91
A Random Distribution of Wealth (2017)
W hat happens, if 100 persons in a room are given $100 each and give away a Dollar to one randomly chosen person in this room each tick of the clock? How is wealth distributed over time by pure chance?
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 171 posts.
92
Hinge and Its Implementation of the Gale–Shapley algorithm
https://thetab.com/uk/2020/05/20/this-is-how-the-nobel-prize-winning-hinge-algorithm-actually-works-157740
93
The Philosophy of Linear Algebra (2021)
Whenever a student wonders why linear algebra, matrices, and vectors are important, the response from teachers usually sounds like this:
94
You need to know what right-half-plane zeros are
Why some systems -- as a consequence of their intrinsic dynamics -- require a control action that first pushes them the wrong way and makes things worse before it gets better.
95
96
40k coin tosses yield ambiguous evidence for dynamical bias
However, no experiment with actual coin-tosses has been done to investigate whether the predicted effect is empirically observed. Diaconis et al noted, correctly, that to estimate the probability with a S.E. of 0.1% would require 250,000 tosses, but this seems unnecessarily precise. Let's work with numbers of tosses…
97
98
Alan Turing using math to repair his bike
Audio Link With the arrival of summer weather in many parts of the U.S., it’s time to think again about various outdoor activities. Wat...
99
Math on GitHub: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Finally! On May 19, 2022, GitHub released one of its most requested features: Math support on Markdown! Many had been anticipating this for years, including myself, so much in fact that I wrote a browser extension to get there early. (xhub, it can do a few other things so check it out.)
100
Render mathematical expressions in Markdown On GitHub
You can now use LaTeX style syntax to render math expressions within Markdown inline (using $ delimiters) or in blocks (using $$ delimiters). Writing expressions as blocks To add math…
101
The big six matrix factorizations
Six matrix factorizations dominate in numerical linear algebra and matrix analysis: for most purposes one of them is sufficient for the task at hand. We summarize them here. For each factorization …
102
Time-Series Compression Algorithms
These algorithms aren't magic – but combined they can save over 90% of storage costs and speed up queries. Here’s how 5 common ones work.
103
How to get rid of gerrymandering: the math is surprising
Gerrymandering distorts the will of the people, but the basic math of geographic representation makes it difficult to get rid of, unless we get rid of representation for geographic districts.
104
“I don't know the numbers”: a math puzzle
I saw a math puzzle the other day on Hacker News. It reads as follows: Two numbers are chosen randomly, both are positive integers smaller than 100. Sandy is told the sum of the numbers, while Peter is told the product of the numbers. Then, this dialog occurs between Sandy and Peter: Peter: I don’t know the numbers…
105
106
An automatic theorem proving project
I am very happy to say that I have recently received a generous grant from the Astera Institute to set up a small group to work on automatic theorem proving, in the first instance for about three y…
107
An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California
Update (April 27): Boaz Barak—Harvard CS professor, longtime friend-of-the-blog, and coauthor of my previous guest post on this topic—has just written an awesome FAQ, providing his pers…
108
Against Bayesianism – David Deutsch
Bayesianism, the doctrine that it's always rational to represent our beliefs in terms of probabilities, dominates the intellectual world, from decision theory to the philosophy of science. But does it make sense to quantify our beliefs about such ineffable things as scientific theories or the future? And what separates
109
110
TypeScript and Set Theory
How does set theory help to understand type assignability and resolution in TypeScript?
111
I can't let go of “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation”
Organizing my thoughts regarding an argument about the Dunning-Kruger study and statistics in general
112
Things I would like to see in a computer algebra system
If I were to design a computer algebra system (CAS) from scratch today, I would try to achieve the following goals. Several ideas have already been implemented in one system or another, but certainly not all at once. Some ideas could be adopted by existing CASes; others would require fundamentally different designs or…
113
Can you be sure to clear a line at Tetris?
Summary: it is possible to play Tetris and guarantee that you will score at least one line, no matter which pieces are given to you, i.e., even assuming they are chosen adversarially.
114
Bad but interesting mathematical notation idea
From the highly eclectic blog of Mark Dominus
115
Exponentially Better Rotations
If you’ve done any 3D programming, you’ve likely encountered the zoo of techniques and representations used when working with 3D rotations. Some of them are better than others, depending on the situation.
116
117
Why a Slide Rule Works
Why does lining up two scales of a slide rule let you multiply numbers?
118
Money Stuff is Linear-ish
What was once a pre-market morning newsletter became an afternoon newsletter, 12 seconds at a time
119
The examples in the textbooks are not representative of real world problems
Bill Harris points to this cartoon from Randall Munroe. I think he (Munroe) is really on to something here. Not about Bayes’s theorem but about the sorts of examples that are in textbooks.
120
Markov Chains for programmers
Materials for book: “Markov Chains for programmers”