Leonhard Euler

It is better to celebrate what was than to mourn what is not. On April 15, 2007, we celebrate the 300th birthday of Leonhard Euler, the finest mathematician of the 18th century.

To many, I’m sure, his name is unfamiliar. He won no battles, nor held high office: yet our world today is utterly dependent on his work. Those who serve quietly often serve best.

I chose to honor the occasion with a monograph on Euler’s formula, considering the implications of raising "i" in Euler's formula to fractional powers of two: coincidentally, the binary arithmetic of computers. You can think of it as Euler’s formula meets the digital age.

Prothero essays through 2006

Essays on various topics through 2006, with links to the ones on the web.


Prothero, J. (2006). JackBe Application Methodology (JAM). JackBe Corporation.
[A software development methodology that combines User-Centered Design (UCD) with a light-weight version of the iterative Rational Unified Process (RUP). UCD keeps the end-user’s needs in mind; iterative development provides the checkpoints to keep the project on target. Currently unreleased.]



http://www.esnips.com/doc/ea00d471-14fa-4461-ba73-6bae42765b9e/Ajax-Usability-Benefits-and-Best-Practices-2006
Prothero, J. (2006). Ajax Usability Benefits and Best Practices. JackBe Corporation.
[Rated #2 free Ajax document on the web by Intelligentedu:
http://www.intelligentedu.com/blogs/post/best_new_training_sites/3562/top-14-free-docs-on-ajax-web-design-and-strategy.]



Shaw, D. & Prothero, J. (2006). Unified Authentication for Warranty Chain Management. In Proceedings of Warranty Chain Management Conference.
[Application of content-centric security to efficiently maintaining authenticated warranty chain documentation.]



http://www.esnips.com/doc/31089b25-2f73-49d0-8ccc-07d9e938e7a7/Applied-Synesthesia-2005
Prothero, J. (2005). Applied Synesthesia: A Technique for Learning Languages.
[Synesthesia, the “mixing of the senses”, is usually seen as an innate and unlearnable characteristic of a small part of the population. This essay argues the opposite: that synesthesia is universal and learnable. Further, that synesthesia can be applied to reducing the memory burden of learning languages.]



Prothero, J. & Parker, D.E. (2003). A Unified Approach to Presence and Motion Sickness. In L.J. Hettinger and M.W. Haas (Eds.) Virtual & Adaptive Environments: Applications, Implications, and Human Performance Issues: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.
[Book chapter on the application of the Rest Frame Hypothesis to understanding the sense of “being in” a virtual environment and to mitigating motion sickness.]



http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6497649.html
Parker, D.E., Duh, B-L., Furness, T.A., Prothero, J.D. and Seibel, E.J. (2002). Alleviating Motion, Simulator, and Virtual Environmental Sickness by Presenting Visual Scene Components Matched to Inner Ear Vestibular Sensations. US Patent #6,497,649.
[Patent on techniques for reducing simulator sickness, derived originally from the Rest Frame Hypothesis; see below.]



http://www.esnips.com/doc/72314eaf-5227-4c63-9307-605be467edad/Cyber-Defense-2001
Prothero, J. (2001). Cyber-Defense: A Strategic Approach to Defending our Critical Information Infrastructure..
[A strategic approach to securing the national IT infrastructure, based on the underlying causes for its weakness. Developed the idea of a “convenience overshoot” in the evolution of new technologies. ]



http://www.esnips.com/doc/b0d55b24-7d84-45c4-9644-5320ac3ecaf7/Customer-Confusion-Call-Kill-a-Website-2001
Prothero, J. (2001). Customer Confusion Can Kill a Web Site. Puget Sound Business Journal, April 20th issue. ps Tech: 28A.
[Why usability matters, from a business perspective.]



Prothero, J., Draper, M., Furness, T., Parker, D. and Wells, M. (1999). The Use of an Independent Visual Background to Reduce Simulator Side-Effects. Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine, 70(3), 277-283.



http://www.esnips.com/doc/694da917-c923-4281-b68f-8a4217bc8989/The-Role-of-Rest-Frames-in-Vection,-Presence,--Motion-Sickness
Prothero, J. (1998). The Role of Rest Frames in Vection, Presence and Motion Sickness. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Washington.
[Borrowed the idea of a “rest frame” from physics and applied it to the psychology of spatial perception, particularly for virtual environments. Used to develop robust, psychophysical measures for presence and for mitigating simulator sickness. The “simulator sickness” application has been developed fairly thoroughly since, including the patent referenced above; the “presences measures” application is more open, if anyone is looking for a research topic in the human factors of virtual environments. (Incidentally, I have the dubious distinction of being one of the few people awarded a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering without ever taking a class in the subject, or knowing anything about it. The University of Washington didn’t know quite where to put me; a problem not unique to that institution.)]



