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Christopher Olah's Blog
- Deep Learning, NLP, and Representations 2014-07-08In the last few years, deep neural networks have dominated pattern recognition. They blew the previous state of the art out of the water for many computer vision tasks. Voice recognition is also moving that way. But despite the results, we have to wonder… why do they work so well? This post reviews some extremely […]colah
- Fanfiction, Graphs, and PageRank 2014-07-07On a website called fanfiction.net, users write millions of stories about their favorite stories. They have diverse opinions about them. They love some stories, and hate others. The opinions are noisy, and it’s hard to see the big picture. With tools from mathematics and some helpful software, however, we can visualize the underlying structure. […]colah
- Neural Networks, Manifolds, and Topology 2014-04-09Recently, there’s been a great deal of excitement and interest in deep neural networks because they’ve achieved breakthrough results in areas such as computer vision. However, there remain a number of concerns about them. One is that it can be quite challenging to understand what a neural network is really doing. If one trains it well, it […]colah
- Visualizing Functions On Groups 2014-01-16Functions of the form or , where is a group, arise in lots of contexts. One very natural way this can happen is to have a probability distribution on a group, . The probability density of group elements is a function . Another way this can happen is if you have some function and has […]colah
- The Death of a Squirrel 2013-08-25(Trigger warning: descriptions of severe animal injury.) Today a squirrel was hit by a car a few feet away from me while I was walking down the side walk. Three of its legs kept twitching. I thought it had a broken leg. I came out of my stupor and went to grab it and pull […]colah
- Order Statistics 2013-08-16What is the distribution of the maximum of random variables? What started out a utilitarian question in my exploration of some generalized versions of the secretary problem turns out to be quite a deep topic. (Note that I have little background in probability and statistics. Please forgive (and inform me of, so I can fix!) […]colah
- Topology Notes 2013-06-14I’ve been talking about writing a topology textbook introductory notes on topology for years. Basically since I wrote my Rethinking Topology (or a Personal Topologodicy) post 2 years ago — it’s hard to believe it’s been that long! In any case, I finally started writing it. I’ve done a mild review of existing introductions to general topology (ie. I […]colah
- How My Neural Net Sees Blackboards (Part 2) 2013-06-09Previously, I discussed training a neural net to clean up images. I’m pleased to say that, using more sophisticated techniques, I’ve since achieved much better results. My latest approach is a four layer convolutional network. Sadly, the convolution throws away the sides of the images, so we get a black margin. In any case, compare […]colah
- I’m Sick and Tired of 3D Printed Guns 2013-05-29For the last few months, every time someone hears that I work with 3D printers they bring up 3D printed guns. I can’t say how many times it has happened in this month alone. And I’m getting really really tired of it. “They’re the killer app of 3D printers.” What a great pun. You don’t know […]colah
- How My Neural Net Sees Blackboards 2013-05-11For the last few weeks, I’ve been taking part in a small weekly neural net study group run by Michael Nielsen. It’s been really awesome! Neural nets are very very cool! They’re so cool, I had to use them somehow. Having been interested in mathematical handwriting recognition for a long time, I decided to train […]colah
Creative Commons
- Training: Open Licenses for Artists, Musicians and Creators 2023-02-03Curious about Creative Commons licenses? Join Creative Commons staff for an overview of the six CC licenses and two public domain tools. We will describe the CC license and tool elements, their legal, machine-readable, and human-readable layers, as well as show practical use cases for each of the licenses and tools. Participants will engage in […]Jennryn Wetzler
- CC’s #BetterSharing Collection | February: Sharing Brightens The Future 2023-02-02As part of our #20CC anniversary, last year we joined forces with Fine Acts to spark a global dialogue on what better sharing looks like in action. Our #BetterSharing collection of illustrations was the result — we gathered insights from 12 prominent open advocates around the world and tasked 12 renowned artists who embrace openness […]Ony Anukem
- ¿Interasado en ser voluntario en la formación de la Cumbre Global CC en la Ciudad de México? 2023-02-01[Read this post in English >] ¿Ya escuchaste la emocionante noticia de que el CC Global Summit 2023 será en la Ciudad de México? Ahora tienes la oportunidad de ser voluntario y formar parte de los comités que ayudarán a dar forma al programa y podrás evaluar las solicitudes de becas para futuros participantes. Los […]Nate Angell
- Volunteer to Help Shape CC’s Global Summit in Mexico City 2023-02-01[Lee esta entrada en español >] You’ve heard the exciting news that the 2023 CC Global Summit will be in Mexico City? Now you have the opportunity to volunteer to join the committees that will help shape the program and evaluate applications for participant scholarships. Volunteers are essential to ensure that the CC Summit reflects […]Nate Angell
