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Search Tool Home Search -- Spartan Ideas A collection of thoughts, ideas, and opinions independently written by members of the MSU community and curated by MSU Libraries About Spartan Ideas Spartan Ideas is a collection of thoughts, ideas, and opinions independently written by members of the MSU community and curated by MSU Libraries FAQs Site Curators Starting a Blog Terms of Use Follow @SpartanIdeas Categories Agriculture Anthropology Archaeology Art Business Chemistry Computer Science Criminal Justice Economics Education Engineering Environment Food Science General Interest Grad School History Humanities Law Mathematics Medicine MSU Libraries Native Americans Philosophy Physics Politics Professional Development Psychology Religion Science Social Science Social Work Sports Statistics Sustainability Technology Writing Zoology Contributing Authors A. Allan Schmid Abbey Frazier Adrienne Hu Alexa McKinley Alexander Swindle Amanda Guthrie Amanda Toler Woodward Amy Auletto Amy Michael Andrea Zellner Andrew Lundeen Andy Funk Ann Marie Schneider Ann Mongoven Anna Groves Anna Herzberger Arnold Weinfeld Ashley Sanders Autumn Beyer Autumn Faulkner Ben Oberdick Bexx Caswell-Olson Bjørn Østman Blair Zaid Bobby Smiley Brent Donnellan Bryan Newland C. 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Starting from a list of integers, it is trivial to compute the list of all pairwise absolute differences, but what about going in the other direction? Given the pairwise (absolute) differences, with duplicates removed, can you recover the source list (or a … More → February 19, 2020 Paul Rubin Leave a comment Collections of CPLEX Variables Recently, someone asked for help online regarding an optimization model they were building using the CPLEX Java API. The underlying problem had some sort of network structure with \(N\) nodes, and a dynamic aspect (something going on in each of \(T\) periods, relating to arc flows I think). Forget about solving the problem: the program … More → February 19, 2020 Paul Rubin Leave a comment Generic Callback Changes in CPLEX 12.10 CPLEX 12.10 is out, and there have been a few changes to the new(ish) generic callbacks. Rather than go into them in detail (and likely screw something up), I’ll just point you to the slides for a presentation by Daniel Junglas of IBM at the 2019 INFORMS Annual Meeting. I’ve written about half a dozen … More → February 3, 2020 Paul Rubin Leave a comment Greedy Methods Can Be Exact We generally sort optimization algorithms (as opposed to models) into two or three categories, based on how certain we are that solutions will be either optimal or at least “good”. An answer by Michael Feldmeier to a question I posted on OR Stack Exchange neatly summarizes the categories: exact methods eventually cough up provably optimal … More → January 8, 2020 Paul Rubin Leave a comment 1-D Cutting Stock with Overlap An interesting variation of the 1-D cutting stock problem was posed on OR Stack Exchange. Rather than having a specified demand for various size cut pieces, the requirement is to cut pieces to cover a specified number of units of fixed lengths. Moreover, you can use multiple pieces to cover one target unit, but if … More → January 7, 2020 Paul Rubin Leave a comment Generosity, Humility, Vulnerability A few conversations in recent days, as well as a bunch of the reading I did during my holiday writing retreat, have led me back to thinking about generosity. One would think I’d have exhausted myself on that concept, but not even close. In the same way that I find myself continually relearning the same … More → December 18, 2019 Kathleen Fitzpatrick Leave a comment New Publication: Spam and Educators’ Twitter Use Several months ago, I wrote about a presentation on spam in educational Twitter research that I prepared with my colleagues Jeff Carpenter, Matt Koehler, and Bret Staudt Willet. Since that presentation, we’ve been hard at work continuing this project, and I’m pleased to announce that Spam and educators’ Twitter use: Methodological challenges and considerations has is now available “online first” through TechTrends. At … More → December 9, 2019 Spencer Greenhalgh Leave a comment In the Age of AI (Frontline, PBS) Something to share with your normie (i.e., non-technical) friends :-) I can’t point to anything specific I learned from the documentary, but I was entertained and interested throughout. For a non-specialist, this is a very good introduction to the topic. See also Manifold Podcast #16 with John Schulman of OpenAI :-) John Schulman is … More → December 9, 2019 Stephen Hsu Leave a comment That Didn’t Last Long My previous post did not age well. After a gorgeous start, Autumn has come to a bitter end here in East Lansing—many weeks before the official start of Winter. We had several inches of snow two nights ago, followed by extreme cold last night. It is quite beautiful, though, as you can see in the … More → December 3, 2019 Richard Lenski Leave a comment The Peril and Promise of Historians as Data Creators: Perspective, Structure, and the Problem of Representation [This is a working draft of a chapter in progress for an edited collection.] Data-Driven History Digital historians are well-familiar with notion that the larger community of historians generally has been skeptical of and cautious about data-driven scholarship. The controversies surrounding Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman’s 1974 work, Time on the Cross: the Economics of American … More → December 2, 2019 Sharon Leon Leave a comment No Quality With...