Baron Augustin-Louis Cauchy was a French mathematician, engineer, and physicist who made pioneering contributions to several branches of mathematics, including mathematical analysis and continuum mechanics. He was one of the first to state and rigorously prove theorems of calculus, rejecting the heuristic principle of the generality of algebra of earlier authors. He (nearly) single-handedly founded complex analysis and the study of permutation groups in abstract algebra.
Brownian motion is the random motion of particles suspended in a medium.
In probability theory, the expected value is a generalization of the weighted average. Informally, the expected value is the arithmetic mean of a large number of independently selected outcomes of a random variable. Since it is obtained through arithmetic, the expected value sometimes may not even be included in the sample data set; it is not the value you would "expect" to get in reality.
A finite difference is a mathematical expression of the form f (x + b) − f (x + a). If a finite difference is divided by b − a, one gets a difference quotient. The approximation of derivatives by finite differences plays a central role in finite difference methods for the numerical solution of differential equations, especially boundary value problems.
In combinatorial mathematics, a derangement is a permutation of the elements of a set in which no element appears in its original position. In other words, a derangement is a permutation that has no fixed points.
In vector calculus, Green's theorem relates a line integral around a simple closed curve C to a double integral over the plane region D bounded by C. It is the two-dimensional special case of Stokes' theorem.
In calculus, Leibniz's notation, named in honor of the 17th-century German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, uses the symbols dx and dy to represent infinitely small increments of x and y, respectively, just as Δx and Δy represent finite increments of x and y, respectively.
The St. Petersburg paradox or St. Petersburg lottery is a paradox involving the game of flipping a coin where the expected payoff of the theoretical lottery game approaches infinity but nevertheless seems to be worth only a very small amount to the participants. The St. Petersburg paradox is a situation where a naïve decision criterion that takes only the expected value into account predicts a course of action that presumably no actual person would be willing to take. Several resolutions to the paradox have been proposed.
Charles-Jean Étienne Gustave Nicolas, baron de la Vallée Poussin was a Belgian mathematician. He is best known for proving the prime number theorem.
In mathematics, the Gauss–Kuzmin distribution is a discrete probability distribution that arises as the limit probability distribution of the coefficients in the continued fraction expansion of a random variable uniformly distributed in (0, 1). The distribution is named after Carl Friedrich Gauss, who derived it around 1800, and Rodion Kuzmin, who gave a bound on the rate of convergence in 1929. It is given by the probability mass function
Ars Conjectandi is a book on combinatorics and mathematical probability written by Jacob Bernoulli and published in 1713, eight years after his death, by his nephew, Niklaus Bernoulli. The seminal work consolidated, apart from many combinatorial topics, many central ideas in probability theory, such as the very first version of the law of large numbers: indeed, it is widely regarded as the founding work of that subject. It also addressed problems that today are classified in the twelvefold way and added to the subjects; consequently, it has been dubbed an important historical landmark in not only probability but all combinatorics by a plethora of mathematical historians. The importance of this early work had a large impact on both contemporary and later mathematicians; for example, Abraham de Moivre.
Pascal's law is a principle in fluid mechanics given by Blaise Pascal that states that a pressure change at any point in a confined incompressible fluid is transmitted throughout the fluid such that the same change occurs everywhere. The law was established by French mathematician Blaise Pascal in 1653 and published in 1663.
In calculus, the differential represents the principal part of the change in a function with respect to changes in the independent variable. The differential is defined by
Rodion Osievich Kuzmin was a Soviet mathematician, known for his works in number theory and analysis. His name is sometimes transliterated as Kusmin. He was an Invited Speaker of the ICM in 1928 in Bologna.
Essay d'analyse sur les jeux de hazard is a book on combinatorics and mathematical probability written by Pierre Remond de Montmort and published in 1708. The work applied ideas from combinatorics and probability to analyse various games of chances popular during the time. This book was mainly influenced by Christiaan Huygens' treatise De ratiociniis in ludo aleae and the knowledge of the fact that Jakob Bernoulli had written an unfinished work in probability. The work was intended to re-create the yet unpublished work of Jakob Bernoulli called Ars Conjectandi. The work greatly influenced the thinking of Montmort's contemporary, Abraham De Moivre.
In probability and game theory, the Waldegrave problem refers to a problem first described in the second edition of Pierre Raymond de Montmort`s Essay d'analyse sur les jeux de hazard. This problem is remarkable in that it is the first appearance to a mixed strategy solution in game theory. Montmort originally called Waldegrave's Problem the Problème de la Poulle or the Problem of the Pool. He provides a minimax mixed strategy solution to a two-person version of the card game le Her. It was Isaac Todhunter who called it Waldegrave's Problem.
A mathematical constant is a key number whose value is fixed by an unambiguous definition, often referred to by a special symbol, or by mathematicians' names to facilitate using it across multiple mathematical problems. Constants arise in many areas of mathematics, with constants such as e and π occurring in such diverse contexts as geometry, number theory, statistics, and calculus.
Nicolas Guisnée was a French mathematician.
This is a glossary for the terminology applied in the mathematical theories of Lie groups and Lie algebras. For the topics in the representation theory of Lie groups and Lie algebras, see Glossary of representation theory. Because of the lack of other options, the glossary also includes some generalizations such as quantum group.