- Scanning 3D: Cultural Heritage Preservation, Access and Revitalization 2023-01-30On 7 February 2023, Creative Commons will host a panel discussion on 3D scanning, preservation, access and revitalization of cultural heritage. As 3D technologies advance and cultural heritage institutions around the world seek better ways to enable people to engage with their collections, we also see cultural artifacts threatened by global climate change, armed conflict, […]Jennryn Wetzler
- CC Open Education Platform Lightning Talks: Join us on 2 February 2023 2023-01-25The Creative Commons Open Education Platform community welcomes you to our Lightning Talks, or seven-minute presentations on specific updates or stories in open education. Kicking off our Lightning Talks series for 2023, presenters will highlight: open educational resources (OER) as tools for social justice, work/life balance, climate change and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals […]Jennryn Wetzler
- CC’s #BetterSharing Collection | January: Open Palms, Not Clutching Fists 2023-01-20As part of #20CC, last year we joined forces with Fine Acts to spark a global dialogue on what better sharing looks like in action. Our #BetterSharing collection of illustrations was the result — we gathered insights from 12 prominent open advocates around the world and tasked 12 renowned artists who embrace openness with transforming […]Ony Anukem
- Aparta la fecha: la Cumbre Global de Creative Commons 2023 llegará a la Ciudad de México 2023-01-19[Read this post in English >] La Cumbre Global de Creative Commons volverá a ser un evento presencial este 2023, y esta vez se llevará a cabo en una de las ciudades más imponentes y llenas de cultura del mundo: ¡la Ciudad de México! Del 3 al 6 de octubre de 2023, nos reuniremos en […]Creative Commons
- Mark Your Calendars: The 2023 CC Global Summit Is Coming to Mexico City 2023-01-19[Lee esta entrada en español >] We are thrilled to announce that the Creative Commons Global Summit will return to an in-person event in 2023, and this time we are heading to one of the most vibrant and culturally rich cities in the world — Mexico City! During 3-6 October 2023, we will be gathering […]Creative Commons
- 2023: The Year of Open Science 2023-01-172023 is the year of the rabbit in the Chinese Lunar calendar, the year Voyager 2 is predicted to overtake Pioneer 10 as the second-farthest spacecraft from Earth, and the Year of Open Science. In an announcement by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), 2023 was declared the Year of Open […]Cable Green
Planet Sage
- Sébastien Labbé: Tiling a polyomino with polyominoes in SageMath 2020-12-03Suppose that you 3D print many copies of the following 3D hexo-mino at home: sage: from sage.combinat.tiling import Polyomino, TilingSolver sage: p = Polyomino([(0,0,0), (0,1,0), (1,0,0), (2,0,0), (2,1,0), (2,1,1)], color='blue') sage: p.show3d() Launched html viewer for Graphics3d Object You would like to know if you can tile a larger polyomino or in particular a rectangular […]
- William Stein: DataDog: Don't make the same mistake I did -- a followup and thoughts about very unhappy customers 2020-04-13This is a followup to my previous blog post about DataDog billing. TL;DR:- I don't recommend DataDog,- dealing with unhappy customers is hard,- monitoring for data science nerds?Hacker News CommentsDataDog at Google Cloud SummitI was recently at the Seattle Google Cloud Summit and DataDog was well represented, with the biggest booth and top vendor billing […]
- Sébastien Labbé: Computer experiments for the Lyapunov exponent for MCF algorithms when dimension is larger than 3 2020-03-27In November 2015, I wanted to share intuitions I developped on the behavior of various distinct Multidimensional Continued Fractions algorithms obtained from various kind of experiments performed with them often involving combinatorics and digitial geometry but also including the computation of their first two Lyapunov exponents. As continued fractions are deeply related to the combinatorics […]
Yet Another Mathblog
- Harmonic quotients of regular graphs – examples 2023-01-06Caroline Melles and I have written a preprint that collects numerous examples of harmonic quotient morphisms , where is a quotient graph obtained from some subgroup . The examples are for graphs having a small number of vertices (no more than 12). For the most part, we also focused on regular graphs with small degree […]wdjoyner
- A graph_id function in SageMath 2022-09-07While GAP has a group_id function which locates a “small” group in a small groups database (see the SageMath page or the GAP page for more info), AFAIK, SageMath doesn’t have something similar. I’ve written one (see below) based on the mountain of hard work done years ago by Emily Kirkman.wdjoyner
- Rankine’s “The Mathematician in Love” 2022-05-26The 1874 poem “The Mathematician in Love” by Scottish mechanical engineer William Rankine (in the book From Songs and Fables) has been published in many places (e.g., poetry.com, New Scientist and the scanned version is available at the internet archive. However, the mathematical equations Rankine presented at the end of his poem are only available […]wdjoyner
