Ewart Shaw  (J. E. H. Shaw)

About Me

I recently retired from the Department of Statistics, University of Warwick, and since 2018 have been studying for a BA in Fine Art at Coventry University. Current interests include multimedia, neurodiversity, the tension between pattern and randomness, and uses of mathematics, science and computing in art. Professional interests include Bayesian inference, numerical and graphical methods, spherical and related codes, and medical statistics. I now mainly program in J, but have in the past used the usual suspects including C, C++, Fortran, Pascal and Python. Other interests include photography, and go. Previous interests include chess, guitar and squash.

Highlights

This section will eventually summarise & link to new, updated and/or popular sub-pages. Assuming, of course, that there are some.

For the moment, here's a little abstract photography.

Degrees of Separation

Erdös number = 4:
P. Erdös R. Blecksmith P. W. Laud A. F. M. Smith J. E. H. Shaw.

Kasparov number = 3:
Kasparov 0-1 Chandler 0-1 Rumens 0-1 Shaw, or Kasparov 0-1 Anand 0-1 Emms 0-1 Shaw.
Note in fairness that Garry Kasparov has a Shaw number of 2: Kasparov 1-0 Nunn 1-0 Shaw.

Morphy number = 4:
MorphyMortimerTartakowerGligorić — Shaw.

Shusaku number = 5:
ShusakuShueiShusaiYasunagaMacfadyen — Shaw.

Kibo number = 1 (attained June 1993).

Faux Bacon number = 4 (pretending that television programmes & home videos are allowed):

Kevin Bacon was in JFK (1991) with Donald Sutherland;
Donald Sutherland was in The First Great Train Robbery (1979) with Wayne Sleep;
Wayne Sleep was interviewed on Central TV (1998) with Sarah Payman-Shaw;
Sarah Payman-Shaw was in Terry Payman's New Year Video (1994) with Ewart Shaw.

Higher Degrees of Separation

My PhD genealogy includes Adrian Smith as supervisor, Dennis Lindley as grandsupervisor, George Barnard as great-grandsupervisor, Euler as great9-grandsupervisor, Leibniz as great13-grandsupervisor, and Copernicus as great19-grandsupervisor:

Nicolaus CopernicusGeorg Joachim RheticusMoritz Valentin SteinmetzChristoph MeurerPhilipp MüllerErhard WeigelGottfried LeibnizNicolas MalebrancheJacob BernoulliJohann BernoulliLeonhard EulerJoseph-Louis LagrangeSiméon Denis PoissonMichel ChaslesHubert Anson NewtonEliakim Hastings MooreOswald VeblenAlonzo ChurchGeorge BarnardDennis LindleyAdrian Smith — Ewart Shaw.

With Leibniz, relationships get complicated. As well as his doctorate from Universität Leipzig in 1666, he also had Christiaan Huygens as advisor for a dissertation at the Académie Royale des Sciences de Paris in 1676. Hence Erasmus is my step-great22- and Thomas à Kempis my step-great24-grandsupervisor:

Thomas à KempisAlexander HegiusDesiderius ErasmusJakob MilichErasmus ReinholdValentin NabothRudolph SnelliusWillebrord SnelliusJacobus GoliusFrans van SchootenChristiaan HuygensLeibniz — ...

Through van Schooten, Marin Mersenne is also a step-great16-grandsupervisor.

My own former PhD students, with Leibniz as their great14-grandsupervisor (etc.), are: Karla Hemming, Ben Cowling, Simon Bond, Costas Kallis, Maria Costa, Miland Joshi and Hasinur Rahaman Khan.

Many thanks to Simon Bond for researching the mathematical genealogy, and to Tony O'Hagan for correcting my Erdös number.