randformblog on math, physics, art, and design |
Glowlum tapping along a dull wire, artwork by Hucky Finn, oil on canvas, inspired by a photography by Baertels, www.plainpicture.com.
There have been quite some discussions here in Germany about the revelations about the surveillance of ordinary citizens and the protection of ordinary citizens data in general.
Der deutsche Text in diesem Post ist nach dem Link:
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As described in the last german TAX post I was trying to get information about german income taxes, in particular I wanted to get the concrete formulas. I asked via fragdenstaat.org at the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung: BPB) for that information, since they have a webpage about income taxes. This page however cited only a little phrase, with the names of the different income zones before I wrote the letter, but luckily it got meanwhile at least a little revamped. However the page still doesn’t show the formulas, moreover it is not very up-to-date. In addition the BPB was not only not able to help me with my request, but I was told that:
” In Bezug auf weitere steuerrechtliche Auskünfte bitte ich Sie, von Anfragen bei der bpb Abstand zu nehmen, weil wir definitiv nicht dafür zuständig sind.”
(translation without guarantee: with regard to further tax law requests I ask you to precind from sending further requests to BPB, because we are definitly not in charge for this.)
I should maybe also mention that I asked a representative of the ministry of economics for the formulas, who said I should ask a tax consultant.
As already said in the comment at fragdenstaat.de I had then finally found formulas for the taxes 2010-2012 (after a long search). The formulas are on the site of the ministry for finance with the taxcalculator and you can get the formulas if you type in any income, and then hit the button “BERECHNEN”. I couldnt however find the formulas for the original draft for the taxes for 2013 from February last year, neither the formulas for the new draft as of december 12 last year for the taxes for 2013. Mr. Liebig, who runs the website www.lohn-info.de had however found them and had included the numbers on his site, so I wrote him an email and asked him for the links.
I have meanwhile got an answer from Mr. Liebig who had kindly send me the links via email.
A document which describes the taxes for the upcoming year, as of 121212 is at the website of the Bundesrat.
A document which was the old draft for the 2013 taxes and which was intended to mitigate the impact of higher taxes due to BRACKET CREEP is at
http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/17/086/1708683.pdf
I meanwhile included the new numbers into the formulas. Details (in german) and the mathics code can be found after the click.
The result in short: If I didn’t miscalculate then there are tax reductions of 8-24 Euros/year for the incomes above 13500 Euros per year. For incomes of 8100 Euro to 13500 Euros there is a tax increase of about 15 Euros/per year. The procentual bracket creep (not sure wether this is called this way, please look at formulas) is for 6% income increase maximaly about 2.5%, for 2% income increase it is about 0.8%.
Some time ago randform had a blogpost on the mathematical typesetting software LaTeX, however we sofar had not installed LaTeX. On one hand this was due to the fact that until somewhat recently it would have been necessary to install LaTeX on our server for that purpose. Moreover there was sofar no big need to have LaTeX here, because randform hasn’t sofar used too many math formulas. With the tool MathJax, which is offered as a WordPress plugin and with in particular the MathJax possibility to link to a javascript library (which considerably reduces serverspace) we now test the possibility to typeset LaTeX on this blog.
So here as the first typesetting experiment with MathJax: the formula for the suggested function in the petition “Reformvorschläge in der Sozialversicherung”
sideremark: A search with keyword “LaTeX” on openpetition.de, a website which is offering the possibility to launch petitions, which are not allowed on the official petition website of the german parliament (like the above petition) offered just some Google ads with the typical offers you get when you type in latex.
After the click some infographics which illustrate the german Reformvorschläge (in german).
(more…)
“verticalized overhead power line with book lover using excessive light”, fotography of the Sony Center court yard on Potsdamer Platz by Loretta (see also the randform post chains)
I was recently looking a bit into the issue of smart grids and ran over an interesting european strategy analysis.
In 2005 the european smartgrid platform www.smartgrids.eu was set up. On their document page the currently newest document linked to is from 2010, it is a Strategic Deployment Document for Europe’s electricity networks of the future (2010) on page 53 one finds:
Engineering in the energy sector, electricity grids in particular, is seen by many as old- fashioned and “difficult” as it requires a high level of competence in mathematics, physics and other sciences. This discourages the potential new students from studying and pursuing a career in power engineering.
… and
All stakeholders in the electricity sector have a responsibility to improve the image of the sector, e.g. by engaging with educational institutions and explaining in an understandable way the real benefits of being involved with and able to deliver solutions to the energy, climate and environmental challenges of today.
This sounds very much as if the major problem of getting new working force for the electricity high-tech sector is mainly a question of hipness. In part it may be true that science and math is regarded as highly “unhip” in certain circles (and the reasons for this are manifold), however the comment in the document seems to miss somewhat a crucial point. Or maybe lets say it sounds a bit strange in the view that even fields medallists in e.g. Great Britain or France try to politely point out that there is structurally something at odds with the whole european science and math research and education.
Happy holidays to all randform readers!
supplement 1.1.2012: a happy new year to all randform readers!
“fractal breakfast at Tiffany’s” , by Rodriguez de la Mär
There seems to be currently an interesting exhibition at Foundation Cartier in Paris called “Mathematiques – un depaysement soudain” (a sudden change of scenery). It is a collaboration between mathematicians and artists. The exhibitions english website says that:
Visitors may continue to experience this “sudden change of scenery” via the exhibition catalog, an iPad application, the Fondation Cartier website, as well as by attending a series of events, the Nights of Uncertainty.
I couldn’t yet figure out how one can “continue the experience via the Fondation Cartier website” that is apart from the above mentioned french exhibition announcement and its english translation there seems sofar not so much more online and the flash plugin crashes regularily. But who knows ? – eventually the plan ist that Fondation Cartier thinks of revamping existing websites related to math and art like e.g. the Voro Wiki?
My talk at the open knowledge confence was well perceived, however on the other hand there were not so many participants listening to my talk. In general it seemed to me that games were not (yet) in the focus of the open knowledge community. That is tere were not so many talks involving games at the conference. Nevertheless there were enough issues of importance and the conference was fun.
The slides of my talk are currently too big for upload, so I only uploaded a newer version of the article.
update (130711): The slides are available now at slideshare.net:
Talk: “Testing new toy economies/political structures in MMOGs” at slideshare.net
A recent product description at Inhabitat. Read about: Miss Maple – the pendant lamp by Elisa Strozyk and the tile-tale of cozy Sherlock Home.
