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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · 8d

Spineless and disappointing

A statement from the President of the Royal Society | Royal Society

A statement from Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society, regarding threats to the values that allow science to flourish.

royalsociety.org

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · 17d

🚨 Very excited about this!

Among other things, we give the first complete characterization of the case of equality in Shannon's Entropy Power Inequality

Full paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2509.14021

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · 23d

If Elon Musk is *not* removed from the Fellowship, the Royal Society should explain why it even has a Code of Conduct.

Royal Society to reconsider expelling Elon Musk - Research Professional News

“Language of violence” in address to anti-immigration rally pushes science academy to reassess billionaire’s fellowship

www.researchprofessionalnews.com

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Reposted by Ioannis Kontoyiannis

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences @pnas.org · 23d

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.

Studying mathematicians’ sudden insights in their natural habitat.

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Sep 11

Not saying I loved it, but a popular-science introduction to Markov chains that gets nearly 8 million views in six weeks is definitely something to celebrate!

The Strange Math That Predicts (Almost) Anything

YouTube video by Veritasium

www.youtube.com

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Sep 9

ICYMI: Terry Tao on Trump's science policy 👇

The world’s greatest mathematician avoided politics. Then Trump cut science funding.

Terence Tao, a renowned mathematician at UCLA, faced funding challenges after the Trump administration froze federal research funds.

www.washingtonpost.com

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Sep 5

Full paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2309.02944

The case for and against fixed step-size: Stochastic approximation algorithms in optimization and machine learning

Theory and application of stochastic approximation (SA) have become increasingly relevant due in part to applications in optimization and reinforcement learning. This paper takes a new look at SA with...

arxiv.org

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Sep 5

🚨 Is fixed step-size a good idea? A rigorous analysis, in exciting new work with Sean Meyn (@supermeyn.bsky.social) and Caio Kalil Lauand

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Aug 30

🙋‍♂️❓

When did Google search stop saying how many results it found, and is it still possible to get that info?

Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Jul 29

Full paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2507.16529

Bayesian causal discovery: Posterior concentration and optimal detection

We consider the problem of Bayesian causal discovery for the standard model of linear structural equations with equivariant Gaussian noise. A uniform prior is placed on the space of directed acyclic g...

arxiv.org

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Jul 29

🚨 New paper -- Causal modeling and the curse of overfitting

Title and abstract of the paper: "Bayesian causal discovery: Posterior concentration and optimal detection", by Valentinian Lungu, Graduate Student Member, IEEE, Joni Shaska, Graduate Student Member, IEEE, Ioannis Kontoyiannis, Fellow, IEEE, Urbashi Mitra, Fellow, IEEE

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Jul 20

UK vs the US: Cultural and lifestyle differences

lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · Jul 19

I decided to make a long blog post combining general sociological things I am aware of with personal observations of cultural and lifestyle differences between the UK and USA.

sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/07/comp...

Comparisons Between Life in the UK and the USA

For most of my life I have lived in the UK, but for six years I lived in the United States of America. Somewhat erratic and unpleasant polit...

sootyempiric.blogspot.com

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Jun 27

And a gut-wrenching estimated 22,800 children

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Jun 27

"Almost 84,000 people died in Gaza between October 2023 and early January 2025 as a result of the Hamas–Israel war"

"More than half of the people killed were women aged 18–64, children or people over 65"

Nature @nature.com · Jun 27

First independent survey of deaths in Gaza reports more than 80,000 fatalities

The results align with other efforts to count the number of people killed amid the ongoing conflict.

https://go.nature.com/44nH0la

First independent survey of deaths in Gaza reports more than 80,000 fatalities

Results align with other efforts to count the number of people killed amid the ongoing conflict.

go.nature.com

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Reposted by Ioannis Kontoyiannis

Edouard Machery @edouardmachery.bsky.social · Apr 18

the ERC has added a million euro for researchers moving to Europe.

ERC to double allowance for researchers moving to EU

The European Research Council (ERC) is doubling the relocation allowance it makes to researchers coming to the EU to take up one of its grants. At present it offers third-country researchers up to €1 ...

sciencebusiness.net

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Jun 27

New entropy inequalities --

Fun new work with Rupert Li and Lampros Gavalakis just posted www.arxiv.org/abs/2506.20813 !

title and abstract of the paper on the arXiv

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Jun 27

www.itsoc.org/news/shannon...

Shannon Award for 2026 | IEEE Information Theory Society

www.itsoc.org

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Jun 27

🚨 Breaking -- and extremely exciting -- news!

It was just announced that Frans Willem was awarded the Shannon Award!

Congratulations, Frans!

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Jun 23

In auto-reply/vacation messages that say "...if there is something urgent, please contact Blah at blah@blah...", has anyone ever urgently contacted Blah?

Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · Jun 3

Is the thesis available online somewhere?

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · May 22

This is terrible. An apology would at least be nice. Instead, they are patronizing everyone else: "This should be a learning moment for all journalism organizations".

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · May 21

Hard to see how this may not be a problem 😮❗

The New York Times @nytimes.com · May 21

During a Senate hearing, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, falsely described habeas corpus as the president’s “constitutional right” to deport people. nyti.ms/3H1DXXS

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Reposted by Ioannis Kontoyiannis

Steven Strogatz @stevenstrogatz.com · May 17

Obit for Peter Lax, an applied mathematician who did pioneering work in PDEs, solitons, and computational science.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/s...

Peter Lax, Pre-eminent Cold War Mathematician, Dies at 99

www.nytimes.com

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Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · May 17

Exciting talk by Frank den Hollander at the Athens Probability Colloquium

AProC.gr

Ioannis Kontoyiannis @kontoyiannis.bsky.social · May 15

"most of what we write about is humans doing things and other humans being upset about it" 🙃

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