Related papers: How many digits are needed?

Many mathematical, man-made and natural systems exhibit a leading-digit bias, where a first digit (base 10) of 1 occurs not 11\% of the time, as one would expect if all digits were equally likely, but rather 30\%. This phenomenon is known…

In this article, we try to explain and unify standard divisibility tests found in various books. We then look at recurring decimals, and list a few of their properties. We show how to compute the number of digits in the recurring part of…

We study the set $\mathcal{S}$ of odd positive integers $n$ with the property ${2n}/{\sigma(n)} - 1 = 1/x$, for positive integer $x$, i.e., the set that relates to odd perfect and odd "spoof perfect" numbers. As a consequence, we find that…

Let $X_1,X_2,...$ be independent identically distributed random variables with values in $\C$. Denote by $\mu$ the probability distribution of $X_1$. Consider a random polynomial $P_n(z)=(z-X_1)...(z-X_n)$. We prove a conjecture of Pemantle…

Let $p>3$ be a prime and $b\ge 2$ an integer such that $p$ does not divide $b$. Then $1/p$ has a periodic digit expansion with respect to the basis $b$. The length $q$ of the period is the (multiplicative) order of $b$ mod $p$. In the case…

We study the extremes of a sequence of random variables $(R_n)$ defined by the recurrence $R_n=M_nR_{n-1}+q$, $n\ge1$, where $R_0$ is arbitrary, $(M_n)$ are iid copies of a non--degenerate random variable $M$, $0\le M\le1$, and $q>0$ is a…

In this paper we study the distribution of the real algebraic numbers. Given an interval $I$, a positive integer $n$ and $Q>1$, define the counting function $\Phi_n(Q;I)$ to be the number of algebraic numbers in $I$ of degree $n$ and height…

We extend the notion of matching for one-dimensional dynamical systems to random matching for random dynamical systems on an interval. We prove that for a large family of piecewise affine random systems of the interval the property of…

This note displays an interesting phenomenon for percentiles of independent but non-identical random variables. Let $X_1,\cdots,X_n$ be independent random variables obeying non-identical continuous distributions and $X^{(1)}\geq \cdots\geq…

Let $\{a_n(x)\}_{n\geq1}$ be the sequence of digits of $x\in(0,1)$ in infinite iterated function systems with polynomial decay of the derivative. We first study the multifractal spectrum of the convergence exponent defined by the sequence…

Let $q$ be a sufficiently large integer, and $a_0\in\{0,\dots,q-1\}$. We show there are infinitely many prime numbers which do not have the digit $a_0$ in their base $q$ expansion. Similar results are obtained for values of a polynomial…

Many systems exhibit a digit bias. For example, the first digit base 10 of the Fibonacci numbers, or of $2^n$, equals 1 not 10% or 11% of the time, as one would expect if all digits were equally likely, but about 30% of the time. This…

We introduce new method for generating correlated or uncorrelated Bernoulli random variables by using the binary expansion of a continuous random variable with support on the unit interval. We show that when this variable has a symmetric…

For each $n\ge 1$, let $X_{n,1},\ldots,X_{n,N_n}$ be real random variables and $S_n=\sum_{i=1}^{N_n}X_{n,i}$. Let $m_n\ge 1$ be an integer. Suppose $(X_{n,1},\ldots,X_{n,N_n})$ is $m_n$-dependent, $E(X_{ni})=0$, $E(X_{ni}^2)<\infty$ and…

Let $\beta > 1$ be a real number and $x \in [0,1)$ be an irrational number. Denote by $k_n(x)$ the exact number of partial quotients in the continued fraction expansion of $x$ given by the first $n$ digits in the $\beta$-expansion of $x$…

We show there exists a constant $0<c_{0}<1$ such that the dimension of every measure on $[0,1]$, which makes the digits in the continued fraction expansion independent, is at most $1-c_{0}$. This extends a result of Kifer, Peres and Weiss…

Let $X_1,\,X_2,\,\ldots,\,X_N$, $N\in\mathbb{N}$ be independent but not necessarily identically distributed discrete and integer-valued random variables. Assume that $X_1\geqslant m_1$, $X_2\geqslant m_2$, $\ldots$, $X_N\geqslant m_N$…

We study sequences of partitions of a non decreasing sequence I n of intervals into subintervals, starting from the trivial partition, in which each partition is obtained from the one before by splitting its subintervals in two, according…

For uniformly chosen random $\alpha \in [0,1]$, it is known the probability the $n^{\rm th}$ digit of the continued-fraction expansion, $[\alpha]_n$ converges to the Gauss-Kuzmin distribution $\mathbb{P}([\alpha]_n = k) \approx \log_2 (1 +…

For a random variable $N = 0, 1, 2, \ldots$ we study the following question: When does the sum of $N$ many independent and identically distributed copies of a random variable $X$ have the same law a a nontrivial rescaling of $X$? We show…