Related papers: Equidistribution, Uniform distribution: a probabil…
Let $G_1,\dots, G_n\in \mathbb{F}_p[X_1,\dots,X_m]$ be $n$ polynomials in $m$ variables over the finite field $\mathbb{F}_p$ of $p$ elements. For any sufficiently large prime $p$ and non-trivial bounds for the Weyl sums associated to the…
In the following we revisit the frequency interpretation of probability of Richard von Mises, in order to bring the essential implicit notions in focus. Following von Mises, we argue that probability can only be defined for events that can…
During last two decades it has been discovered that the statistical properties of a number of microscopically rather different random systems at the macroscopic level are described by {\it the same} universal probability distribution…
We obtain multidimensional metric uniform distribution results involving sequences in ${\mathbb R}^k$ parametrized by analytic curves. Our theorems extend the classical theorems of Weyl and Koksma in a variety of ways. One of our main…
We survey the development of probability from 1900, starting with Bachelier's theory of speculation. Fisher information appears in the theory of estimation. We touch on Brownian motion, and the Wiener integral. The Ito calculus, and its…
The design of uniformly spread sequences on $[0,1)$ has been extensively studied since the work of Weyl and van der Corput in the early $20^{\text{th}}$ century. The current best sequences are based on the Kronecker sequence with golden…
Measure rigidity is a branch of ergodic theory that has recently contributed to the solution of some fundamental problems in number theory and mathematical physics. Examples are proofs of quantitative versions of the Oppenheim conjecture,…
We trace a conceptual genealogy from Abraham de Moivre's derivation of the normal curve (1733) to the modern distributional approach to statistics. De Moivre's Approximatio ad Summam Terminorum Binomii gave the first systematic derivation…
The theory of probability, based on very general rules referred to as the Cox-Polya-Jaynes Desiderata, can be used both as a theory of random mass phenomena and as a quantitative theory of plausible inference about the parameters of…
We investigate Maxwell's attempt to justify the mathematical assumptions behind his 1860 Proposition IV according to which the velocity components of colliding particles follow the normal distribution. Contrary to the commonly held view we…
In [A dozen de {F}inetti-style results in search of a theory, Ann. Inst. H. Poincar\'{e} Probab. Statist. 23(2)(1987), 397--423], Diaconis and Freedman studied low-dimensional projections of random vectors from the Euclidean unit sphere and…
In physics, one is often misled in thinking that the mathematical model of a system is part of or is that system itself. Think of expressions commonly used in physics like "point" particle, motion "on the line", "smooth" observables, wave…
We consider a sequence of four variable polynomials by refining Stieltjes' continued fraction for Eulerian polynomials. Using combinatorial theory of Jacobi-type continued fractions and bijections we derive various combinatorial…
Estimating a large alphabet probability distribution from a limited number of samples is a fundamental problem in machine learning and statistics. A variety of estimation schemes have been proposed over the years, mostly inspired by the…
Generalized probability distributions for Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac statistics, with unequal source probabilities $q_i$ for each level $i$, are obtained by combinatorial reasoning. For equiprobable degenerate…
In statistical inference, uncertainty is unknown and all models are wrong. That is to say, a person who makes a statistical model and a prior distribution is simultaneously aware that both are fictional candidates. To study such cases,…
The traditional class of elliptical distributions is extended to allow for asymmetries. A completely robust dispersion matrix estimator (the `spectral estimator') for the new class of `generalized elliptical distributions' is presented. It…
We study the problem, introduced by Qiao and Valiant, of learning from untrusted batches. Here, we assume $m$ users, all of whom have samples from some underlying distribution $p$ over $1, \ldots, n$. Each user sends a batch of $k$ i.i.d.…
The uniform information density (UID) hypothesis states that humans tend to distribute information roughly evenly across an utterance or discourse. Early evidence in support of the UID hypothesis came from Genzel & Charniak (2002), which…
A random variable is equi-dispersed if its mean equals its variance. A Poisson distribution is a classical example of this phenomenon. However, a less well-known fact is that the class of normal densities that are equi-dispersed constitutes…