What is your formula?

[Note: I goofed up in describing What is your formula? as an Edge annual question. It's not, and I've updated the post below to correct this.]

Edge Foundation does a yearly thing where they pose a question to an array of scientists and other intellectuals, and collect together all their answers. They have also had occasion to pose a question outside of the normal cycle, when after the 9/11 terrorist attacks they asked, What Now? Earlier this month, as part of a collaboration with the Serpentine Gallery in London, Edge posed another question to their collection of thinkers. The question was What is your formula? Your equation? Your algorithm? and browsing through the answers is a great way to waste an afternoon. Because the replies consisted mainly of diagrams and equations (many of which were hand-drawn), they are displayed as scanned images, which adds a personal touch to the results.

Unfortunately, the format of the question also limited the form the answers could take, most of which express some kind of heuristic relationship rather than a true formula. I did like this entry by psychology professor Danny Kahneman, which seems to explain a lot of popular culture.

As might be expected, the entries by mathematicians tended to have actual formulas in them. I can relate to the sentiment expressed by Nassim Taleb in his entry. Over a typeset page of equations on how to price stock derivatives, he hand-wrote, "I spent a large part of my life working on this equation. I am glad it is over."

Many of the entries were just plain silly. I'll single out this one by cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman, because of his abuse of mathematics. He has a nice diagram illustrating composition of functions that would make any algebra teacher proud, but follows it with a fallacious argument that shows he has not mastered basic logic.

Let me mention one more entry before I stop. Popular math writer Keith Devlin uses an analogy to speculate on how math will be taught in the future, and it looks like he would like to see virtual manipulatives taken to a whole new level.

Be sure to also check out the archive of annual answers to questions. Because they are not constrained by the "formula" format imposed on the current question, the answers are better developed and far more insightful.