mathematics

Mason Porter

Mason Porter is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mason Porter rather than just read about it. In short: Mason A. Porter (born 1976) is an American mathematician, physicist, and social scientist currently at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Key takeaways

Mason Porter belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mason Porter to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mason Porter from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Mason A. Porter (born 1976) is an American mathematician, physicist, and social scientist currently at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was elected to the 2018 class of fellows of the American Mathematical Society.

Early life and education Mason Porter was born in 1976 in Los Angeles. He completed his studies at Beverly Hills High School in 1994 as the salutatorian of his class. Afterward, he attended California Institute of Technology, where he was a member of Lloyd House. In 1998, he graduated in with a Bachelor of Science (Honours degree) in Applied Mathematics. For his graduate studies, he went to the Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell University, where he worked on quantum billiards. He was supervised by Richard Liboff and graduated in 2002 with a PhD.

Career Subsequently, Mason Porter had postdoctoral scholar positions at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology. From 2007 to 2016, he was a faculty member of the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and a Tutorial fellow at Somerville College, Oxford. Currently, he is a professor of mathematics and sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has been working on a range of topics in applied and theoretical mathematics. These include community structure in multidimensional networks, dynamical systems, granular material, topological data analysis, and social network analysis. His collaborators include Danielle Bassett, Andrea Bertozzi, Charlotte Deane, and Heather Harrington.

Awards and honors In 2014, he received an Erdős–Rényi Prize, recognizing his work on the mathematics of networks and his outreach efforts. In 2015, he was awarded a Whitehead Prize by the London Mathematical Society in recognition of his interdisciplinary research, particularly the detection of communities in networks. He is a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and an Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2016, he was awarded a Young Scientist Award for Socio- and Econophysics by the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. In 2019 he was named a SIAM Fellow "for contributions to diverse problems and applications in networks, complex systems, and nonlinear systems".

Trivia Mason Porter writes a blog called Quantum Chaotic Thoughts. From 2016 onwards, he has been a Top Writer on Quora. He is a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mason Porter

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mason Porter claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mason Porter before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mason Porter ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mason Porter

In research: Mason Porter appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mason Porter in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mason Porter is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1976 births, 21st-century American mathematicians, 21st-century American physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mason Porter outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mason Porter in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mason Porter means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mason Porter out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mason Porter in simple terms?

Mason A. Porter (born 1976) is an American mathematician, physicist, and social scientist currently at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Why does Mason Porter matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mason Porter?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mason Porter.