Simple Examples

Physicists always have the habit of taking the simplest example of any phenomenon and calling it “physics”, leaving the more complicated examples to become the concern of other fields.

– Richard Feynman, Lectures on Physics, Ch. 31

Simple experiments and simple theorems are the building blocks that help understand complicated larger phenomena.

– Ali Rahimi and Ben Recht, Reflections on Random Kitchen Sinks

Wright, Fisher, and I all made simplifying assumptions which allowed us to pose problems soluble by the elementary mathematics at our disposal […]. Our mathematics may impress zoologists but do not greatly impress mathematicians.

– JBS Haldane, A Defense of Beanbag Genetics

Every scientist who has been in the profession for long enough probably has a dustbin (for some maybe even a treasure trove) of unpublished results, ideas never followed up on, small experiments or calculations, etc. Keeping all this hidden from view is not FAIR. These (unpolished!) notes are my attempt at sharing some of this material, in the hope that it will be useful to others. If you find any errors or better ways of doing things let me know. If you are a student in search of a (short) project, have a look at the posts in the “Open project” category.