Category Archives: exposition

a post aimed to teach something

The infinite lottery

Posted on 25/05/2018 by

Probability is a mathematical subject where the application of the results to the real world remains controversial, and different schools of thought flourish. Littlewood, in his Miscellany, discusses this, and comes firmly to the conclusion that probability theory can say … Continue reading →

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Scottish Combinatorics Meeting 2018

Posted on 29/04/2018 by

Last week saw the fourth annual Scottish Combinatorial Meeting in Edinburgh, in the Informatics Forum at the University of Edinburgh. The building was new to me, but easy enough to find, and having a terrace with a fine view of … Continue reading →

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Polynomially bounded orbit counts

Posted on 12/04/2018 by

The best news I had yesterday was an email from Justine Falque with a link to a paper that she and Nicolas Thiéry have just put on the arXiv. The 12-page document is only the “short version”, and a longer … Continue reading →

Posted in exposition, open problems | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Integrals of groups

Posted on 28/03/2018 by

Everyone who has studied mathematics knows what the derivative and integral of a function are. The derivative measures rate of change, the integral (the inverse operation) measures area under a curve. They are inverse operations; and two functions have the … Continue reading →

Posted in doing mathematics, exposition | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

A counting problem

Posted on 16/03/2018 by

I quite often get questions by email. Mostly I can’t answer them, but sometimes I can, and sometimes the answers might be of more general interest. Suppose that we have m boxes and a supply of identical balls. In how … Continue reading →

Posted in doing mathematics, exposition | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

A new kind of design?

Posted on 03/03/2018 by

Rosemary and I have just put on the arXiv a paper prompted by a question by Valery Fedorov. Suppose that we are testing a number v1 of drugs on a number v2 of cancer types. To simplify the protocol, at … Continue reading →

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Symmetry vs Regularity

Posted on 06/12/2017 by

This is the title of a conference to be held next year (2018) from 1 to 7 July, in Pilsen, Bohemia, Czech Republic. The subtitle is “The first 50 years since Weisfeiler-Leman stabilization”, and the webpage is here. If you … Continue reading →

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