Related papers: A probabilistic way to discover the rainbow
Parallelograms are one of the basic building blocks in two-dimensional tiling. They have important applications in a wide variety of science and engineering fields, such as wireless communication networks, urban transportation, operations…
The set of visited sites and the number of visited sites are two basic properties of the random walk trajectory. We consider two independent random walks on a hyper-cubic lattice and study ordering probabilities associated with these…
Pandora's Box is a fundamental stochastic optimization problem, where the decision-maker must find a good alternative while minimizing the search cost of exploring the value of each alternative. In the original formulation, it is assumed…
We develop rigorous, analytic techniques to study the behaviour of biased random walks on combs. This enables us to calculate exactly the spectral dimension of random comb ensembles for any bias scenario in the teeth or spine. Two specific…
We revisit the game in which each of several players chooses a pattern and then a coin is flipped repeatedly until one of these patterns is generated. In particular, we demonstrate how to compute the probability of any one player winning…
Permutation puzzles, such as the Rubik's Cube and the 15 puzzle, are enjoyed by the general public and mathematicians alike. Here we introduce quantum versions of permutation puzzles where the pieces of the puzzles are replaced with…
Skill mastery is a priority for success in all fields. We present a parallel between the development of skill mastery and the process of solving jigsaw puzzles. We show that iterative random sampling solves jigsaw puzzles in two phases: a…
A rainbow stacking of $r$-edge-colorings $\chi_1, \ldots, \chi_m$ of the complete graph on $n$ vertices is a way of superimposing $\chi_1, \ldots, \chi_m$ so that no edges of the same color are superimposed on each other. We determine a…
Let $\mathcal{G}=\{G_1, G_2, \ldots , G_k\}$ be a family of bipartite graphs on the same vertex set. A rainbow Hamilton path (cycle) in $\mathcal{G}$ is a path (cycle) that visits each vertex precisely once such that any two edges belong to…
Surprise describes a range of phenomena from unexpected events to behavioral responses. We propose a measure of surprise and use it for surprise-driven learning. Our surprise measure takes into account data likelihood as well as the degree…
I think we can agree that dealing with uncertainty is not easy. Probability is the main tool for dealing with uncertainty, and we know there are many probability-related puzzles and paradoxes. Here I describe a rather idiosyncratic…
We give a simple statistical proof of a binomial identity, by evaluating the Laplace transform of the maximum of n independent exponential random variables in two different ways. As a by product, we obtain a simple proof of an interesting…
We consider the following variant of the classic collector's problem: The family of coupon probabilities is the mixing of two subfamilies one of which is the \textit{uniform} family, while the other belongs to the well known \textit{Zipf…
Given a graph $G=(V,E)$ on $n$ vertices and an assignment of colours to its edges, a set of edges $S \subseteq E$ is said to be rainbow if edges from $S$ have pairwise different colours assigned to them. In this paper, we investigate…
Consider a randomly shuffled deck of $2n$ cards with $n$ red cards and $n$ black cards. We study the average number of moves it takes to go from a randomly shuffled deck to a deck that alternates in color by performing the following move:…
We study the problem of approximately counting the number of list packings of a graph. The analogous problem for usual vertex coloring and list coloring has attracted a lot of attention. For list packing the setup is similar but we seek a…
Random walks are powerful tools to analyze spatial-temporal patterns produced by living organisms ranging from cells to humans. At the same time, it is evident that these patterns are not completely random but are results of a convolution…
A variation of Rosenstock's trapping model in which $N$ independent random walkers are all initially placed upon a site of a one-dimensional lattice in the presence of a {\em one-sided} random distribution (with probability $c$) of…
The process of doing Science in condition of uncertainty is illustrated with a toy experiment in which the inferential and the forecasting aspects are both present. The fundamental aspects of probabilistic reasoning, also relevant in real…
The proper choice of a measurement technique that minimizes systematic and random uncertainty is an essential part of experimental physics. These issues are difficult to teach in the introductory laboratory, though: because most experiments…