1951
Understanding Variance, Co-Variance, and Correlation
An explanation of Variance, Covariance and Correlation in rigorous yet clear terms providing a more general and intuitive look at these essential concepts.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 2,391 posts.
1952
Show HN: Interactive Essay on Signals, Sampling and the Fourier Transform
This text is designed to accompany your study of introductory digital signal processing. 1 It’s an eccentric piece of not-so-rigorous literature with a preoccupation for explaining things using interactive visualizations, animations and sound. 2 My goal is to explain the Discrete Fourier Transform using a miniature…
1953
1954
Small Introduction to Markov Chains
Introduction A Markov Chain is a set of transitions from one state to the next; Such that the transition from the current state to the next depends only on the current state, the previous and future states do not effect the probability of the transition. A transitions independence from future and past sates is called…
1955
1956
1957
Bayes' Theorem with Lego
Find Bayes' Theorem confusing? Let's break down this famous formula using Lego to help you build up a better intuition for this foundational concept!
1958
Who Can Name the Bigger Number?
[This essay in Spanish] [This essay in French] [This essay in Chinese] In an old joke, two noblemen vie to name the bigger number. The first, after ruminating for hours, triumphantly announces "Eighty-three!" The second, mightily impressed, replies "You win." A biggest number contest is clearly pointless when the…
1959
Are You Living In a Computer Simulation? (2003)
The original paper that introduced the simulation argument
1960
From 1,000,000 to Graham's Number
Graham's number is so big, we need a whole new set of tools to even discuss it.
1961
A regular expression to check for prime numbers
Regular expressions are extremely powerful. This is something I read at least once or twice every day while reading articles and blogs on the Web.
1962
Impossible Escape?
Can you use math to escape from, what seems like, an impossible prison escape problem based on coins and a chessboard?
1963
1964
1965
Computational Geometry in Python
This post is a simplified version of the accompanying notebook to chapter 6 of my upcoming book Mastering SciPy. Click anywhere on this box for more information.
1966
Maze Generation in Thirteen Bytes (2012)
Update 12/7/2012 @ 13:46: Peter Ferrie smashed my record by a single byte, so the record is now held by him at 12 bytes. Congrats, and I feel like a fool for missing it :-) I’ve tacked on h…
1967
How did Einstein Think?
John D. Norton Department of History and Philosophy of Science and Center for Philosophy of Science University of Pittsburgh http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton This page at http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies Prepared to accompany cityLIVE! "everything einstein" November 15, 2007, 6:30 pm The New Hazlett Theater…
1968
Eigenvectors and eigenvalues explained visually
Eigenvalues/vectors are instrumental to understanding electrical circuits, mechanical systems, ecology and even Google's PageRank algorithm. Let's see if visualization can make these ideas more intuitive.
1969
The Simulated Annealing Algorithm
Simulated annealing is a method for finding a good (not necessarily perfect) solution to an optimization problem. If you're in a situation where you want to maximize or minimize something, your problem can likely be tackled with simulated annealing.
1970
Path Tracing 3D Fractals
In some ways path tracing is one of the simplest and most intuitive ways to do ray tracing.
1971
Hopefully the last post I'll ever write on Dual EC DRBG
I’ve been working on some other blog posts, including a conclusion of (or at least an installment in) this exciting series on zero knowledge proofs. That’s coming soon, but first I want…
1972
1973
If Scheme's numbers were like Scheme
Scheme's numbers are not like the rest of its library. They're older, and they're mostly borrowed from other languages (Maclisp and Common L...
1974
Brainfuck Optimization Strategies
In almost every computation a great variety of arrangements for the succession of the processes is possible, and various considerations must influence the selection amongst them for the purposes of a Calculating Engine. One essential object is to choose that arrangement which shall tend to reduce to a minimum the time…
1975
1976
Introduction to Category Theory
The aim of this course is to teach the basics of category theory, in a way that is accessible and relevant to computer scientists. The emphasis is on gaining a good understanding the basic definitions, examples, and techniques, so that students are equipped for further study on their own of more advanced topics if…
1977
The two cultures of mathematics and biology
I’m a (50%) professor of mathematics and (50%) professor of molecular & cell biology at UC Berkeley. There have been plenty of days when I have spent the working hours with biologists and…
1978
A Gentle Introduction to Data Compression
Joe Bertolami's portfolio and blog covering artificial intelligence, game development, computer graphics, data compression, and more.
1979
1980
The Fermi Paradox
The Fermi Paradox: There should be 100,000 intelligent alien civilizations in our galaxy — so why haven't we found any of them?