- Let’s do the Landau shuffle 2021-10-23Here’s a shuffle I’ve not seen before: Take an ordinary deck of 52 cards and place them, face up, in the following pattern:Going from the top of the deck to the bottom, placing cards down left-to-right, put 13 cards in the top row:11 cards in the next row:then 9 cards in the next row:then 7 […]wdjoyner
- Coding Theory and Cryptography 2021-10-11This was once posted on my USNA webpage. Since I’ve retired, I’m going to repost it here. Coding Theory and Cryptography:From Enigma and Geheimschreiber to Quantum Theory(David Joyner, ed.) Springer-Verlag, 2000. ISBN 3-540-66336-3 Summary: These are the proceedings of the “Cryptoday” Conference on Coding Theory, Cryptography, and Number Theory held at the U. S. Naval […]wdjoyner
- Shanks’ SQUFOF according to McMath 2021-07-30In 2003, a math major named Steven McMath approached Fred Crabbe and I about directing his Trident thesis. (A Trident is like an honors thesis, but the student gets essentially the whole year to focus on writing the project.) After he graduated, I put a lot of his work online at the USNA website. Of […]wdjoyner
- The truncated tetrahedron covers the tetrahedron 2021-04-29At first, you might think this is obvious – just “clip” off each corner of the tetrahedron to create the truncated tetrahedron (by essentially creating a triangle from each of these clipped corners – see below for the associated graph). Then just map each such triangle to the corresponding vertex of the tetrahedron. No, it’s […]wdjoyner
- A mathematical card trick 2021-03-28If you search hard enough on the internet you’ll discover a pamphlet from the 1898 by Si Stebbins entitled “Card tricks and the way they are performed” (which I’ll denote by [S98] for simplicity). In it you’ll find the “Si Stebbins system” which he claims is entirely his own invention. I’m no magician, by from […]wdjoyner
- Quartic graphs with 12 vertices 2020-10-13This is a continuation of the post A table of small quartic graphs. As with that post, it’s modeled on the handy wikipedia page Table of simple cubic graphs. According to SageMath computations, there are 1544 connected, 4-regular graphs. Exactly 2 of these are symmetric (ie, arc transitive), also vertex-transitive and edge-transitive. Exactly 8 of these are […]wdjoyner
- A footnote to Robert H. Mountjoy 2020-08-27In an earlier post titled Mathematical romantic? I mentioned some papers I inherited of one of my mathematical hero’s Andre Weil with his signature. In fact, I was fortunate enough to go to dinner with him once in Princeton in the mid-to-late 1980s – a very gentle, charming person with a deep love of mathematics. […]wdjoyner
What's all this, then?
- Carroll's "improved" Doublets: allowing permutations 2022-11-07Carroll originally invented his Doublets in 1877, they were published in "Vanity Fair" (the magazine, not the Thackeray novel) in 1879. Some years later, in an 1892 letter, Carroll added another rule: that permutations were allowed. This allows very neat chains such as: roses, noses, notes, steno, stent, scent Because the words stay the same […]
- Super Doublets: more word ladders with Julia 2022-11-05Apparently there's a version of Doublets (see previous post) which allows you to add or delete a letter each turn. Thus we can go from WHEAT to BREAD as WHEAT, HEAT, HEAD, READ, BREAD which is shorter than the ladder given in that previous post. However, we can easily adjust the material from that post […]
- Word ladders with Julia 2022-11-03Lewis Carroll's game of Doublets Such a long time since my last post! Well, that's the working life for you. Anyway, recently I was reading about Lewis Carroll - always one of my favourite people - and was reminded of his word game "Doublets" in which one word is turned into another by changing one […]
- Every academic their own text-matcher 2022-06-19Plagiarism, text matching, and academic integrity Every modern academic teacher is in thrall to giant text-matching systems such as Ouriginal or Turnitin. These systems are sold as "plagiarism detectors", which they are not - they are text matching systems, and they generally work by providing a report showing how much of a student's submitted work […]
- More mapping "not quite how-to" - Voronoi regions 2022-06-18What this post is about In the previous post we showed how to set up a simple interactive map using Python and its folium package. As the example, we used a Federal electorate situated within the city of Melbourne, Australia, and the various voting places, or polling places (also known as polling "booths") associated with […]
- A mapping "not quite how-to" 2022-06-11Message about the underlying software NOTE: much of the material and discussion here uses the Python package "folium", which is a front end to the Javascript package "leaflet.js". The lead developer of leaflet.js is Volodymyr Agafonkin, a Ukrainian up until recently living and working in Kyiv. Leaflet version 1.80 was released on April 18, "in […]
