Geek Ink

So ever since I decided to leave grad school, I’ve been thinking that it might be nice to have the diffusion equation tattooed on my feet. This is the first tattoo idea I’ve had that I’ve actually liked for more than a week at a time; if I still like it when I’m 30 I’ll start looking for an artist. Why is this such an appealing concept? Well:

1. I’m a really big dork.
2. I like to think of life as a random walk (NB: you can derive the diffusion equation from the drunkard’s walk problem).
3. Reeeeeeeeally big dork.

But of course, there are some important dorky questions to answer first, one of which is detailed in a chat log below the cut. It also brings up an important gender issue.

Okay, fine, I’m just posting chat logs because I haven’t been posting much lately and I really don’t want to redo my figures.

Yami: hey, do you think my life has a constant diffusion coefficient?
Mr. McMoots: diffusion?
Yami: if I am getting the diffusion equation tattooed on my feet, do I need to keep the diffusion coefficient inside the divergence?
del-squared is nicer looking
but i don’t want to put bad physics on my ankles
Mr. McMoots: maybe you need to generalize to the Fokker-Planck equation
Yami: maybe i can just say that i’m only living to within an order of magnitude
that’s not a very funny joke though
Mr. McMoots: you could always say your life is a Wiener process
Yami: I don’t have a Wiener
you’re oppressing me