Before I read The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya, I only knew about John von Neumann in two contexts: that computers use the von Neumann architecture, and that he appeared in a story about a mathematical problem I remember from many years ago. After reading it, I understand what a genius he was, and how much of science in the 20th century he influenced. He deserves to be better known than I think he is, and this is a great book to learn about him.
Posted in Learning
Tagged book, book review, history, learning, math, mathematics, science
This fall I took the course Mathematical Modelling of Football from Uppsala University. It was taught by Professor David Sumpter, and I believe this is the first academic course of its kind. The main subjects covered are modelling and analysis of events (on the ball actions), movement and pitch control (tracking data), player evaluation, and match result simulations. There were also several guest lectures from (among others) William Spearman, lead data scientist at Liverpool FC, and Javier Fernández, head of sports analytics at FC Barcelona.
The tools used were Python (using Anaconda) with NumPy, Pandas and Matplotlib. The course was a lot of work, especially the assignments, but I really enjoyed it and learned a lot.
Henrik Warne's blog 