Related papers: Quicksort with unreliable comparisons: a probabili…
When averages of different experimental determinations of the same quantity are computed, each with statistical and systematic error components, then frequently the statistical and systematic components of the combined error are quoted…
The higher criticism of a family of tests starts with the individual uncorrected p-values of each test. It then requires a procedure for deciding whether the collection of p-values indicates the presence of a real effect and if possible…
Nonprobability (convenience) samples are increasingly sought to stabilize estimations for one or more population variables of interest that are performed using a randomized survey (reference) sample by increasing the effective sample size.…
QuickSort and the analysis of its expected run time was presented 1962 in a classical paper by C.A.R Hoare. There the run time analysis hinges on a by now well known recurrence equation for the expected run time, which in turn was justified…
One of the greatest algorithms of all time is Quicksort. Its average running time is famously O(nlog(n)), and its variance, less famously, is O(n^2) (hence its standard deviation is O(n)). But what about higher moments? Here we find…
Asymmetric statistical errors arise for experimental results obtained by Maximum Likelihood estimation, in cases where the number of results is finite and the log likelihood function is not a symmetric parabola. This note discusses how…
Nonprobability (convenience) samples are increasingly sought to reduce the estimation variance for one or more population variables of interest that are estimated using a randomized survey (reference) sample by increasing the effective…
The analysis of decision making under uncertainty is closely related to the analysis of probabilistic inference. Indeed, much of the research into efficient methods for probabilistic inference in expert systems has been motivated by the…
Ranking and comparing items is crucial for collecting information about preferences in many areas, from marketing to politics. The Mallows rank model is among the most successful approaches to analyse rank data, but its computational…
Generalised regression estimation allows one to make use of available auxiliary information in survey sampling. We develop three types of generalised regression estimator when the auxiliary data cannot be matched perfectly to the sample…
Estimating a constrained relation is a fundamental problem in machine learning. Special cases are classification (the problem of estimating a map from a set of to-be-classified elements to a set of labels), clustering (the problem of…
Ranks estimated from data are uncertain and this poses a challenge in many applications. However, estimated ranks are deterministic functions of estimated parameters, so the uncertainty in the ranks must be determined by the uncertainty in…
The Quickselect algorithm (also called FIND) is a fundamental algorithm for selecting ranks or quantiles within a set of data. Gr\"ubel and R\"osler showed that the number of key comparisons required by Quickselect considered as a process…
The two most prominent solutions for the sorting problem are Quicksort and Mergesort. While Quicksort is very fast on average, Mergesort additionally gives worst-case guarantees, but needs extra space for a linear number of elements.…
Quantitative characterizations and estimations of uncertainty are of fundamental importance in optimization and decision-making processes. Herein, we propose intuitive scores, which we call certainty and doubt, that can be used in both a…
In this pedagogical text aimed at those wanting to start thinking about or brush up on probabilistic inference, I review the rules by which probability distribution functions can (and cannot) be combined. I connect these rules to the…
Model selection aims to identify a sufficiently well performing model that is possibly simpler than the most complex model among a pool of candidates. However, the decision-making process itself can inadvertently introduce non-negligible…
We survey results on the hardness of approximating combinatorial optimization problems.
Stochastic comparisons of series and parallel systems are important in many areas of engineering, operations research and reliability analysis. These comparisons allow for the evaluation of the performance and reliability of systems under…
Herein we present one hundred inequalities culled from various corners of the probability, statistics, and combinatorics literature. We welcome new suggestions.