Miscellaneous
Some interesting facts
How, then, when all female ants in the same colony share the same genetic heritage, are they destined for such contrasting fates? On one side, the queen: often the sole mother of the other ants in the colony; with an imposing morphology and exceptional longevity – up to 15 to 30 years. On the other side, the workers, all sterile, who will live no more than a year (in ants, females come from fertilized eggs, and males from unfertilized eggs). This question finds some answers in the work of Ingrid Fetter-Pruneda, who published this interesting paper in Science (2018). A good summary article has been produced by Le Monde for a more vulgarized approach.
If you go to a supermarket, observe the prices of each item. On a piece of paper, write down the first digit of the price of each item: if it’s written 81.12€, write down 8; if it’s 0.12€, write down 1, and so on. Once you have collected all these digits, count the number of 1s, the number of 2s, the number of 3s, etc. The result will always be the same: there will be more 1s (30% in total) than 2s, more 2s (17% in total) than 3s, and so on, with more 8s (5% in total) than 9s. Even more astonishing: this observation generalizes to any statistical sample, whether it’s the population of cities around the world or the lengths of rivers (in any unit of measurement!). This is known as Benford’s Law. I discovered this phenomenon in the very interesting book of Mickael Launay, the author tackles various of interesting examples where maths meets our daily life, before diving into more complex subjects such that the research of G. Cantor about infinity and the evolution of cosmological research.
More to come about history (for example the archeological research about Massada, the evolution of mathematics and physics), maths (for example the Collatz/Syracuse conjecture) and the challenges linked to model reality (this about data science, this aboutshoal of fish modelization).
Side projects
Is it possible to have dinner for free at a nice restaurant in Paris? Yes, if you can leverage some public exposure. This idea inspired me to create an Instagram page with the goal of gaining enough followers to get invited by the restaurants themselves. However, I didn’t want to spend my time posting photos and interacting with users. So, I created a fully automated account that posts beautiful Parisian pictures.
First, I selected 10,000 photos from various photographers and developed a machine learning model to choose the most promising ones. The account posts the photos (crediting the authors, who were always happy to be reposted), interacts, and even follows, likes, and comments relevantly. This coding challenge was very interesting and taught me a lot. The account gained almost 1,000 followers in one month, itwas quite effective—I did receive some invitations! Once I felt I had achieved my goal, I decided to stop the program to comply with Instagram’s new anti-bot policy.
Mens sana in corpore sano
I’m really into water sports and board sports.They are not just about thrilling sensations, but also about enjoying serene moments in beautiful landscapes and nature.
Sport and art can be a nice mix. I customize my skateboards inspired by my favorite painters.
