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Shuffling - Wikipedia
The Gilbert–Shannon–Reeds model provides a mathematical model of the random outcomes of riffling, that has been shown experimentally to be a good fit to human shuffling[2] and that forms the basis for a recommendation that card decks be riffled seven times in order to randomize them thoroughly.[3] Later, mathematicians Lloyd M. Trefethen and Lloyd N. Trefethen authored a paper using a tweaked version of the Gilbert-Shannon-Reeds model showing that the minimum number of riffles for total randomization could also be 5, if the method of defining randomness is changed.[4][5]
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12 weeks ago by nhaliday
The Reason Why | West Hunter
There are odd things about the orbits of trans-Neptunian objects that suggest ( to some) that there might be an undiscovered super-Earth-sized planet  a few hundred AU from the Sun..

We haven’t seen it, but then it would be very hard to see. The underlying reason is simple enough, but I have never seen anyone mention it: the signal from such objects drops as the fourth power of distance from the Sun.   Not the second power, as is the case with luminous objects like stars, or faraway objects that are close to a star.  We can image close-in planets of other stars that are light-years distant, but it’s very difficult to see a fair-sized planet a few hundred AU out.
--
interesting little fun fact
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july 2019 by nhaliday
Rational Sines of Rational Multiples of p
For which rational multiples of p is the sine rational? We have the three trivial cases
[0, pi/2, pi/6]
and we wish to show that these are essentially the only distinct rational sines of rational multiples of p.

The assertion about rational sines of rational multiples of p follows from two fundamental lemmas. The first is

Lemma 1: For any rational number q the value of sin(qp) is a root of a monic polynomial with integer coefficients.

[Pf uses some ideas unfamiliar to me: similarity parameter of Moebius (linear fraction) transformations, and finding a polynomial for a desired root by constructing a Moebius transformation with a finite period.]

...

Lemma 2: Any root of a monic polynomial f(x) with integer coefficients must either be an integer or irrational.

[Gauss's Lemma, cf Dummit-Foote.]

...
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july 2019 by nhaliday
What every computer scientist should know about floating-point arithmetic
Floating-point arithmetic is considered as esoteric subject by many people. This is rather surprising, because floating-point is ubiquitous in computer systems: Almost every language has a floating-point datatype; computers from PCs to supercomputers have floating-point accelerators; most compilers will be called upon to compile floating-point algorithms from time to time; and virtually every operating system must respond to floating-point exceptions such as overflow. This paper presents a tutorial on the aspects of floating-point that have a direct impact on designers of computer systems. It begins with background on floating-point representation and rounding error, continues with a discussion of the IEEE floating point standard, and concludes with examples of how computer system builders can better support floating point.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2729637/does-epsilon-really-guarantees-anything-in-floating-point-computations
"you must use an epsilon when dealing with floats" is a knee-jerk reaction of programmers with a superficial understanding of floating-point computations, for comparisons in general (not only to zero).

This is usually unhelpful because it doesn't tell you how to minimize the propagation of rounding errors, it doesn't tell you how to avoid cancellation or absorption problems, and even when your problem is indeed related to the comparison of two floats, it doesn't tell you what value of epsilon is right for what you are doing.

...

Regarding the propagation of rounding errors, there exists specialized analyzers that can help you estimate it, because it is a tedious thing to do by hand.

https://www.di.ens.fr/~cousot/projects/DAEDALUS/synthetic_summary/CEA/Fluctuat/index.html

This was part of HW1 of CS24:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahan_summation_algorithm
In particular, simply summing n numbers in sequence has a worst-case error that grows proportional to n, and a root mean square error that grows as {\displaystyle {\sqrt {n}}} {\sqrt {n}} for random inputs (the roundoff errors form a random walk).[2] With compensated summation, the worst-case error bound is independent of n, so a large number of values can be summed with an error that only depends on the floating-point precision.[2]

cf:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pairwise_summation
In numerical analysis, pairwise summation, also called cascade summation, is a technique to sum a sequence of finite-precision floating-point numbers that substantially reduces the accumulated round-off error compared to naively accumulating the sum in sequence.[1] Although there are other techniques such as Kahan summation that typically have even smaller round-off errors, pairwise summation is nearly as good (differing only by a logarithmic factor) while having much lower computational cost—it can be implemented so as to have nearly the same cost (and exactly the same number of arithmetic operations) as naive summation.

