Drift and Diffusion

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Ellie's Yellow Belt

Of course, we are very proud parents....

(For windows users, a better video host is here.)

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Cookies in August

Seems Ellie was flipping through back issues of her Ladybug magazine and *really* wanted to decorate gingerbread men. At least it wasn't 98 degrees out with the oven on.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Rainy Day Marble Run

AKA "I can't remember the word 'block'."

About the blog title...

In addition to being a fairly straightforward metapor for how I think and write and learn, Drift and Diffusion are mathematical terms. "Drift" is (usually) a deterministic effect like Newton's laws and "Diffusion" is a random effect like molecular bombardment.

The most picturesque description I know is the route of a dandelion seed in a stream. The current is drift, and all the while water molecules are causing tiny oscillations that keep the motion from being predictable and smooth. Such mathematical models played a role in my (fading) thesis work, and in quantitative finance.