- Further mapping: a win and a near miss 2022-06-09In this post we look at two Divisions from the recent Federal election: the inner city seat of Melbourne, and the bayside seat of Macnamara. Up until the recent election, Melbourne was the only Division to have a Greens representative. Macnamara, previously known as "Melbourne Ports" has been a Labor stronghold for all of its […]
- Post-election mapping 2022-06-05This continues on from the previous post, trying to make some sense of the voting in my electorate of Wills and the neighbouring electorate of Cooper. Both these electorates (or more formally "Divisions"), as I mentioned in the previous post, are very similar in their geography, demography, and history. Last post I simply showed a […]
- Post-election swings 2022-05-22So the Australian federal election of 2022 is over as far as the public is concerned; all votes have been cast and now it's a matter of waiting while the Australian Electoral Commission tallies the numbers, sorts all the preferences, and arrives at a result. Because of the complications of the voting system, and of […]
- Ramanujan's cubes 2022-04-03This post illustrates the working of Ramanujan's generating functions for solving Euler's diophantine equation \(a^3+b^3=c^3+d^3\) as described by Andrews and Berndt in "Ramanujan's Lost Notebook, Part IV", pp 199 - 205 (Section 8.5). The text is available from Springer. Ramanujan's result is that if \[ f_1(x) = \frac{1+53x+9x^2}{1-82x-82x^2+x^3} = a_0+a_1x+a_2x^2+a_3x^3+\cdots = \alpha_0+\frac{\alpha_1}{x}+\frac{\alpha_2}{x^2}+\frac{\alpha_3}{x^3}+\cdots\] \[ f_2(x) = […]
- Wordle 2022-01-24Wordle is a pleasant game, basically Mastermind with words. You choose an English word (although it can also be played in other languages), and then you're told if your letters are incorrect, correct but in the wrong place, or correct and in the right place. These are shown by the colours grey, yellow, and green. […]
- Five letter words in English 2022-01-23I was going to make a little post about Wordle, but I go sidetracked exploring five letter words. At the same time, I had a bit of fun with regular expressions and some simple scripting with ZSH. The start was to obtain lists of 5-letter words. One is available at the Stanford Graphbase site; the […]
- A new year (2022) 2022-01-01What does one do on the first day of a new year but write a blog post, and in it clearly delineate all plans for the coming year? Well, I'm doing the first part, but not the second, as I know that any plans will not be fulfilled - something always gets in the way. […]
- Exploring Tanh-Sinh quadrature 2021-04-30As is well known, tanh-sinh quadrature takes an integral \[ \int_{-1}^1f(x)dx \] and uses the substitution \[ x = g(t) = \tanh\left(\frac{\pi}{2}\sinh t\right) \] to transform the integral into \[ \int_{-\infty}^{\infty}f(g(t))g'(t)dt. \] The reason this works so well is that the derivative \(g'(t)\) dies away at a double exponentional rate; that is, at the rate […]
- A note on Steffensen's method for solving equations 2021-04-30Steffensen's method is based on Newton's iteration for solving a non-linear equation \(f(x)=0\): \[ x\leftarrow x-\frac{f(x)}{f'(x)} \] Newton's method can fail to work in a number of ways, but when it does work it displays qudratic convergence; the number of correct signifcant figures roughly doubling at each step. However, it also has the disadvntage of […]
- High precision quadrature with Clenshaw-Curtis 2021-04-21An article by Bailey, Jeybalan and LI, "A comparison of three high-precision quadrature schemes", and available online here, compares Gauss-Legendre quadrature, tanh-sinh quadrature, and a rule where the nodes and weights are given by the error function and its integrand respectively. However, Nick Trefethen of Oxford has shown experimentally that Clenshaw-Curtis quadrature is generally no […]
- The circumference of an ellipse 2021-04-10Note: This blog post is mainly computational, with a hint of proof-oriented mathematics here and there. For a more in-depth analysis, read the excellent article "Gauss, Landen, Ramanujan, the Arithmetic-Geometric Mean, Ellipses, pi, and the Ladies Diary" by Gert Akmkvist and Bruce Berndt, in The American Mathematical Monthly, vol 95 no. 7 (August-September 1988), pages […]
- Voting power (7): Quarreling voters 2021-01-24In all the previous discussions of voting power, we have assumed that all winning coalitions are equally likely. But in practice that is not necessarily the case. Two or more voters may be opposed on so many issues that they would never vote the same way on any issues: such a pair of voters may […]
- Voting power (6): Polynomial rings 2021-01-22As we have seen previously, it's possible to compute power indices by means of polynomial generating functions. We shall extend previous examples to include the Deegan-Packel index, in a way somewhat different to that of Alonso-Meijide et al (see previous post for reference). Again, suppose we consider the voting game \[ [30;28,16,5,4,3,3] \] What we'll […]
- Voting power (5): The Deegan-Packel and Holler power indices 2021-01-14We have explored the Banzhaf and Shapley-Shubik power indices, which both consider the ways in which any voter can be pivotal, or critical, or necessary, to a winning coalition. A more recent power index, which takes a different approach, was defined by Deegan and Packel in 1976, and considers only minimal winning coalitions. A winning […]