In particular, pairwise summation of a sequence of n numbers xn works by recursively breaking the sequence into two halves, summing each half, and adding the two sums: a divide and conquer algorithm. Its worst-case roundoff errors grow asymptotically as at most O(ε log n), where ε is the machine precision (assuming a fixed condition number, as discussed below).[1] In comparison, the naive technique of accumulating the sum in sequence (adding each xi one at a time for i = 1, ..., n) has roundoff errors that grow at worst as O(εn).[1] Kahan summation has a worst-case error of roughly O(ε), independent of n, but requires several times more arithmetic operations.[1] If the roundoff errors are random, and in particular have random signs, then they form a random walk and the error growth is reduced to an average of {\displaystyle O(\varepsilon {\sqrt {\log n}})} O(\varepsilon {\sqrt {\log n}}) for pairwise summation.[2]

A very similar recursive structure of summation is found in many fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithms, and is responsible for the same slow roundoff accumulation of those FFTs.[2][3]

https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Electrical_Engineering/Book%3A_Fast_Fourier_Transforms_(Burrus)/10%3A_Implementing_FFTs_in_Practice/10.8%3A_Numerical_Accuracy_in_FFTs
However, these encouraging error-growth rates only apply if the trigonometric “twiddle” factors in the FFT algorithm are computed very accurately. Many FFT implementations, including FFTW and common manufacturer-optimized libraries, therefore use precomputed tables of twiddle factors calculated by means of standard library functions (which compute trigonometric constants to roughly machine precision). The other common method to compute twiddle factors is to use a trigonometric recurrence formula—this saves memory (and cache), but almost all recurrences have errors that grow as O(n‾√) , O(n) or even O(n2) which lead to corresponding errors in the FFT.

...

There are, in fact, trigonometric recurrences with the same logarithmic error growth as the FFT, but these seem more difficult to implement efficiently; they require that a table of Θ(logn) values be stored and updated as the recurrence progresses. Instead, in order to gain at least some of the benefits of a trigonometric recurrence (reduced memory pressure at the expense of more arithmetic), FFTW includes several ways to compute a much smaller twiddle table, from which the desired entries can be computed accurately on the fly using a bounded number (usually <3) of complex multiplications. For example, instead of a twiddle table with n entries ωkn , FFTW can use two tables with Θ(n‾√) entries each, so that ωkn is computed by multiplying an entry in one table (indexed with the low-order bits of k ) by an entry in the other table (indexed with the high-order bits of k ).

[ed.: Nicholas Higham's "Accuracy and Stability of Numerical Algorithms" seems like a good reference for this kind of analysis.]
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may 2019 by nhaliday
gn.general topology - Pair of curves joining opposite corners of a square must intersect---proof? - MathOverflow
In his 'Ordinary Differential Equations' (sec. 1.2) V.I. Arnold says "... every pair of curves in the square joining different pairs of opposite corners must intersect".

This is obvious geometrically but I was wondering how one could go about proving this rigorously. I have thought of a proof using Brouwer's Fixed Point Theorem which I describe below. I would greatly appreciate the group's comments on whether this proof is right and if a simpler proof is possible.

...

Since the full Jordan curve theorem is quite subtle, it might be worth pointing out that theorem in question reduces to the Jordan curve theorem for polygons, which is easier.

