Saturday, March 21, 2015

A Baltimore Raven's Math Research


Offensive lineman John Urschel of the Baltimore Ravens before a game against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Nov. 2, 2014, in Pittsburgh.
Photographer: George Gojkovich/Getty Images


A Baltimore Raven's Math Research 


His  quarterback,

the talented  Joe Flacco

may consider hims something of a whack-o

while  worrying about a sack

from the fiercely   opposing sector

as one of his lineman could  be  computing  the  Fiedler Vector---

something coming from   advanced math

and  the Theory of the Graph .



Would  it  better predict a football's path,

and, while all about are madly rushing,

hopefully,  avoid their  concussing--

or else, often  take the blame

for  Delay of Game?


 Time will tell.

  in the NFL.

HZL
3/21/15


One of the Baltimore Ravens Just Published an Insanely Complex Study in a Math Journal

John Urschel worries that his hitting position could interfere with his future as a math scholar
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John Urschel, an offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, recently co-authored a paper in the Journal of Computational Mathematics. It is titled "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians" and apparently includes "a cascadic multigrid algorithm for fast computation of the Fiedler vector of a graph Laplacian, namely, the eigenvector corresponding to the second smallest eigenvalue." I understand close to none of the words in that sentence, which comes from the paper's abstract. I probably never will. The rest of the study is similarly accessible. See some highlights below: 
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Urschel, who was drafted in 2014 to block for Joe Flacco, had a 4.0 grade point average at Penn State and has been published in several mathematical journals. He is also an accomplished chess player. For a living, he uses his body as a bulldozer. His family, he says, wonders why he would spend his time in such a way. The answer is, apparently, that he just enjoys leveling people. 
"There’s a rush you get when you go out on the field, lay everything on the line and physically dominate the player across from you. This is a feeling I’m (for lack of a better word) addicted to," wrote Urschel in a post this week on the Players Tribune. Urschel said he was jealous of Chris Borland, the San Francisco 49ers linebacker who retired from football this month at the age of 24 because he was worried about head trauma. "Playing a hitting position in the NFL can’t possibly help your long-term mental health," Urschel acknowledged, before rattling off a list of reasons why his mental health might be particularly valuable, including a "bright career ahead of me in mathematics." The problem is that Urschel likes to crush his peers too much. ("I love hitting people," he confirms.) Too bad you can't hit people with pi. 

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