Monthly Archives: January 2014

A response to FtYoU’s question on Reddit

FtYou writes

Hello everyone ! There is a concept I have a hard time getting my head wrap around. If you have a Vector Space V and a subspace W, I understand that you can find the least square vector approximation from any vector in V to a vector in W. And this correspond to the projection of V to the subspace W. Now , for data fitting … Let’s suppose you have a bunch of points (xi, yi) where you want to fit a set a regressors so you can approximate yi by a linear combination of the regressors lets say ( 1, x, x2 … ). What Vector space are we talking about ? If we consider the Vector space of function R -> R, in what subspace are we trying to map these vectors ?

I have a hard time merging these two concepts of projecting to a vector space and fitting the data. In the latter case what vector are we using ? The functions ? If so I understand the choice of regressors ( which constitute a basis for the vector space ) But what’s the role of the (xi,yi) ?

I want to point out that I understand completely how to build the matrices to get Y = AX and solving using least square approx. What I miss is the big picture. The linear algebra picture. Thanks for any help !

We’ll go over this by closely examining and understanding an example. Suppose we have the data points ${(x_i, y_i)}$

$\displaystyle \begin{cases} (x_1, y_1) = (-1,8) \\ (x_2, y_2) = (0,8) \\ (x_3, y_3) = (1,4) \\ (x_4, y_4) = (2,16) \end{cases},$

and we have decided to try to find the best fitting quadratic function. What do we mean by best-fitting? We mean that we want the one that approximates these data points the best. What exactly does that mean? We’ll see that before the end of this note – but in linear algebra terms, we are projecting on to some sort of vector space – we claim that projection is the ”best-fit” possible.

Friendly Introduction to Sieves with a Look Towards Progress on the Twin Primes Conjecture

This is an extension and background to a talk I gave on 9 October 2013 to the Brown Graduate Student Seminar, called `A friendly intro to sieves with a look towards recent progress on the twin primes conjecture.’ During the talk, I mention several sieves, some with a lot of detail and some with very little detail. I also discuss several results and built upon many sources. I’ll provide missing details and/or sources for additional reading here.

Furthermore, I like this talk, so I think it’s worth preserving.

1. Introduction

We talk about sieves and primes. Long, long ago, Euclid famously proved the infinitude of primes (${\approx 300}$ B.C.). Although he didn’t show it, the stronger statement that the sum of the reciprocals of the primes diverges is true:

$\displaystyle \sum_{p} \frac{1}{p} \rightarrow \infty,$

where the sum is over primes.

Proof: Suppose that the sum converged. Then there is some ${k}$ such that

$\displaystyle \sum_{i = k+1}^\infty \frac{1}{p_i} < \frac{1}{2}.$

Suppose that ${Q := \prod_{i = 1}^k p_i}$ is the product of the primes up to ${p_k}$. Then the integers ${1 + Qn}$ are relatively prime to the primes in ${Q}$, and so are only made up of the primes ${p_{k+1}, \ldots}$. This means that

$\displaystyle \sum_{n = 1}^\infty \frac{1}{1+Qn} \leq \sum_{t \geq 0} \left( \sum_{i > k} \frac{1}{p_i} \right) ^t < 2,$

where the first inequality is true since all the terms on the left appear in the middle (think prime factorizations and the distributive law), and the second inequality is true because it’s bounded by the geometric series with ratio ${1/2}$. But by either the ratio test or by limit comparison, the sum on the left diverges (aha! Something for my math 100 students), and so we arrive at a contradiction.

Thus the sum of the reciprocals of the primes diverges. $\diamondsuit$