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Mike Spivey's user avatar
Mike Spivey's user avatar
Mike Spivey's user avatar
Mike Spivey
  • Member for 14 years, 2 months
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About
I am a mathematics professor at the University of Puget Sound. My background is operations research, and I tend to like problems at the intersection of combinatorics, probability, and optimization.
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Top posts
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question
38
When does symmetry in an optimization problem imply that all variables are equal at optimality?
Mar 17, 2011
answer
35
What recent discoveries have amateur mathematicians made?
Nov 20, 2010
answer
28
Identifying poisoned wines
Jun 8, 2011
answer
21
Does War have infinite expected length?
Oct 1, 2010
answer
21
More open problems
Dec 4, 2010
question
18
Partitioning the integers $1$ through $n$ so that the product of the elements in one set is equal to the sum of the elements in the other
Feb 14, 2011
question
14
Combinatorial proof for the number of lattice paths that return to the axis only at times that are a multiple of 4
Jan 28, 2012
answer
14
What is the expected maximum out of a sample (size N) from a geometric distribution?
Oct 9, 2010
answer
12
Can assignment solve stable marriage?
Nov 14, 2010
answer
11
What topics should be included in a calculus-for-the-liberal arts course?
Nov 10, 2010
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194
Why is $1^{\infty}$ considered to be an indeterminate form
153
Intuition behind using complementary CDF to compute expectation for nonnegative random variables
144
Proving an alternating Euler sum: $\sum_{k=1}^{\infty} \frac{(-1)^{k+1} H_k}{k} = \frac{1}{2} \zeta(2) - \frac{1}{2} \log^2 2$
127
Nice proofs of $\zeta(4) = \frac{\pi^4}{90}$?
118
Probability density function vs. probability mass function