Live data from Hacker News

Elegant six-page proof reveals the emergence of random structure

quantamagazine.org

141–150 of 178 posts

Re: Elegant six-page proof reveals the emergence of random structure

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the definition in the article, “a chain of edges that passes through every vertex exactly once”, is incorrect?

No, that's the correct definition of a Hamiltonian cycle. However, the article isn't as clear as it could be about what the "increasingness" aspect applies to. > It’s possible to think about any property, so long as it is “increasing” — that is, if adding more edges to a graph that already contains the property will not destroy the property. The "property" here isn't the Hamiltonian cycle itself, it's the property "a…

Ah, I get it now. Thanks.

Re: Elegant six-page proof reveals the emergence of random structure

#142
post #42

> 2 (of a scientific theory or solution to a problem) pleasingly ingenious and simple: the grand unified theory is compact and elegant in mathematical terms. A 6 page proof described as "elegant" must be incredibly dense.

You might be interested in this 1 page paper by John Nash, which proves the existence of equilibria for finite N-player games (an extremely powerful result). In essence it uses a set theory result (Kakutani's fixed point theorem), and simply notes that his description of a N-player game meets the required conditions for that result to hold. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/chwe/austen/nash1...

Re: Elegant six-page proof reveals the emergence of random structure

#143
post #86
post #74

A nice 'visual' illustration of the threshold is found in Percolation theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percolation_theory where if you have an infinite grid of square rooms with either a wall or a door between each pair of rooms, that there is shift about what is connected when the percentage of door gets just over 50% as is visualized in this animation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percolation_theory#/media/Fil…

And, to give an example we've probably all become familiar with, this this is equivalent to how a disease becomes an epidemic as the R value crosses 1.

When you say R, are you referring to R_0? Because R_0 is not a mathematical predictor of percolation.

Re: Elegant six-page proof reveals the emergence of random structure

#144
post #112
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, to give an example we've probably all become familiar with, this this is equivalent to how a disease becomes an epidemic as the R value crosses 1.

That seems more like a truism: If on average one case leads to more than one other (R > 1), the number of cases will grow. The R number therefore appears to be nothing more than a measure of growth or decline. What am I missing?

R is not a measure of anything (i.e. real world data), it's more of a prediction based on a mathematical modeling procedure. It's not constant for a pathogen like Sars-CoV2, as it depends also on other conditions (environmental factors like temp/humidity, and social factors (norms like handshaking, etc.).

The models used to generate R-numbers have some assumptions which may or may not be valid: (1) rectangular and stationary age distribution, and (2) homogeneous mixing of the population. Thus, the result is a fairly rough estimate.

A major use is in getting a decent estimate of what percentage of a population needs to be vaccinated in order to halt the spread of a viral infection. However, this supposes 'sterilizing vaccination', i.e. vaccinated individuals are not asymptomatic carriers and spreaders of the infection. While this was the case for the smallpox vaccine, it doesn't seem to be the case with all known Covid19 vaccines, where there are many breakthrough cases (even though symptoms are reduced and hospitalization is minimal).

Re: Elegant six-page proof reveals the emergence of random structure

#145
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the "fluff" in this case is outstanding. The paper itself doesn't provide much context, but the Quanta piece does a great job at explaining why the result is important.

It does an okay job, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions, or assumed knowledge for a lay person: > Mathematicians want to know when such a graph is likely to have some sort of interesting structure. Why? > a Hamiltonian cycle, a chain of edges that passes through every vertex exactly once > adding more edges to a graph that already contains the property will not destroy the property. Adding one edge aft…

> Adding one edge after the exact number of edges required to create a Hamiltonian cycle (number of edges equal to number of vertices) would appear to break the property.

A Hamiltonian cycle is a simple cycle (no repeated vertices or edges) that contains every vertex of the graph. If a graph G has a Hamiltonian cycle, then adding more edges to G will not make that cycle go away; it will still be there. So the property of "has a Hamiltonian cycle" is not broken by adding more edges.

As a simple example: consider the graph which is the cycle on 5 vertices. That is, the graph has 5 vertices, and is just one big cycle with 5 edges. This graph has a Hamiltonian cycle (the entire graph itself is one such cycle). If we add an extra edge to this graph, say between vertices 1 and 3, the original Hamiltonian cycle does not go away.

> How can there be a lower bound other than zero? However small the possibility, surely given an infinite number of cases, there are infinite possibilities of a particular structure being created.

