Related papers: A distribution on triples with maximum entropy mar…
Let $\mathcal{G}$ denote the variety generated by infinite dimensional Grassmann algebras; i.e., the collection of all unitary associative algebras satisfying the identity $[[z_1,z_2],z_3]=0$, where $[z_i,z_j]=z_iz_j-z_jz_i$. Consider the…
We consider the maximally symmetric $(2,3,5)$-distribution given by the An-Nurowski circle twistor bundle over the product of an An-Nurowski surface and the plane. This circle twistor distribution encodes the configuration space of an…
Let $p_n$ be $n$th prime, and let $(S_n)_{n=1}^\infty:=(S_n)$ be the sequence of the sums of the first $2n$ consecutive primes, that is, $S_n=\sum_{k=1}^{2n}p_k$ with $n=1,2,\ldots$. Heuristic arguments supported by the corresponding…
We estimate the number of incidences in a configuration of $m$ lines and $n$ points in dimension 3. The main term is $mn^{1/3}$ if we work over the real or complex numbers but $mn^{2/5}$ over finite fields. Both of these are optimal, aside…
Let $g$, $h$ be a random pair of generators of $G=Sym(n)$ or $G=Alt(n)$. We show that, with probability tending to $1$ as $n\to \infty$, (a) the diameter of $G$ with respect to $S = \{g,h,g^{-1},h^{-1}\}$ is at most $O(n^2 (\log n)^c)$, and…
Sufficient conditions are developed, under which the compound Poisson distribution has maximal entropy within a natural class of probability measures on the nonnegative integers. Recently, one of the authors [O. Johnson, {\em Stoch. Proc.…
We consider the three dimensional array $\mathcal{A} = \{a_{i,j,k}\}_{1\le i,j,k \le n}$, with $a_{i,j,k} \in [0,1]$, and the two random statistics $T_{1}:= \sum_{i=1}^n \sum_{j=1}^n a_{i,j,\sigma(i)}$ and $T_{2}:= \sum_{i=1}^{n}…
We recognise that an entropy inequality akin to the main intermediate goal of recent works (Gowers, Green, Manners, Tao [3],[2]) regarding a conjecture of Marton provides a black box from which we can also through a short deduction recover…
An infinitely divisible distribution on $\mathbb{R}$ is a probability measure $\mu$ such that the characteristic function $\hat{\mu}$ has a L\'{e}vy-Khintchine representation with characteristic triplet $(a,\gamma, \nu)$, where $\nu$ is a…
We study the problem of distinguishing between two symmetric probability distributions over $n$ bits by observing $k$ bits of a sample, subject to the constraint that all $k-1$-wise marginal distributions of the two distributions are…
In multiple classification, one aims to determine whether a testing sequence is generated from the same distribution as one of the M training sequences or not. Unlike most of existing studies that focus on discrete-valued sequences with…
This paper establishes new upper bounds for the sum of the $k$ largest eigenvalues of symmetric matrices. When applied to the adjacency matrix of a graph, our results improve upon a related bound due to Mohar {\bf [On the sum of k largest…
Let $A$ be an $n\times n$ random matrix with independent rows $R_1(A),\dots,R_n(A)$, and assume that for any $i\leq n$ and any three-dimensional linear subspace $F\subset {\mathbb R}^n$ the orthogonal projection of $R_i(A)$ onto $F$ has…
From among $ {n \choose 3}$ triangles with vertices chosen from $n$ points in the unit square, let $T$ be the one with the smallest area, and let $A$ be the area of $T$. Heilbronn's triangle problem asks for the maximum value assumed by $A$…
Under suitable hypotheses, we construct a probability measure on the set of closed maximal isotropic subspaces of a locally compact quadratic space over F_p. A random subspace chosen with respect to this measure is discrete with probability…
In many problems in data mining and machine learning, data items that need to be clustered or classified are not points in a high-dimensional space, but are distributions (points on a high dimensional simplex). For distributions, natural…
The scaled standard Wigner matrix (symmetric with mean zero, variance one i.i.d. entries), and its limiting eigenvalue distribution, namely the semi-circular distribution, has attracted much attention. The $2k$th moment of the limit equals…
Standard maximum-likelihood estimators for binary-star and exoplanet eccentricities are biased high, in the sense that the estimated eccentricity tends to be larger than the true eccentricity. As with most non-trivial observables, a simple…
Consider tossing a collection of coins, each fair or biased towards heads, and take the distribution of the total number of heads that result. It is natural to conjecture that this distribution should be 'more random' when each coin is…
The Boltzmann-Gibbs celebrated entropy $S_{BG}=-k\sum_ip_i \ln p_i$ is {\it concave} (with regard to all probability distributions $\{p_i\}$) and {\it stable} (under arbitrarily small deformations of any given probability distribution). It…