Uncategorized
Spurious Correlation: Patterns in Noise
Search enough data and you will find relationships that mean nothing.
Stories by Mahendra
Uncategorized
The Law of Large Numbers
Toss a fair coin a few times and the results are erratic; toss it many times and the fraction of heads settles near one half.
Uncategorized
Randomness Versus Determinism
Is the world's apparent chance real, or merely hidden order we cannot trace? The question divides deterministic systems that only look random from processes that may be random at the root.
Uncategorized
The Limits of Formal Systems
We build systems of axioms and rules hoping to capture a domain completely and mechanically.
Uncategorized
Information and the Black Hole Paradox
Throw something into a black hole and it seems to vanish, and when the hole slowly evaporates, its information appears lost forever.
Uncategorized
Superposition: Being in Many States at Once
A quantum system need not be in one state or another but can be in a blend of both, in a way that has no classical picture.
Uncategorized
The Measurement Problem
Between measurements, a quantum system evolves smoothly through many possibilities at once.
Uncategorized
Maxwell’s Demon: Information and the Second Law
Imagine a tiny being that sorts fast molecules from slow, seeming to create order for free and defy the second law.
Uncategorized
Least Action: Nature’s Economy
Of all the paths a system might take between two moments, it follows the one that makes a certain quantity least.
Uncategorized
Small-World Networks
In a huge web of connections, any two nodes may be surprisingly close.