Suppose on the contrary that the curves A,BA,B joining opposite corners do not meet. Since A,BA,B are closed sets, their minimum distance apart is some ε>0ε>0. By compactness, each of A,BA,B can be partitioned into finitely many arcs, each of which lies in a disk of diameter <ε/3<ε/3. Then, by a homotopy inside each disk we can replace A,BA,B by polygonal paths A′,B′A′,B′ that join the opposite corners of the square and are still disjoint.

Also, we can replace A′,B′A′,B′ by simple polygonal paths A″,B″A″,B″ by omitting loops. Now we can close A″A″ to a polygon, and B″B″ goes from its "inside" to "outside" without meeting it, contrary to the Jordan curve theorem for polygons.

- John Stillwell
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october 2017 by nhaliday
Lecture 14: When's that meteor arriving
- Meteors as a random process
- Limiting approximations
- Derivation of the Exponential distribution
- Derivation of the Poisson distribution
- A "Poisson process"
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september 2017 by nhaliday
Why is Earth's gravity stronger at the poles? - Physics Stack Exchange
The point is that if we approximate Earth with an oblate ellipsoid, then the surface of Earth is an equipotential surface,11 see e.g. this Phys.SE post.

Now, because the polar radius is smaller than the equatorial radius, the density of equipotential surfaces at the poles must be bigger than at the equator.

Or equivalently, the field strength22 gg at the poles must be bigger than at the equator.
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september 2017 by nhaliday
diffusion - Surviving under water in air bubble - Physics Stack Exchange
I get d≈400md≈400m.

It's interesting to note that this is independent of pressure: I've neglected pressure dependence of DD and human resilience to carbon dioxide, and the maximum safe concentration of carbon dioxide is independent of pressure, just derived from measurements at STP.

Finally, a bubble this large will probably rapidly break up due to buoyancy and Plateau-Rayleigh instabilities.
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august 2017 by nhaliday
rotational dynamics - Why do non-rigid bodies try to increase their moment of inertia? - Physics Stack Exchange
This happens to isolated rotating system that is not a rigid body.

Inside such a body (for example, steel chain in free fall) the parts move relatively to each other and there is internal friction that dissipates kinetic energy of the system, while angular momentum is conserved. The dissipation goes on until the parts stop moving with respect to each other, so body rotates as a rigid body, even if it is not rigid by constitution.

The rotating state of the body that has the lowest kinetic energy for given angular momentum is that in which the body has the greatest moment of inertia (with respect to center of mass). For example, a long chain thrown into free fall will twist and turn until it is all straight and rotating as rigid body.

...

If LL is constant (net torque of external forces acting on the system is zero) and the constitution and initial conditions allow it, the system's dissipation will work to diminish energy until it has the minimum value, which happens for maximum IaIa possible.
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august 2017 by nhaliday
gravity - Gravitational collapse and free fall time (spherical, pressure-free) - Physics Stack Exchange
the parenthetical regarding Gauss's law just involves noting a shell of radius r + symmetry (so single parameter determines field along shell)
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august 2017 by nhaliday
Introduction to Scaling Laws
http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/304/scaling.pdf

Galileo’s Discovery of Scaling Laws: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~mpeterso/classes/galileo/scaling8.pdf
Days 1 and 2 of Two New Sciences

An example of such an insight is “the surface of a small solid is comparatively greater than that of a large one” because the surface goes like the square of a linear dimension, but the volume goes like the cube.5 Thus as one scales down macroscopic objects, forces on their surfaces like viscous drag become relatively more important, and bulk forces like weight become relatively less important. Galileo uses this idea on the First Day in the context of resistance in free fall, as an explanation for why similar objects of different size do not fall exactly together, but the smaller one lags behind.
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august 2017 by nhaliday
The Earth-Moon system
nice way of expressing Kepler's law (scaled by AU, solar mass, year, etc.) among other things

1. PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF THE MOON
2. LUNAR PHASES
3. ECLIPSES
4. TIDES
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august 2017 by nhaliday
Diophantine approximation - Wikipedia
- rationals perfectly approximated by themselves, badly approximated (eps>1/bq) by other rationals
- irrationals well-approximated (eps~1/q^2) by rationals:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirichlet%27s_approximation_theorem
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august 2017 by nhaliday
Kelly criterion - Wikipedia
In probability theory and intertemporal portfolio choice, the Kelly criterion, Kelly strategy, Kelly formula, or Kelly bet, is a formula used to determine the optimal size of a series of bets. In most gambling scenarios, and some investing scenarios under some simplifying assumptions, the Kelly strategy will do better than any essentially different strategy in the long run (that is, over a span of time in which the observed fraction of bets that are successful equals the probability that any given bet will be successful). It was described by J. L. Kelly, Jr, a researcher at Bell Labs, in 1956.[1] The practical use of the formula has been demonstrated.[2][3][4]

The Kelly Criterion is to bet a predetermined fraction of assets and can be counterintuitive. In one study,[5][6] each participant was given $25 and asked to bet on a coin that would land heads 60% of the time. Participants had 30 minutes to play, so could place about 300 bets, and the prizes were capped at$250. Behavior was far from optimal. "Remarkably, 28% of the participants went bust, and the average payout was just \$91. Only 21% of the participants reached the maximum. 18 of the 61 participants bet everything on one toss, while two-thirds gambled on tails at some stage in the experiment." Using the Kelly criterion and based on the odds in the experiment, the right approach would be to bet 20% of the pot on each throw (see first example in Statement below). If losing, the size of the bet gets cut; if winning, the stake increases.
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august 2017 by nhaliday
Roche limit - Wikipedia
In celestial mechanics, the Roche limit (pronounced /ʁɔʃ/) or Roche radius, is the distance within which a celestial body, held together only by its own gravity, will disintegrate due to a second celestial body's tidal forces exceeding the first body's gravitational self-attraction.[1] Inside the Roche limit, orbiting material disperses and forms rings whereas outside the limit material tends to coalesce. The term is named after Édouard Roche, who is the French astronomer who first calculated this theoretical limit in 1848.[2]
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july 2017 by nhaliday
Strings, periods, and borders
A border of x is any proper prefix of x that equals a suffix of x.

...overlapping borders of a string imply that the string is periodic...

In the border array ß[1..n] of x, entry ß[i] is the length
of the longest border of x[1..i].
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may 2017 by nhaliday
Main Page - Competitive Programming Algorithms: E-Maxx Algorithms in English
original russian version: http://e-maxx.ru/algo/

some notable stuff:
- O(N) factorization sieve
- discrete logarithm
- factorial N! (mod P) in O(P log N)
- flow algorithms
- bridges, articulation points
- Ukkonen algorithm
- sqrt(N) trick, eg, for range mode query
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february 2017 by nhaliday
inequalities - Is the Jaccard distance a distance? - MathOverflow
Steinhaus Transform
the referenced survey: http://kenclarkson.org/nn_survey/p.pdf

It's known that this transformation produces a metric from a metric. Now if you take as the base metric D the symmetric difference between two sets, what you end up with is the Jaccard distance (which actually is known by many other names as well).
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february 2017 by nhaliday
st.statistics - Lower bound for sum of binomial coefficients? - MathOverflow
- basically approximate w/ geometric sum (which scales as final term) and you can get it up to O(1) factor
- not good enough for many applications (want 1+o(1) approx.)
- Stirling can also give bound to constant factor precision w/ more calculation I believe
- tighter bound at Section 7.3 here: http://webbuild.knu.ac.kr/~trj/Combin/matousek-vondrak-prob-ln.pdf
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february 2017 by nhaliday
probability - Variance of maximum of Gaussian random variables - Cross Validated
In full generality it is rather hard to find the right order of magnitude of the variance of a Gaussien supremum since the tools from concentration theory are always suboptimal for the maximum function.

