A research poster from the School of Emergent Priorities orders a cabinet of undated seminar notes by the way a single symbol is written.
An archaeologist's sorting method is applied to 318 handwritten sheets from one filing cabinet
A filing cabinet has been emptied in the School of Emergent Priorities, with some ceremony, and put back as it was found. In between, its 318 handwritten sheets were arranged into the order in which they were most probably written. The exercise is reported in Dating by the Commutant: A Frequency Seriation of Undated Notes from an Operator Algebras Seminar, a research poster by Dr Anneke Tolan, Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Convenor of Futures in Committee, with Dr Iben Chikere, Lecturer, and Dr Petra Umbile, Postdoctoral Fellow.
I have sat through a great many meetings in order to learn what was decided. It was restful to work with a seminar that had already finished.
— Dr Anneke Tolan, Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Convenor, Futures in Committee
The poster brings a long-established archaeological technique alongside a body of working mathematics. The notes, left behind by a seminar in operator algebras, were sorted by the small habits of their writing, chiefly which of three ways a recurring symbol had been set down. The resulting order was then held up against the 41 sheets that happened to carry a date. One habit kept time across all 14 folders. Another proved to belong to the individual writer and was set aside.
The University notes with some satisfaction that the School has now dated a body of work it makes no claim to have followed. Dr Chikere said the team “would like to thank whoever labelled the folders, and whoever did not, in roughly equal measure”.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.b5sbyf.