i will discuss a recent proof of a weak upper bound on the coarsening rate of the discrete-in-space version of an ill-posed, nonlinear diffusion equation. the continuum version of the equation violates parabolicity and lacks a complete well-posedness theory. in particular, numerical simulations indicate very sensitive dependence on initial data. nevertheless, models based on its discrete-in-space version, which i will discuss, are widely used in a number of applications, including population dynamics (chemotactic movement of bacteria), granular flow (formation of shear bands), and computer vision (image denoising and segmentation). the bounds have implications for all three applications. this is joint work with selim esedoglu (u. of michigan mathematics).