dinner with john nash! :-)

so today's experimental math seminar was packed... normally there's maybe a dozen people in a room that holds like 50 desks? (maybe poor estimating), and showing up 30 seconds early is plenty of time... the talk was not advertised other than on the general math department seminar calendar, yet when i came 15 minutes early, the room was already 2/3 full with non-math people i'd never even seen before!

nash was a very clear speaker, but a very different style from many people i've heard. while in some sense he talked the most in generalities about models and the big idea of what he's studying lately, in another sense he worried a lot about explaining variable names in his mathematica code for example. if you're familiar at all with nash equilibria (loosly finding a point where every person involved in a bargaining game can't have a better lot if they change their strategy and everyone else keeps their current strategy).. he talked about the same kind of cooperative games only where players can elect another player to be an "agent" for them and form coalitions together. it was a good talk.

after the talk, there was the usual dinner with the speaker deal at an indian restaurant. normally there's 8-10 of us, which includes my advisor, me, a few of dr. z.'s other students, past and present, and a few profs from the department. as it turned out i ended up sitting right next to john nash himself! his son johnny was also present, but johnny was kind of in his own world for the evening working on some stuff in a notebook further down the table. john nash though, talked to me a bit about last names, because he had never heard of mine before and wanted to compare ancestries. when he heard me reply to a comment about budapest and gathered i was there for a semester, he compared notes with me about various eastern european foreign languages (as if i'm an expert)... he also commented to vince (who was sitting across from me) when vince asked if he's frequently recognized and made to be in pictures and give autographs, "well, right after the movie, i was pretty popular, but i think the older i get the more incognito i get... actually, i kinda like being incognito". that made me laugh. :-)

so yeah, not only did i hear john nash lecture and get to eat dinner with him, but by random chance of the 20+ish people at dinner tonight me and my advisor were the two who got to sit immediately next to him. it was a quality evening.

i took pictures, but i brought my regular camera, not my digital, so i'll post them when i finish the roll.

later dudes :-P