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What are alternative mathematical definitions of observers beyond Bennett and Hoffman's framework?

Motivation: This question is inspired by a talk from Avi Wigderson given on Randomness, where the idea that the randomness is in the eye of the observer is suggested. In the study of information ...
mathoverflowUser's user avatar
7 votes
0 answers
222 views

Projected polar chessboard measure convergence in total variation?

$\newcommand\R{\mathbb R}\newcommand\C{\mathbb C}\newcommand\ga{\gamma}$For natural $n$, let $E_n$ be the set of all points in $\R^2$ with "polar coordinates" $(r,t)$ in the set $$F_n:=\...
Iosif Pinelis's user avatar
32 votes
3 answers
12k views

What is the Katz-Sarnak philosophy?

It has been recently mentioned by a speaker (his talk is completely not relevant to random matrix theory/RMT though) that modern statistics, especially random matrices theory, will help solving some ...
Henry.L's user avatar
  • 8,071
17 votes
13 answers
6k views

Probability in number theory

I am hearing that there are some great applications of probability theory (or more general measure theory) to number theory. Could anyone recommend some good book(s) on that (or other types of ...
7 votes
1 answer
465 views

A theorem by Harald Cramér?

In the paper “On the order of magnitude of the difference between consecutive prime numbers” by Harald Cramér there is the following statement: Suppose $\{X_n\}_{n=2}^\infty$ is a sequence of ...
Chain Markov's user avatar
  • 2,618
3 votes
3 answers
330 views

Reference request: probability that d numbers are coprime

The following theorem can be found in Hardy-Wright (Theorem 459), except that they state it only for $d=2$. Do you know of a reference where the proof of this general statement is written? Theorem: ...
user56097's user avatar
  • 402
8 votes
2 answers
512 views

The average of reciprocal binomials

This question is motivated by the MO problem here. Perhaps it is not that difficult. Question. Here is an cute formula. $$\frac1n\sum_{k=0}^{n-1}\frac1{\binom{n-1}k}=\sum_{k=1}^n\frac1{k2^{n-k}}...
T. Amdeberhan's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
411 views

When are "normal" functions normal?

I expected that the fractional part of f(n), n being an integer, would be distributed uniformly over [0,1] (for positive functions - otherwise take [-1,1]) for any run-of-the-mill function, except ...
Hauke Reddmann's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
537 views

Famous results about the value of a given limit assuming it exists

Chebyshev got famous showing that if the limit $l:=\lim_{x\to\infty}\frac{\pi(x)}{x/\log x}$ exists, then necessarily $l=1$, constituting a major breakthrough towards a proof of the famous prime ...
Sylvain JULIEN's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
1k views

What is a random number? (poll experiment) [closed]

Imagine the following experiment: you wait say at a subway exit, and ask everyone passing "please tell me a number" (positive integer, of course). You do this day after day, until you reach say 1M ...
Richard's user avatar
  • 1,363
6 votes
3 answers
938 views

Uniformly distributed sequence in $\mathbb{R}$

We say that a sequence $(x_n)_{n=1}^\infty \subseteq \mathbb{R}$ is "uniformly distributed in $[a,b]$", with $a < b$, if $(x_n)_{n=1}^\infty \cap [a,b] \neq \varnothing$ and $$\lim_{N \to \infty} \...
Fry's user avatar
  • 61
11 votes
0 answers
282 views

Reference request: a combinatoric result [closed]

When I tried to construct a counterexample in my research, I encountered the following result, which should be true. Let $m=m(n)$ be a function that grows faster than $\sqrt n$, so $m(n) = \omega(\...
Zhu Cao's user avatar
  • 211