1321
Reverse Engineering the Constants in the Pentium FPU
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993, establishing a long-running brand of high-performance processors. 1 The Pentium incl...
Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 2,391 posts.
1322
Explained from scratch: private information retrieval and homomorphic encryption
This is a from-scratch explanation of private information retrieval built using homomorphic encryption. I try to assume only a general math / computer science background. To simplify things, my explanations may not always match academic definitions. You can check out this paper or code for more.
1323
Unprojecting text with ellipses (2016)
Using transformed ellipses to estimate perspective transformations of text.
1324
Continuations by example: Exceptions, time-traveling search, threads, and more
Continuations are the least understood of all control-flow constructs. This lack of understanding (or awareness) is unfortunate, given that continuations permit the programmer to implement powerful language features and algorithms, including exceptions, backtracking search, threads, generators and coroutines.
1325
Combinatorial Music Theory (1991)
graph theory, music theory
1326
A Misalignment of AI in Mathematics
I am proud to be among the list of 25 initial signatories — all Fields Medallists — to the declaration below, which grew out of discussions between ourselves over the last week. We have…
1327
A Dive into the Math Behind Bitcoin Schnorr Signatures
Get up close and personal with Schnorr and his now patent-free linear signature algorithm.
1328
Taleb is wrong about IQ
Investigation of Talebs claims about IQ using real data.
1329
How fast should you accelerate your kid in math?
We thought we were accelerating fast enough. Turns out we weren't.
1330
Will it be a golden age or a dark age for mathematics (and science)?
[This is a guest post by Francesco Maggi. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] Large language models (LLMs) and the research systems b…
1331
The Invention of Zero
“If you look at zero you see nothing; but look through it and you will see the world.”
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Hilbert space: Treating functions as vectors
The tools of linear algebra are extremely useful when working in Euclidean space (e.g. \mathbb{R}^3 ). Wouldn’t it be great if we could apply these tools to additional mathematical constructs, such as functions and sequences? Hilbert space allows us to do exactly this - apply linear algebra to functions.
1334
Statistical Arbitrage – An Easy Walkthrough
Statistical arbitrage (stat arb) is a pillar of quantitative trading that relies on mean reversion to predict the future returns of an asset. Mean reversion believes that if a stock has risen higher it’s more likely to revert in the short term which is the opposite of a momentum strategy that believes if a stock has…
1335
Sorting algorithms with CUDA
Building on my previous post on sorting algorithms, I implemented the same algorithms using CUDA to explore performance improvements through parallel computing. The goal is to see how we can leverage the power of parallel computing to speed up our sorting algorithms. I went for a NVIDIA recruiting event some days ago…
1336
Finding Love Optimally
Like many in operations research, my research interests often creep over into my everyday life. Since I work on scheduling issues, I get particularly concerned with everyday scheduling, to the consternation of my friends and family (“We should have left six minutes ago: transportation is now on the critical path!”)…
1337
How to get from high school math to cutting-edge ML/AI
1) Foundational math. 2) Classical machine learning. 3) Deep learning. 4) Cutting-edge machine learning.
1338
Introduction to spherical harmonics for graphics programmers
On your computer graphics journey, you will eventually run into some paper or code mentioning spherical harmonic functions. They are indeed a very useful tool: with just a few coefficients, they allow us to approximate a given function defined on a sphere. This can be very useful for modeling complex lighting.
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1340
The Mathematics of 2048: Counting States by Exhaustive Enumeration
How many board configurations are there in the game of 2048? Let's try to enumerate them.
1341
The Great Theorem Prover Showdown
Functional programming and immutability are hot right now. On one hand, this is pretty great as there’s lots of nice things about functional programming. On the other hand, people get a little overzealous and start claiming that imperative code is unnatural or that purity is always preferable to mutation. I think that…
1342
A Deep Dive into Monte Carlo Tree Search
(This was originally a sponsor talk given at PyCon 2018. Unfortunately there is no video.)
1343
The lat/lon floating point delusion
This morning I had a shower for 6.11686718 minutes. For breakfast I had 189.41576911 ml of fruit juice, followed by 75.24902503 g of muesli topped with 36.55668786 ml of milk and 15.44171338 g of yogurt.
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1345
The deepest problem with deep learning
Some reflections on an accidental Twitterstorm, the future of AI and deep learning, and what happens when you confuse a schoolbus with a…
1346
1347
Knuth's 'Earthshaking Announcement' due tomorrow
(I'm still looking for the catchiest way to appreciate the number MMXXVI. Exercise 7.2.1.6–122 gives 1234+.5*6+789 and -1+2345*6/7+8+9 and 1+(2/3)*45*67.8-9 ; other suggestions are welcome. The most elegant that I've seen so far is a beauty that was suggested independently by Arnaud Lefebvre and by Evangelos…
1348
Down with Determinants (1995)
This paper was published in the American Mathematical Monthly 102 (1995), 139-154.
1349
Don't bet on the most likely winner
It's all relative
1350
Three Meanings of E=mc²
It’s so much more than mass-energy equivalence; it’s the key to unlocking the quantum Universe.