Related papers: A Probability Puzzle
One of the central themes in the classification task is the estimation of class posterior probability at a new point $\bf{x}$. The vast majority of classifiers output a score for $\bf{x}$, which is monotonically related to the posterior…
The ideas of aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty are widely used to reason about the probabilistic predictions of machine-learning models. We identify incoherence in existing discussions of these ideas and suggest this stems from the…
We study the famous mathematical puzzle of prisoners and hats. We introduce a framework in which various variants of the problem can be formalized. We examine three particular versions of the problem (each one in fact a class of problems)…
Discrete mathematics and probability theory contain foundational material for computer scientists. Despite their importance, instructors often worry that students will find these courses to be too abstract and seemingly disconnected from…
Decision theories offer principled methods for making choices under various types of uncertainty. Algorithms that implement these theories have been successfully applied to a wide range of real-world problems, including materials and drug…
We consider the problem of revealing a small hidden lattice from the knowledge of a low-rank sublattice modulo a given sufficiently large integer -- the {\em Hidden Lattice Problem}. A central motivation of study for this problem is the…
We consider the possibility problem of determining if a document is a possible world of a probabilistic document, in the setting of probabilistic XML. This basic question is a special case of query answering or tree automata evaluation, but…
$\texttt{Randomstrasse101}$ is a blog dedicated to Open Problems in Mathematics, with a focus on Probability Theory, Computation, Combinatorics, Statistics, and related topics. This manuscript serves as a stable record of the Open Problems…
This paper discusses the semantics and proof theory of Nilsson's probabilistic logic, outlining both the benefits of its well-defined model theory and the drawbacks of its proof theory. Within Nilsson's semantic framework, we derive a set…
This article presents a general solution to the problem of computational complexity. First, it gives a historical introduction to the problem since the revival of the foundational problems of mathematics at the end of the 19th century.…
This is a short survey on existing upper and lower bounds on the probability of the union of a finite number of events using partial information given in terms of the individual or pairwise event probabilities (or their sums). New proofs…
This note is the written version of conversations with young colleagues on unofficial history, general ideas, unexpected facts and open problems concerning tilting theory.
We present a variation of the water puzzle, which is related to a simple model of marginal utility. The problem has an intriguing solution and can be extended in several directions.
A simple problem is studied in which there are N boxes and a prize known to be in one of the boxes. Furthermore, the probability that the prize is in any box is given. It is desired to find the prize with minimal expected work, where it…
In 2024, Daniel Litt posed a simple coinflip game pitting Alice's "Heads-Heads" vs Bob's "Heads-Tails": who is more likely to win if they score 1 point per occurrence of their substring in a sequence of n fair coinflips? This attracted over…
These are the notes of my lectures at the 1996 European Congress of Mathematicians. {} Polynomials appear in mathematics frequently, and we all know from experience that low degree polynomials are easier to deal with than high degree ones.…
This paper presents formulae that can solve various seemingly hopeless philosophical conundrums. We discuss the simulation argument, teleportation, mind-uploading, the rationality of utilitarianism, and the ethics of exploiting artificial…
The discrete logarithm problem (DLP) generalizes to the constrained DLP, where the secret exponent $x$ belongs to a set known to the attacker. The complexity of generic algorithms for solving the constrained DLP depends on the choice of the…
I argue that we must distinguish between: (0) the Three-Doors-Problem Problem [sic], which is to make sense of some real world question of a real person. (1) a large number of solutions to this meta-problem, i.e., many specific…
How predictable a word is can be quantified in two ways: using human responses to the cloze task or using probabilities from language models (LMs).When used as predictors of processing effort, LM probabilities outperform probabilities…