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teaching

Statistical Inference

Math 472

Textbook: An introduction to mathematical statistics and its applications (Larsen and Marx), 5th edition
Times: TuTh 9-10:15

Homework list

HW1: 3.8: 1, 2, 6 (Transforming and combining random variables); 3.10: 8, 12, 14 (Order statistics)
HW2: 4.6: 1, 4, 5 (Gamma distribution); 5.2: 2, 10, 14 (Method of maximum likelihood)
HW3: 5.3: 1, 13, 22 (Interval estimation); 5.4: 14, 16, 17
HW4: 5.5: 2, 3, 7; 5.6: 1, 5, 6
HW5: 5.7: 3, 4, 5; 5.8: 3, 5, 7
HW6: 6.2: 5, 7, 9; 6.3: 3, 4, 8
HW7: 6.4: 4, 6, 9; 6.5: 2, 4, 6
HW8: 7.3: 4, 6, 8; 7.4: 1, 3, 25
HW9: 9.2: 1, 5, 16
HW10: 10.2: 2, 4, 9; 10.3: 6, 8, 9
HW11: 11.2: 10, 22, 29; 11.3: 10, 18, 19
HW12: 11.4: 1, 5, 14; 12.2: 5, 6, 8

Each homework set is worth the same amount. The top 10 of 12 homeworks count 2% of the course each. The best out of two midterms counts 40%. The final counts 40%.

research

Semantic distance using search engines

Google Distance Between Words (with Alberto J. Evangelista).
Frontiers in Undergraduate Research, University of Connecticut, Spring 2006.
arXiv: 0901.4180 [cs.CL]
The normalized Google distance of Cilibrasi and Vitanyi was studied. An explicit example of the failure of the triangle inequality was found:
\[d(\text{Rolling Stones}, \text{salmonflies})>d(\text{Rolling Stones}, \text{Beatles})+d(\text{Beatles}, \text{salmonflies}).\]
(This is probably due to people misspelling “beetles”.)

Surprisingly (?) this paper was cited by:
Wu, Lin, and Liu: An exploratory study of navigating Wikipedia semantically: model and application (published in LNCS, Online Communities and Social Computing: 4th International Conference).

Worawitphinyo, Gao and Jabeen: Improving Suffix Tree Clustering with New Ranking and Similarity Measures (published in LNCS, Advanced Data Mining and Applications
7th International Conference, ADMA 2011, Beijing, China, December 17-19, 2011, Proceedings, Part II)

Lee Jun Choi,; Rashid, Nur’Aini Abdul;
Adapting normalized google similarity in protein sequence comparison (This paper appears in: Information Technology, 2008. ITSim 2008. International Symposium on)

Khushboo Thakkar et al. / International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering (IJCSE): Test Model for Text Categorization and
Text Summarization

http://efreedom.com/Question/9-19264/Determining-Similarity-Words

Kolmogorov Complexity in perspective Part II: Classification, InformationProcessing and Duality, by Marie Ferbus-Zanda (published in Synthese)

The language specialisation of the Google search
engine, by Volker Schatz

teaching

Fall 2011 Teaching

Math 244

HW1: 14.1: 2,4,15,19,23,25
HW2: 14.2: 3,12,15, 20,23,33, 52, 54,55,58
HW3: 14.3: 8,9,14,18 and
14.4:3,12,13,25,30,32,36
HW4: 14.5: 13, 16, 18, 22, 23, 24, 30, 40, 41, 43
HW5: 14.6: 2, 8, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20
HW6: 14.7: 4, 8, 12, 35, 45, 53, 56, 60, 62, 76 and
14.8: 4, 13, 15, 20, 21
HW7: 15.1: 2, 8, 18, 19, 28, 31
15.2: 2, 8, 13, 21, 26, 34, 39, 43, 45
HW8: 15.3: 7, 16, 18, 20, 25, 33, 34, 36
HW9: 15.4: 1, 3, 9, 20, 22, 30, 33, 37
HW10: 15.5: 1, 8, 12, 19, 22, 25, 28, 36, 41, 42
HW11: 15.6: 11, 13, 14, 18, 21, 24, 37, 38, 42
HW12: 15.7: 2, 4, 7, 22, 25 and
15.8: 2, 8, 9, 21, 23, 30

Each homework set is worth the same amount. The top 10 out of 12 homeworks count 1.5% of the course each for a total of 15% for homework. The two best out of three midterms count 20% each. The final counts 45%.

Math 244 Course calendar

Math 471

Midterm III

HW1: Chapter 1:
2,3,4,13,15,19,23,25,26,35,37,40,43,46
HW2: Chapter 1: 51, 56 and Chapter 2:
8,9,18,21,23,30,33,35,40,41,44,45,49,56,62,67,68,70,71,79,80,85
HW3: Chapter 3:
11,12,13,14,18,19,21,24,29,37,38,42,43,44,46,50,59,60,66
HW4: Chapter 5: 1,3,7,9,20,22,23
HW5: Chapter 5: 28, 33, 36, 39
HW6: Chapter 6: 2,6,8,11,12,19,21,25,28,30,31,39,42
Each homework set is worth the same amount. The top 5 homeworks count 2% of the course each. The two best out of three midterms count 25% each. The final counts 45%.

Math 471 Course calendar

teaching

2011-2013 Teaching

Here’s what I may be teaching in the next couple of years (if enrollment is high enough). Current teaching information is here.

n Fall n Spring n+1 Annual number of courses
2012
Stochastic Calculus (Shidler School of Business)
Set theory (454)
Mathematical logic (455)

Calculus (24X)
 		4
2011
Calculus IV (244)
Probability (471)
Statistical Inference (472)
Transition to Advanced Math (321)
4
computability, research

Computability menagerie

The Computability Menagerie houses animals of varying degrees of non-computability. The project started during my Marie Curie fellowship in Heidelberg, where I was working on a huge diagram of downward closed classes of Turing degrees, using JFig.

Mushfeq Khan and Joe Miller have written a web app version of the menagerie.

Related research on André Nies’ home page:
Logic Blog

Tamer (computable) creatures are on display at the Complexity Zoo.