The lower bound can be other than zero because they are looking at the threshold (probability) at which the probability of the object existing goes from "very low" to "extremely high". This is alluded to in the following quote:

  "When edges are added to a random graph of N vertices with a probability of less than log(N)/N, for instance, the graph is unlikely to contain a Hamiltonian cycle. But when that probability is adjusted to be just a hair greater than log(N)/N, a Hamiltonian cycle becomes extremely likely."
I don't know the precise probabilities, but this would be something like: "When the probability of an edge being present is less than log(N)/N then the probability of there being a Hamiltonian cycle is 1/(N^2). When the probability of an edge being present is slightly more than log(N)/N then the probability of there being a Hamiltonian cycle becomes (1 - 1/(N^2))."

(Note that I plucked the above probabilities out of thin air just for the sake of illustration, just to give you an idea of the form that these statements take. For the precise probabilities, please ask Google.)

> What does this mean?

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunflower_(mathematics)

> This seems to suggest multiple Hamiltonian cycles in a graph, contradicting the earlier definition that every vertex must be connected.

This is no contradiction. There can be multiple Hamiltonian cycles in a graph. Consider the complete graph on n vertices; there are roughly n-factorial-many Hamiltonian cycles. Any permutation of the vertices corresponds to one such cycle. Different permutations can correspond to the same cycle, so the number is not exactly n-factorial. But you get the idea.

Re: Elegant six-page proof reveals the emergence of random structure

#146
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a fine idea, but ignores the importance of typesetting and design for print. I’m sure plenty of people would want something like this regardless, but the product would usually look much less polished than people expect to see in printed and bound materials and that would reflect on the authors/editors. Authors and editors who take pride in the presentation of their work might be a hard sell.

Sounds like a job for a design & typesetting DALL-E AI. BTW, Kindle is pretty successful, and pretty much all books use a standard design template, so the great importance of typesetting & design is questionable.

"Pretty successful" is a poor proxy for "satisfies condition X." Kindle is known to be bad for anything where the spatial layout matters.

Re: Elegant six-page proof reveals the emergence of random structure

#147
post #101

Ok, please ELI5 this for me, The very statement that anything at all is random is completley absurd to me, especially from an academic context. Are they using a definition of random that is equivalent to "nearly impossible to predict"? , I mean, yes, from the perspective of a limited observer random things can exist, but in an absolute sense, for something to be random then even with the knowledge of all things past…

Lemme go through details, not because anyone doesn't know the details, but to get them written down and discussable. "Random" means I draw up a list of all possible outcomes. The probability of an event is defined as the fraction of outcomes in which that event is true. Example. Choose two numbers "randomly" between 1 and 3. What's the probability that the two numbers are equal? The list of outcomes is: (1,1),(1,2),(…

Thank you, my original comment was for ELI5, I was asking because I didn't know and clarifying like this helps.

Wouldn't it be more correct to say arbitrary instead of random?

Re: Elegant six-page proof reveals the emergence of random structure

#148

Jinyoung Park's Path to Math video on IAS is a really wonderful 3 minute story of how she came to study threshold behavior in random discrete structures, just like this work. Highly recommended. https://www.ias.edu/ideas/paths-math-jinyoung-park

The video doesn't say (maybe because the answer is 0, but important if not) how much math Park did between the basic college math for the BS Math Education degree, and starting PhD at age ~30.

Did she study advanced math in college, or as a hobby during the pre-PhD years, or did she spend 10 years studying K-12 math very thoroughly while teaching, and then start going deeper?

Re: Elegant six-page proof reveals the emergence of random structure

#150
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The effect you're seeing on the coin flip is best understood by seeing that each coin flip is independent, and in no way connected to the past. So, the odds are based on a fair 50/50 per flip, which leaves you with a simple 2^n sample space of one of each binary combination for n flips. The math for that works out easily, and can be plotted. The emergence of random structure in graphs, however, is different. The chan…

Eh, the coins weren't important, that's just an easy thing for me to visualize. If one graphs that emergence -if one graphs the number of nodes in a graph against the chance of finding some structure in a graph of that size - I had imagined one would see a smooth curve like one half of a binomial distribution curve. It sounds like you're saying the graph would look discontinuous?

It's as continuous a want discrete function can be, but yes it has a region of explosive growth, sort of like a sigmoid.

Think of all the Jenga games. What is the probability of the tower collapsing on turn T (or T/H, for a tower of size H), graphed as a function of T (or T/H)?

Post reply on HN