I am an associate professor (charge de recherche) in theoretical physics at
the Curie Institute/CNRS
and when not in Paris live in London; I also periodically visit Cambridge.
My research interests are network motifs and complex networks;
boolean networks and discrete dynamics;
and inferring genes and gene-gene interactions.
Conkers is a popular game played with the nuts of the common horse-chestnut tree (conkers), in which pairs of players take
turns swiping each other's conker with their own until one conker is broken.
Each conker is assigned a score as follows.
All new conkers start with a score of 1.
Each time a conker beats another conker, it adds to its score the score of the defeated.
In Single elimination competition,
we study a simple model of competition in which each player has a fixed strength.
Randomly selected pairs of players compete and the stronger one wins.
We show that the best indicator of future success is not the number of wins but a player's wealth:
the accumulated wealth of all defeated players.
We calculate statistics of a conker with a given score and offer advice on strategy.
The Man's Book 2008
The Man's Book
is the authoritative handbook of men's customs, habits and pursuits -
a vade mecum for modern-day manliness.
At a time when the sexes are muddled and masculinity is marginalized,
The Man's Book unabashedly celebrates being male. Chaps, cads, blokes and bounders,
rejoice: The Man's Book will bring you back to wear you belong.
The 2008 edition of The Man's Book, published on 19 September, 2007, has been expanded, revised and updated.