Hoffman, H.G., Prothero, J., Wells, M. and Groen, J. (1998). Virtual Chess: Meaning Enhances Users' Sense of Presence in Virtual Environments.. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 10(3), 251-263.
[The relationship between meaningfulness of information and the sense of presence in a virtual environment.]



Prothero, J.D. (1997). Rest Frames and "Class A" Presence Measures. In Proceedings of Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES '97) [poster].



http://www.esnips.com/doc/a11444ef-b877-4330-b64e-97d3b69a6734/Do-Visual-Background-Manipulations-Reduce-Simulator-Sickness-1997
Prothero, J.D., Draper, M.H., Furness, T.A. III, Parker, D.E. and Wells, M.J. (1997). Do Visual Background Manipulations Reduce Simulator Sickness?. In Proceedings of International Workshop on Motion Sickness.



Draper, M., Prothero, J. and Viirre, E. (1997). Physiological Adaptations to Virtual Interfaces: Results of Initial Explorations (Technical Report R-97-26). Seattle: University of Washington, Human Interface Technology Laboratory.



http://www.esnips.com/doc/5c5637bb-d2db-437a-ac72-7430f9492094/The-Political-Science-of-the-Internet
Prothero, J. (1996). The Political Science of the Internet (Technical Report R-96-2). Seattle, Washington: University of Washington, Human Interface Technology Laboratory.
[Analyzed fundamental trends related to the Internet and projected their political and social implications. By the standards of futurology, it has aged pretty well.]



Prothero, JD (1996). Annotations from the 1996 Washington State Chess Championship. Northwest Chess.



Prothero, J (1996). Three Queen Knight Pawns. Northwest Chess.
[Taking the queen knight pawn with a queen is something that young chess players are warned against in the nursery. This is the story of one that could not be taken; one that should not have been taken; and one that had to be taken.]



Prothero, J (1996). An Adventure with the Frenkel French. Northwest Chess.
[1. e4; e6 2. d4; d5 3. e5; c5 4. b4. It looks bizarre, but has the effect of immediately dispelling Black’s central pressure. A variation I learned from Filipp Frenkel, who prefers to call it “Filipp Frenkel’s Fantastic French Phenomenon.”]



Prothero, J. and Hoffman, H. (1995). Widening the Field of View Increases the Sense of Presence in Immersive Virtual Environments (R-95-5). Seattle: University of Washington, Human Interface Technology Laboratory.



http://www.esnips.com/doc/be3bc6a0-89fb-405f-a231-f1ef0d227c16/Foreground-Background-Manipulations-Affect-Presence-1995
Prothero, J., Hoffman, H.G., Furness, T.A., Parker, D. and Wells, M. (1995). Foreground/Background Manipulations Affect Presence. In Proceedings of Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, pp. 1410-1414.



Prothero, J. , Parker, D., Furness, T. A., and Wells, M. (1995). Towards a Robust, Quantitative Measure of Presence. In Proceedings of Conference on Experimental Analysis and Measurement of Situational Awareness, pp. 359-366.



http://www.esnips.com/doc/ccb2622c-e249-4ee2-9568-75dea5eaee53/Interface-Goodness-Measures-1994
Prothero, J. (1994). A Survey of Interface Goodness Measures (R-94-1). Seattle: University of Washington, Human Interface Technology Laboratory.



Weghorst, S., Prothero, J., Furness, T.A. III, Anson, D. and Riess, T. (1994). Virtual Images in the Treatment of Parkinson's Disease Akinesia. In Proceedings of Medicine Meets Virtual Reality II, pp. 242-243.



http://www.esnips.com/doc/e1d7c977-e25f-4494-8de0-16e00fb17e37/The-Treatment-of-Akinesia-Using-Virtual-Images
Prothero, J. (1993). The Treatment of Akinesia Using Virtual Images. Master's Thesis, University of Washington, College of Engineering.
[This was the first formal research showing that Parkinson’s disease akinesia (“freezing”) can be mitigated by providing a virtual image for the patient to react to.]



Prothero, J.D., Prothero, J.W. (1985). TOPPER, a Software Package in ForTran For Scaling Studies. International Journal of Biomedical Computing 17(3-4):185-91.