question is then whose connection is stronger to grant an invitation. It turns out an easy calculation—the Columbia world leader forum has 175 speakers so far, whereas Isaac Newton has 24,219 academic descendants. The likelihood ratio test of Putin vs Newton is (1/175) / (1/24219) = 138. Therefore, reject Sir Newton.
Putin is reported to be able to speak English. Apparently, he does not like to do so.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1565578/Vladimir-Putin-languages-why-won-t-he-speak-English-evg
Bob76
Before both of them denied their language talents, it was safe to guess that speaking English had been likely necessary for Putin’s early intelligence career, to the same extend that Mr. Bankman-Fried had been capable of coding as he started as a trader.
I submitted an anti-Putin comment several hours ago, but it hasn’t appeared. This is perhaps another cyber-crime sponsored by the Russian state, which is worrying for the whole tournament. Or perhaps Andrew will claim it got sent to the spam folder, but having finished the excellent “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia” recently, I know that even supposed allies may be tools, willing or otherwise, of Putin and his cronies. We must fight this.
Newton, as far as I know, never ordered his rivals defenestrated.
I submitted a comment on another post a day ago, and it still has not appeared….maybe they don’t like jokes about machine learning either
You should read more about Newton and Hooke. Not literal defenestration, but close.
Newton was petty and strange, but regarding his behavior toward Hooke as “close” to defenestration is quite a stretch.
I figure that, while the eponymous cookies are mass produced, they are also Mass. produced. And relatively healthy, as these things go, the inevitable wasp body parts notwithstanding. (So sorry, vegetarians!)
And you Maytag me however you wish, but genocidal nutcases needn’t apply to be put in the next round.