16:30 BST 27/06/2023 Oxford, UK. A large number of scientists were spotting riding bicycles across town, to the consternation of onlookers. The event was the Oxford Protein Informatics Group (OPIG) “tour de farce” 2023. A circular bike ride from the Department of Statistics, to The Up in Arms (Marston), The Trout Inn (Godstow), The Perch (Port Meadow) and The Holly Bush (Osney Island). This spurred great bystander-anxiety due to one of a multitude of factors: the impressive size of the jovial horde, the erraticism of the cycling, the deplorable maintenance of certain bikes, and the unchained bizarrerie of the overheard dialogue.

Dissociated Press.

This was my first “Tour de farce” and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I (Matteo) am normally begadgeted with a FitBit, but I forgot it, so I did not collect stats of my vitals. However, despite my bike’s leaden clanking I cannot claim it required much exertion, so such data would be disappointing. This is because it was not a really a sporting event. It was a social event, for which well and truly hit its mark: Go OPIG!

Department of Statistics

Starting point. The Department of Statistics may lack the size and architectural swoosh (and form-over-function glitches) of, say, the departments of Biochemistry or of Mathematics, but instead is a welcoming place with its many common areas. Its whiteboards may be scribbled with Bayesian conditional probabilities, neural network layouts, plans for web infrastructure, and what, I can only guess, are messages of extraterrestrial origin, all with appalling penmanship —I had expected better from visitors from zeta2 Reticuli.
And indeed, the OPIG common area was visited by strangely clad aliens on Tuesday:

The Up in Arms

Pub #1. One of the three Dodo pizzeria/pubs (along with Rickety Press and Rusty Bicycle), this pub features a ping-pong table —I’d love to make one of many possible quips about sporting klutzhood, but apparently the play was “decent”.
A chat about books of Iain (M) Banks for once did not deteriorate into who had visited more of the distilleries in Raw Spirit. But it went darker, namely speculation on setting up a business to sell replicas of the chair of human bones from Use of Weapons. Luckily we had to leave so the presaging clock from The Wasp Factory was not discussed… On hindsight, that was likely no coincidence, but a planned getaways before someone called the police.

Phantom Jams

The cycle ride itself was a beautiful example of phantom traffic jams (or “jamitons”), whose mathematics are very cool —with the caveat that that usage of “cool” is up there with discussing the thixotropy of ketchup. There are actually many models on phantom jams but an exemplar can found in this paper, wherein the lowest density (rho) at which a traffic jam occurs at a given speed (u) and maximum car desity (rho_M), is given by the equation:

Where beta is a basically how good one is at driving. In our case, given that our speed was low, this value must have been abysmal. I for one was highly complicit in this. A modicum of a defence for me spring from the fact my bike rides as if its wheels were squares but not in a rad way like He-Man’s attack truck.

The Trout Inn

Pub #2. This lovely riverside gastropub is across the river from the ruins of Godstow nunnery. In the His Dark Materials universe by the local Philip Pullman, the majority of the story in La Belle Savage is set there. Well, the book I mean, were the BBC to do a TV adaptation it would jumble its locations (Jordan College in Lyra’s universe is most likely Exeter College, but the show was in New College —tut, tut, although I do like the use for the Mound as an airship landing pad). Close by, in Wolvercote, there’s the sweet grave of JRR Tolkien and his wife (captioned with Beren and Luthien, lovers in The Silmarillion). So this part of town is soaked in literature.
However, this pub modestly shows no sign of this and instead can pride itself with its amazing cooking. I had an unexpectedly exceptional dish: pork-belly and scallops in a mango salsa.

This post is turning into book review, but I ought to mentioned one last book —and all to build up to a subpar punchline, so stay with me. In one the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books there’s the starship Bistromath, which breaks the laws of physics to achieve superluminal travel thanks to the field of mathematical confusion generated in a restaurant (who turns up, who ordered what, delay between dishes, what dishes appear and who has to pay what). Due to the size and forgetfulness of our group, the laws of physics were shattered even if the staff were ace, which was very entertaining —until we left and got phone reception only to find out we had phased into a universe with insane current affairs starting from president Gore’s loss of the 2000 US election, Great Britain’s not becoming a federal monarchy in 2014, its non-adoption of the euro in 2016, culminating in whatever the last five years were about.

The Perch

Pub #3. The Trout Inn and The Perch are a short cycle away. Deceivingly. The dirt path is full of potholes, tree roots and ambushing orcs —okay, none of those or hobbits. But it’s a nice path flanking the river oppose Port Meadow (a flood plain) with the spires of Oxford in the distance.

Obviously, that is a stolen photo off the web. In reality, it was a bit more grey than that… We actually had a light summer drizzle….

The Holly Bush

Pub #4. This pizzeria/pub is on Osney Island, a small island off Botley road, which once housed a an augustinian abbey for which no ruins remain —the friars you see in town are either from St Mary’s College (Augustinian) or Blackfriars Hall (Dominican). Personally, I have good memories of The Holly Bush as a good friend of mine used to manage it before and after lockdown, so I am accustomed to its garish parrot wallpaper, which takes some getting used to…
At the end of the evening, a remark about the annoyance of getting My Little Pony results instead of multilayer perceptron when using the acronym MLP in Google led to the idea of testing what would the consequences be if instead of posting photos of the group I were to generate with DALL·E (or similar) a panel of cartoons of group members as ponies and unicorns. Unfortunately, I am totally out of OpenAI credit and, anyway, instead of looking majestic like Sleipnir, Odin’s horse, I’d probably be drawn as a donkey.