Related papers: Tales and Tails and Stuff and Nonsense
The notion of G-structure is defined and various geometrical and topological aspects of such structures are discussed. A particular chain of subgroups in the affine group for Minkowski space is chosen and the canonical geometrical and…
We survey the complexity class $\exists \mathbb{R}$, which captures the complexity of deciding the existential theory of the reals. The class $\exists \mathbb{R}$ has roots in two different traditions, one based on the Blum-Shub-Smale model…
The kicked rotor and the kicked top are two paradigms of quantum chaos. The notions of quantum resonance and the pseudoclassical limit, developed in the study of the kicked rotor, have revealed an intriguing and unconventional aspect of…
We discuss in this paper combinatorial aspects of boundary loop models, that is models of self-avoiding loops on a strip where loops get different weights depending on whether they touch the left, the right, both or no boundary. These…
We present a spontaneous collapse model of a field theory on a 1+1 null lattice, in which the causal structure of the lattice plays a central role. Issues such as ``locality,'' ``non-locality'' and superluminal signaling are addressed in…
My discussions with John Bell about reality in quantum mechanics are recollected. I would like to introduce the reader to Bell's vision of reality which was for him a natural position for a scientist. Bell had a strong aversion against…
This review article provides an overview of recent work in the modeling and analysis of recurrent events arising in engineering, reliability, public health, biomedicine and other areas. Recurrent event modeling possesses unique facets…
Power laws and distributions with heavy tails are common features of many experimentally studied complex systems, like the distribution of the sizes of earthquakes and solar flares, or the duration of neuronal avalanches in the brain.…
In the real world, the frequency of occurrence of objects is naturally skewed forming long-tail class distributions, which results in poor performance on the statistically rare classes. A promising solution is to mine tail-class examples to…
There is an increasing interest to understand the dependence structure of a random vector not only in the center of its distribution but also in the tails. Extreme-value theory tackles the problem of modelling the joint tail of a…
This paper concerns the absolute versus relative motion debate. The Barbour and Bertotti 1982 work may be viewed as an indirectly set up relational formulation of a portion of Newtonian mechanics. I consider further direct formulations of…
Contrary to its initial idea, Belnap's (1992) theory of Branching Space-Times (BST) has models in which histories do not resemble relativistic space-times or any other physical space-times. The aim of this paper is to define a certain class…
This is a non-standard paper, containing some problems in set theory I have in various degrees been interested in. Sometimes with a discussion on what I have to say; sometimes, of what makes them interesting to me, sometimes the problems…
What can be more fascinating than {\it experimental metaphysics}, to quote one of Abner Shimony's enlightening expressions? Bell inequalities are at the heart of the study of nonlocality. I present a list of open questions, organised in…
The classic "Bell's Theorem" of Clauser, Holt, Shimony and Horne tells us that we must give up at least one of: (1) objective reality (aka "hidden variables"); (2) locality; or (3) time-forwards macroscopic statistics (aka "causality"). The…
The subject of topological defects has become a very attractive field of study given its apparent relevance to as diverse systems as the early universe and condensed matter. As usually envisaged the topology of the manifold M of the minima…
One of interesting issues in two-dimensional superconformal field theories is the existence of anomalous modular transformation properties appearing in some non-compact superconformal models, corresponding to the `mock modularity' in…
Gravity theories with non-minimally coupled scalar fields are used as characteristic examples in order to demonstrate the challenges, pitfalls and future perspectives of considering alternatives to general relativity. These lecture notes…
For neural models to garner widespread public trust and ensure fairness, we must have human-intelligible explanations for their predictions. Recently, an increasing number of works focus on explaining the predictions of neural models in…
Many issues combine for consideration when speaking of Bell's Inequalities: nonlocality, realism, hidden variables, incompatible measures, wave function collapse, other. Each of these issues then may be viewed from several viewpoints:…