order ~ 1/log n
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february 2017 by nhaliday
bounds - What is the variance of the maximum of a sample? - Cross Validated
- sum of variances is always a bound
- can't do better even for iid Bernoulli
- looks like nice argument from well-known probabilist (using E[(X-Y)^2] = 2Var X), but not clear to me how he gets to sum_i instead of sum_{i,j} in the union bound?
edit: argument is that, for j = argmax_k Y_k, we have r < X_i - Y_j <= X_i - Y_i for all i, including i = argmax_k X_k
- different proof here (later pages): http://www.ism.ac.jp/editsec/aism/pdf/047_1_0185.pdf
Var(X_n:n) <= sum Var(X_k:n) + 2 sum_{i < j} Cov(X_i:n, X_j:n) = Var(sum X_k:n) = Var(sum X_k) = nσ^2
why are the covariances nonnegative? (are they?). intuitively seems true.
- for that, see https://pinboard.in/u:nhaliday/b:ed4466204bb1
- note that this proof shows more generally that sum Var(X_k:n) <= sum Var(X_k)
- apparently that holds for dependent X_k too? http://mathoverflow.net/a/96943/20644
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february 2017 by nhaliday
Cauchy-Schwarz inequality and Hölder's inequality - Mathematics Stack Exchange
- Cauchy-Schwarz (special case of Holder's inequality where p=q=1/2) implies Holder's inequality
- pith: define potential F(t) = int f^{pt} g^{q(1-t)}, show log F is midpoint-convex hence convex, then apply convexity between F(0) and F(1) for F(1/p) = ||fg||_1
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january 2017 by nhaliday
5/8 bound in group theory - MathOverflow
very elegant proof (remember sum d_i^2 = |G| and # irreducible rep.s = # conjugacy classes)
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january 2017 by nhaliday
mg.metric geometry - Pushing convex bodies together - MathOverflow
- volume of intersection of colliding, constant-velocity convex bodies is unimodal
- pf by Brunn-Minkowski inequality
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january 2017 by nhaliday
probability - How to prove Bonferroni inequalities? - Mathematics Stack Exchange
- integrated version of inequalities for alternating sums of (N choose j), where r.v. N = # of events occuring
- inequalities for alternating binomial coefficients follow from general property of unimodal (increasing then decreasing) sequences, which can be gotten w/ two cases for increasing and decreasing resp.
- the final alternating zero sum property follows for binomial coefficients from expanding (1 - 1)^N = 0
- The idea of proving inequality by integrating simpler inequality of r.v.s is nice. Proof from CS 150 was more brute force from what I remember.
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january 2017 by nhaliday
reference request - The coupon collector's earworm - MathOverflow
I have a playlist with, say, N pieces of music. While using the shuffle option (each such piece is played randomly at each step), I realized that, generally speaking, I have to hear quite a lot of times the same piece before the last one appears. It makes me think of the following question:

At the moment the last non already heard piece is played, what is the max, in average, of number of times the same piece has already been played?

A: e log N + o(log N)
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january 2017 by nhaliday
cv.complex variables - Absolute value inequality for complex numbers - MathOverflow
In general, once you've proven an inequality like this in R it holds automatically in any Euclidean space (including C) by averaging over projections. ("Inequality like this" = inequality where every term is the length of some linear combination of variable vectors in the space; here the vectors are a, b, c).

I learned this trick at MOP 30+ years ago, and don't know or remember who discovered it.
q-n-a  overflow  math  math.CV  estimate  tidbits  yoga  oly  mathtariat  math.FA  metabuch  inner-product  calculation  norms  nibble  tricki
january 2017 by nhaliday
pr.probability - When are probability distributions completely determined by their moments? - MathOverflow
Roughly speaking, if the sequence of moments doesn't grow too quickly, then the distribution is determined by its moments. One sufficient condition is that if the moment generating function of a random variable has positive radius of convergence, then that random variable is determined by its moments.
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january 2017 by nhaliday
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