Milnor on Nash

One of the highlight of last year’s Stony Brook conference was John Milnor’s talk about John Nash. The video is now available online. John Milnor, also an Abel Prize laureate, is familiar to many economists from his book “Topology from the differential approach”. He has known John Nash from the beginning of their careers in the common room in the math school at Princeton University. Watch him talk with clarity and humor about young Nash’s ambitions, creativity, courage, and contributions.
Here is a the handwritten letter which Nash wrote to the NSA in 1955 (pdf), fifteen years before Cook formalized the P/NP problem. In the letter Nash conjectures that for most encryption mechanisms, recovering the key from the cipher requires exponential amount of time. And here is what Nash had to say about proving this conjecture: 

  
   

 
 

Who Was Colonel Blotto?

Credit for the game that bears his name is due to to Borel. It appears in a 1921 paper in French. An English translation (by Leonard Savage) may be found in a 1953 Econometrica.

 

The first appearance in print of a version of the game with Colonel Blotto’s name attached is, I believe, in the The Weekend Puzzle Book by Caliban (June 1924). Caliban was the pen name of Hubert Phillips one time head of Economics at the University of Bristol and a puzzle contributor to The New Statesman.

Blotto itself is a slang word for inebriation. It does not, apparently, derive from the word `blot’, meaning to absorb liquid. One account credits a French manufacturer of delivery tricycles (Blotto Freres, see the picture) that were infamous for their instability. This inspired Laurel and Hardy to title one of their movies Blotto. In it they get blotto on cold tea, thinking it whiskey.

Over time, the Colonel has been promoted. In 2006 to General and to Field Marshall in 2011.

Unraveling in Philosophy

Colleagues outside of Economics often marvel at the coordinated nature of the Economics job market. The job market is so efficient, that the profession no longer wastes resources by having everyone read each candidate’s job market paper. That task is assigned to one person (Tyler Cowen) who reports back to the rest of us. In case you missed the report, here it is

Economics is not alone in having a coordinated job market. Philosophy has one, but it has begun to show signs of unraveling. The ability to interview via Skype, for example, has reduced the value in the eyes of many, for a preliminary interview at their annual meeting. In response, the American Philosophy Association posted the following statement regarding the job market calendar:

For tenure-track/continuing positions advertised in the second half of the calendar year, we recommend an application deadline of November 1 or later. It is further recommended that positions be advertised at least 30 days prior to the application deadline to ensure that candidates have ample time to apply.

In normal circumstances a prospective employee should have at least two weeks for consideration of a written offer from the hiring institution, and responses to offers of a position whose duties begin in the succeeding fall should not be required before February 1.

When advertising in PhilJobs: Jobs for Philosophers, advertisers will be asked to confirm that the hiring institution will follow the above guidelines. If an advertiser does not do so, the advertisement will include a notice to that effect.

Its natural to wonder if the Economics market is not far behind. Skype interviews are already taking place. The current set up requires a department to evaluate and select candidates  for preliminary interviews within a month (roughly the middle of November to mid December) which is hardly conducive to mature reflection (and argument).