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This short tribute to the guru of Enumerative and Algebraic Combinatorics started out when one the authors(DZ) attended the Stanely@70 conference, that took place at the same time as the preliminary stage of the 2014 World Cup. It states a…
In a fascinating recent American Mathematical Monthly article, Norman Wildberger and Dean Rubine introduced a new kind of combinatorial numbers, that they aptly named the ``Geode numbers''. While their definition is simple, these numbers…
We demonstrate that the forecasting combination puzzle is a consequence of the methodology commonly used to produce forecast combinations. By the combination puzzle, we refer to the empirical finding that predictions formed by combining…
Sparse models require less memory for storage and enable a faster inference by reducing the necessary number of FLOPs. This is relevant both for time-critical and on-device computations using neural networks. The stabilized lottery ticket…
Let $X_1,\ldots, X_{d+2}$ be random points in $\mathbb R^d$. The classical Sylvester problem asks to determine the probability that the convex hull of these points, denoted by $P:= [X_1,\ldots, X_{d+2}]$, is a simplex. In the present paper,…
Recently, Frankle & Carbin (2019) demonstrated that randomly-initialized dense networks contain subnetworks that once found can be trained to reach test accuracy comparable to the trained dense network. However, finding these high…
In each round of a Swiss-system tournament, players of similar score are paired against each other. An intentional early loss therefore might lead to weaker opponents in later rounds and thus to a better final tournament result - a…
We suggest a new random model for links based on meander diagrams and graphs. We then prove that trivial links appear with vanishing probability in this model, no link $L$ is obtained with probability 1, and there is a lower bound for the…
I show here that there are three different kinds of iterations for the reduced Collatz algorithm; depending on whether the root of the number is odd or even. There is only one kind of iteration if the root is odd and two kinds if the root…
Collatz Conjecture sequences increase and decrease in seemingly random fashion. By identifying and analyzing the forms of numbers, we discover that Collatz sequences are governed by very specific, well-defined rules, which we call cascades.
A puzzle about prisoners trying to identify the color of a hat on their head leads to a version where there are k more hats than prisoners. This generalized puzzle is related to the independence number of the arrangement graph A(m, n) and…
A confidence sequence (CS) is a sequence of confidence sets that contains a target parameter of an underlying stochastic process at any time step with high probability. This paper proposes a new approach to constructing CSs for means of…
We consider a component of the word statistics known as clump; starting from a finite set of words, clumps are maximal overlapping sets of these occurrences. This parameter has first been studied by Schbath with the aim of counting the…
Many problems in combinatorial linear algebra require upper bounds on the number of solutions to an underdetermined system of linear equations $Ax = b$, where the coordinates of the vector $x$ are restricted to take values in some small…
The probabilistic method is a technique for proving combinatorial existence results by means of showing that a randomly chosen object has the desired properties with positive probability. A particularly powerful probabilistic tool is the…
Proposed in 1937, the Collatz conjecture has remained in the spotlight for mathematicians and computer scientists alike due to its simple proposal, yet intractable proof. In this paper, we propose several novel theorems, corollaries, and…
We consider a model of randomness for self-similar Cantor sets of finite and positive $1$-Hausdorff measure. We find the sharp rate of decay of the probability that a Buffon needle lands $\delta$-close to a Cantor set of this particular…
On the set of positive integers, we consider the iterative process that maps $n$ to either $\frac{3n+1}{2}$ or $\frac{n}{2}$ depending on the parity of $n$. The Collatz conjecture states that all such sequences eventually enter the trivial…
In 1996, my brilliant student John Noonan, discovered, and proved that there are 3(2n)!/(n(n+3)!(n-3)!) ways to line-up n people of different heights in such a way that out of the n(n-1)(n-2)/6 possible triples of people exactly one is such…
This paper discusses the gambling contest introduced in Seel & Strack (Gambling in contests, Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 375, Mar 2012.) and considers the impact of adding a penalty…