OK, it finally happened! My new article, "Gradience as a cognitive principle for evaluating numerical notations", is now out today in @pnas.org. By focusing on numerals' use for communication instead of arithmetic, we have a new tool to assess their efficiency.
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
1/ If you read this NY Times piece but ACTUALLY want to do something to reduce screen time, there's really only one way to do this w/ an iPhone (and it's not switching to greyscale). www.nytimes.com/2025/12/25/o...
Something similar to what @simondedeo.bsky.social did with Darwin's notebooks: doi.org/10.1016/j.co...
Will it work? Gosh, who knows. Is it fun as heck to try? Yes!
I love "Chalk"!
And I'd love to connect our work on the shorter timescales of mathematical creativity to the longer sweep of history... We recently started analyzing Erdös's entire oeuvre using similar methods. No results so far — the analyses are a bit of a mess, tbh — but hope springs eternal.
Nice write-up in Scientific American of some of the latest research from my group, led by my first PhD student Dr. Shadi Tabatabaeian (now a postdoc at Georgetown). I grew up reading Scientific American... Childhood dream fulfilled! @david-landy.bsky.social
I’ll be considering graduate school applications for Fall 2026 – positions are fully funded, typically for 5 years. Deadline to apply to the Cognition program is December 1. Come do science with me in beautiful Amherst, Massachusetts! www.umass.edu/natural-scie...
Studying mathematicians’ sudden insights in their natural habitat.
One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is “An information-theoretic foreshadowing of mathematicians’ sudden insights.” Explore the article here: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
For more trending articles, visit ow.ly/Me2U50SkLRZ.
Mathematician works on whiteboard. Stock photo.
Can the “eureka” moments that advance mathematics be predicted? Close study of mathematicians working at blackboards to solve tough problems found a spike of unpredictable movements and attentional shifts one minute before breakthroughs. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Ceramicist at work in Takayama, Japan. (image: Katherine Mast)
Mastering a skill can take decades, but learning unfolds across timescales from moments to days. A new paper by three former SFI postdocs presents a theoretical model of nested timescales of learning, offering a unified, multi-scale account of skill acquisition. www.santafe.edu/news-center/...
New paper on misperceptions out in PNAS @pnas.org
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Why do people overestimate the size of politically relevant groups (immigrant, LGBTQ, Jewish) and quantities (% of budget spent on foreign aid, % of refugees that are criminals)?🧵👇
Cool paper about why we overestimate the size of minority groups!
From @brianguay.bsky.social, @tylermarghetis.bsky.social, Cara Wong, and @david-landy.bsky.social
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
I'll be presenting some work with @tylermarghetis.bsky.social and Elizabeth Geballe at #CES2024 on translation as transmission. Stop by if you'd like to chat about digital humanities and cross-cultural transmission!
Link: ellisc.dev/pdf/ces_2024...
I've been awarded an early-career research grant in Australia (an ARC DECRA)! Feeling very fortunate 😌
Excited to continue my work on the interactions between music, minds, and culture using a online citizen science approach.
science.anu.edu.au/news-events/...
Call for papers for the Visual Language Conference 2024
We’re hosting a conference! In June we’ll host the Visual Language Conference 2024 (VisLang2024) at Tilburg University for research on graphic and multimodal communication. Submissions are now open. Please submit, join us, and circulate the CFP widely! www.visuallanguagelab.com/vislang2024
Hi Bluesky! I'm recruiting graduate students and postdocs to launch the Visual Learning Lab with me at UC San Diego in Summer/Fall 2024!
The lab will focus on how we learn to derive visual meaning, integrating methods from developmental psychology, machine learning, & vision science.
Read broadly and outside your discipline/area of research. It will allow you to make new and original connections that you would not otherwise make.
My Strategies for Dealing With Radical Psychotic Doubt: A Schizo-Something Philosopher’s Tale | A beautifully written first-person account by the amazing Sofia Jeppsson academic.oup.com/schizophreni... | via @lisabortolotti.bsky.social
During grad school, I worked with an RA who I suspected of fraud. We were running experiments with a pre and post session in the lab. Labor intensive, time suck!
I never witnessed anything but I knew something was off bc the descriptive stats were unbelievable compared to our other similar studies.
I just wrote "As well, I'm Canadian" and realized it's an example where the words and the construction convey the same information.
