I’m Michael Lugo. I have a PhD in mathematics from Penn and once taught statistics at Berkeley. Currently I am a data scientist at AT&T.
This blog is the reincarnation of the old God Plays Dice, and is about mathematics, not anything to do with religion. The name is my answer to a quote of Einstein in a letter to Max Born: “Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the ‘old one.’ I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.” Every so often this blog gets referred to as “your blog with a German name”, which amuses me greatly because I only know a little German.
I used to think the Internet was awesome; parts of it are but it’s gone downhill.
If you want to follow this blog elsewhere: there’s an RSS feed at gottwurfelt.wordpress.com/feed and a Twitter account, which should automatically update when new posts are made, at @gottwurfelt.
You can access this site either from michaellugo.com or from gottwurfelt.com. (“gottwurfelt” is “God plays dice” in German; I used to have the domain godplaysdice.com but it got away from me.)
Other online presences that are me (this isn’t an exhaustive list):
I invented this with some colleagues (for maintaining telecom systems), but not this or this (which are about pacemakers).
People named Michael, Mike, or Miguel Lugo who have some sort of online presence and are not me:
- The coach at Lugo Boxing in Marietta, Georgia;
- The chef at Michael’s, a restaurant in St. Augustine, Florida;
- The television crew member;
- The real estate agent in San Antonio;
- The medical researcher;
- The chemical engineer Michael Lugo-Pimentel;
- The mathematician at Virginia Tech;
- The Assistant Fire Chief in Argyle, Texas;
- The graphic designer;
- The TV account executive;
- The ophthalmologist in central Florida, who also plays dominoes;
- The CFO for Goya Foods
- The civil engineer at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez;
- The sit-down comedian in Los Angeles;
- The biochemist at the University of Guelph;
- The one who had his teaching credentials revoked.
Lugo is a city in Spain and also one in Italy; my father’s family (from where the name comes) is Cuban and there was immigration from Galicia to Cuba, so the Spanish one is probably the relevant one. I’ve never been to either one. Wikipedia has a list of people named Lugo; as far as I know I’m not related to any of them.
God plays dice 
The math in your blog seems to bounce up from the lines of text.. You could consider adding
.center-column img.latex {
margin-bottom: 0;
}
or something like that to some .css file.
Thanks for the tip. I had noticed the problem but hadn’t had time to find a solution yet.
Your algorithm for calculating Hebrew holidays is incorrect by assuming that Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, etc are not permitted to fall on Friday or Saturday coincident with the Jewish Sabbath.
Indeed, these special occurrences are celebrated with double reverence. You will need to adjust your input parameters.
Hi Michael,
I thought you might be interested in this interview I did with Professor Greg Chaitin on his new book – ‘Proving Darwin: Making Biology Mathematical’
Feel free to make a blog post about it if you wish.
Tom
One thing that may interest you: poker. You know game theory and enough math to compute and model most things relevant in poker. You can make money out of it if you invest time in it. This is work, and definitely not for everyone, but I think many mathematicians would benefit alot from knowing poker, how to play, practicing it a few months to gain that experience -over one summer say.
This is something to consider from the point of view of Isabella Laba’s post on alternatives to academic careers.
This is something I am myself trying. So far I have won like 13EUR, through free challenges on Barrière poker and Winamax (I play in play money, and they give real money if you do well.) I am in France -my name is Paul Le Meur. Not sure how it is in the US, they are working on legislation I think.
It is again not for everyone, but definitely something very interesting in many respects.
Thanks for your regular posts on probability and math – I have been reading your blog for a year now. Recent reaction to the 1:1100 risk of an Asteroid hitting NYC in 2028 led me to write about how most people don’t understand probability or micromorts http://abundantmichael.com/blog/index.cfm/2013/2/11/Risk-Asteroid-micromorts-and-the-zeitgeist perhaps you can use in your blog. I would have emailed you but I didn’t see a Contact page on your website.
Very noce article – thanks!
As a very minor aside, there is a fractions module in Python that might have saved a few lines, and would have done all the gcd work behind the scenes.
*God Plays Dice* is brilliant and not just because the subtitle to my blog is *Fencing with the Gods*!
hello how do u find all those articles that relates to mathematics? what are the ways to accumulate all the news that relates to math from all over the internet? let’s say i’m in need of that thing.
oh thanks in advance
Sorry I couldn’t quickly find a better way to contact you. In https://math.stackexchange.com/a/2918271/26369 , it seems I linked to your homework about Rulerette on Berkeley’s site, and the page no longer exists. Do you have a mirror somewhere? Thanks either way.