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Taking Measure Blog Posts

Mathematics and statistics

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Displaying 1 - 25 of 27
cartoon of a young woman at her desk speaking by webcam with another person.

The NIST Summer Undergraduate Fellowship Program Goes Virtual

January 27, 2021
Brandi Toliver
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) designed the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Program to inspire undergraduate students to pursue careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) through a unique research experience that supports our mission
Zach Levine in his kitchen wearing an orange and white striped apron and chef's hat

Minding your Peas and Carrots: Please Try This at Home

July 10, 2020
Ron Cowen
NIST physicist Zachary Levine doesn’t cook that often, but when he does it can easily turn into a science experiment. Two years ago, after he and his wife had endured a week of under-baked cookies and chicken that took forever to roast, Levine wasn’t content to simply recalibrate his oven according
Tytus Mak sitting at his desk and while colleague Arun Moorthy and he look at a computer screen

Shaping the Future of the NIST Mass Spectral Library

June 9, 2020
Tytus Mak
When one thinks of mass spectral libraries — well, let’s be honest here, the very idea of mass spectral libraries will never cross most people’s minds, even most scientists’. But that’s true for most of the seemingly esoteric things that many of us at the National Institute of Standards and
Hae-Jeong Lee speaks into a microphone as a student stands beside her

Women in STEM: Igniting Young Minds, Illuminating the Future

March 16, 2020
Hae-Jeong Lee
I am a research chemist and lab officer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). From November 2019 to February 2020, I worked as an Embassy Science Fellow in the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea. The U.S. Department of State’s Office of Science and Technology Cooperation
white pi symbol on a grey field made up of the numbers of pi

The Life of (Buckingham) Pi

March 12, 2020
C.W. Clark
What do the following topics have in common? Pricing models for parking reservation systems. The mechanics of human walking. The die-down of water waves in sea ice. The self-hovering of unmanned aerial vehicles right above the ground. Bright cosmic infrared arcs that form when stellar dust meets the
a graphic with a large 5 surrounded by objects from the post including mysterious museum objects, a blackboard with equations on it, a cellphone, and three vials. Additional text above the 5 reads "2019 Taking Measure."

Top 5 NIST Blog Posts of 2019

November 25, 2019
Mark Esser
It’s December, and that means it’s time for us to reflect on the past year, and what a year it was! This year tens of thousands of people tuned into the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Taking Measure blog to get their metrological fix, and we couldn’t be more pleased. Thank you
Adam Pintar standing with arms crossed in front of a whiteboard covered with equations and graphs

One Statistical Paradigm to Rule Them All?

April 8, 2019
Adam Pintar
Now, if you’re familiar with either statistics or J.R.R. Tolkien, I know the title grabbed your attention. And if not, don’t worry, all will become clear in time, but I’ve always wanted to reference “The Lord of the Rings” in a title (and scientific papers provide little opportunity for that!)
stainless steel weights

Top NIST Images of 2018

February 6, 2019
Robin Materese
There’s nothing quite like a captivating image to make you want to learn more. And nowhere is that more apparent than when it comes to sometimes hard-to-understand science. Before we all get too settled into 2019, we thought we’d take a look back at some of our best pictures from 2018. If you missed
Mathematician Ryan Evans in front of a whiteboard covered in mathematical equations

It All Adds Up: Being a NIST NRC Postdoc in Applied Mathematics

August 21, 2018
Ryan Evans
I first learned about the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) while a graduate student in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Delaware, which has an active student chapter of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). They regularly invite
Scott Glancy, a sandy blonde-haired Caucasian man with blue eyes, standing in his office wearing a black T-shirt that reads "Quantum physics: The Dreams Stuff is Made of

Local Realism, Bell’s Inequality, and T-Shirts: An Entangled Tale

April 26, 2018
Scott Glancy
For this past Christmas my wife, Rebecca, gave me a T-shirt that says "Quantum mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of." This is an allusion to the book The Dreams That Stuff Is Made Of: The Most Astounding Papers of Quantum Physics— and How They Shook the Scientific World, edited by the late Stephen
man standing in front of a white board filled with equations. Four other men sit around a table watching.

Quantum Information: Changing the Rules of the Game

August 2, 2017
Carl Miller
I was a math researcher at the University of Michigan back in 2008 when I had the crazy—one could even say random—notion to shift from studying pure mathematics to studying quantum information science. My mentor at the time was confused by this. Why give up the field in which you have all your
Lily Chen at her whiteboard

Deciphering: The Thrill of a Lifetime

June 9, 2017
Lily Chen
When I went to graduate school to pursue my master’s degree 35 years ago, I couldn’t have predicted where my study of mathematics would end up taking me. I simply thought I was going to become a math professor. Before digital communications, the internet, and personal computers became part of our
Woman at blackboard

Plotting a Path from NASA Grids to NIST Graphics

April 27, 2017
Bonita Saunders
Before “Hidden Figures” was a movie, it was a book. Actually, two books—the regular book and a young readers’ edition. I liked the movie, but I loved the books. For many months, I watched the excitement surrounding the movie about three African-American women who made significant contributions to
Photo of man in white space suite on surface of moon at night.

Mooning Over Measurement

January 31, 2017
Ann Chiaramonti Debay
I’ve worked with many valuable materials in my career. Precious metals like gold and platinum, rare engineered nanomaterials, and fragile gemstones nearly as old as the Earth itself. But the unassuming jars of fine gray-brown powder I found myself holding last year left them all in the dust, so to
Photo of purplish black sky with a streak of bright lightning

In Pursuit of Plasma Power: Hot Stuff, Snowstorms, and Starry Skies

September 15, 2016
Yuri Ralchenko
Do we really need hot stuff? I’m not talking about Donna Summer’s disco hit of 1979 or global warming. I’m not talking about anything so lukewarm as the surface of our sun—a mere 6,000 kelvins. I don’t even mean something as hot as 1,000,000 kelvins. No, the kind of hot stuff I’m talking about is