arXiv subjects

Steven J. Miller

Publications and source records attributed to Steven J. Miller.

At least 145 records · Page 8Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Extensions of Autocorrelation Inequalities with Applications to Additive Combinatorics

In a 2019 paper, Barnard and Steinerberger show that for $f\in L^1(\mathbf{R})$, the following autocorrelation inequality holds: \begin{equation*} \min_{0 \leq t \leq 1} \int_\mathbf{R} f(x) f(x+t)\ \mathrm{d}x \ \leq\ 0.411 ||f||_{L^1}^2, \end{equation*} where the constant $0.411$ cannot be replaced by $0.37$. In addition to being interesting and important in their own right, inequalities such as these have applications in additive combinatorics where some problems, such as those of minimal difference basis, can be encapsulated by a convolution inequality similar to the above integral. Barnard and Steinerberger suggest that future research may focus on the existence of functions extremizing the above inequality (which is itself related to Brascamp-Lieb type inequalities). We show that for $f$ to be extremal under the above, we must have \begin{equation*} \max_{x_1 \in \mathbf{R} }\min_{0 \leq t \leq 1} \left[ f(x_1-t)+f(x_1+t) \right] \ \leq\ \min_{x_2 \in \mathbf{R} } \max_{0 \leq t \leq 1} \left[ f(x_2-t)+f(x_2+t) \right] . \end{equation*} Our central technique for deriving this result is local perturbation of $f$ to increase the value of the autocorrelation, while leaving $||f||_{L^1}$ unchanged. These perturbation methods can be extended to examine a more general notion of autocorrelation. Let $d,n \in \mathbb{Z}^+$, $f \in L^1$, $A$ be a $d \times n$ matrix with real entries and columns $a_i$ for $1 \leq i \leq n$, and $C$ be a constant. For a broad class of matrices $A$, we prove necessary conditions for $f$ to extremize autocorrelation inequalities of the form \begin{equation*} \min_{ \mathbf{t} \in [0,1]^d } \int_{\mathbf{R}} \prod_{i=1}^n\ f(x+ \mathbf{t} \cdot a_i)\ \mathrm{d}x\ \leq\ C ||f||_{L^1}^n. \end{equation*}

math.FA↗

arXiv2019

Recurrence Relations and Benford's Law

There are now many theoretical explanations for why Benford's law of digit bias surfaces in so many diverse fields and data sets. After briefly reviewing some of these, we discuss in depth recurrence relations. As these are discrete analogues of differential equations and model a variety of real world phenomena, they provide an important source of systems to test for Benfordness. Previous work showed that fixed depth recurrences with constant coefficients are Benford modulo some technical assumptions which are usually met; we briefly review that theory and then prove some new results extending to the case of linear recurrence relations with non-constant coefficients. We prove that, for certain families of functions $f$ and $g$, a sequence generated by a recurrence relation of the form $a_{n+1} = f(n)a_n + g(n)a_{n-1}$ is Benford for all initial values. The proof proceeds by parameterizing the coefficients to obtain a recurrence relation of lower degree, and then converting to a new parameter space. From there we show that for suitable choices of $f$ and $g$ where $f(n)$ is nondecreasing and $g(n)/f(n)^2 \to 0$ as $n \to \infty$, the main term dominates and the behavior is equivalent to equidistribution problems previously studied. We also describe the results of generalizing further to higher-degree recurrence relations and multiplicative recurrence relations with non-constant coefficients, as well as the important case when $f$ and $g$ are values of random variables.

math.PR↗

arXiv2019

Crescent configurations in normed spaces

We study the problem of crescent configurations, posed by Erdős in 1989. A crescent configuration is a set of $n$ points in the plane such that: 1) no three points lie on a common line, 2) no four points lie on a common circle, 3) for each $1 \leq i \leq n - 1$, there exists a distance which occurs exactly $i$ times. Constructions of sizes $n \leq 8$ have been provided by Liu, Palásti, and Pomerance. Erdős conjectured that there exists some $N$ for which there do not exist crescent configurations of size $n$ for all $n \geq N$. We extend the problem of crescent configurations to general normed spaces $(\mathbb{R}^2, \| \cdot \|)$ by studying strong crescent configurations in $\| \cdot \|$. In an arbitrary norm $\|\cdot \|$, we construct a strong crescent configuration of size 4. We also construct larger strong crescent configurations in the Euclidean, taxicab, and Chebyshev norms, of sizes $n \leq 6$, $n \leq 8$, and $n \leq 8$ respectively. When defining strong crescent configurations, we introduce the notion of line-like configurations in $\|\cdot \|$. A line-like configuration in $\|\cdot \|$ is a set of points whose distance graph is isomorphic to the distance graph of equally spaced points on a line. In a broad class of norms, we construct line-like configurations of arbitrary size. Our main result is a crescent-type result about line-like configurations in the Chebyshev norm. A line-like crescent configuration is a line-like configuration for which no three points lie on a common line and no four points lie on a common $\|\cdot \|$ circle. We prove that for $n \geq 7$, every line-like crescent configuration of size $n$ in the Chebyshev norm must have a rigid structure. Specifically, it must be a perpendicular perturbation of equally spaced points on a horizontal or vertical line.

math.CO↗

arXiv2019

Infinite Families of Partitions into MSTD Subsets

A set $A$ is MSTD (more-sum-than-difference) if $|A+A|>|A-A|$. Though MSTD sets are rare, Martin and O'Bryant proved that there exists a positive constant lower bound for the proportion of MSTD subsets of $\{1,2,\ldots ,r\}$ as $r\rightarrow\infty$. Later, Asada et al. showed that there exists a positive constant lower bound for the proportion of decompositions of $\{1,2,\ldots,r\}$ into two MSTD subsets as $r\rightarrow\infty$. However, the method is probabilistic and does not give explicit decompositions. Continuing this work, we provide an efficient method to partition $\{1,2,\ldots,r\}$ (for $r$ sufficiently large) into $k \ge 2$ MSTD subsets, positively answering a question raised by Asada et al. as to whether this is possible for all such $k$. Next, let $R(k)$ be the smallest integer such that for all $r\ge R(k)$, $\{1,2,\ldots,r\}$ can be $k$-decomposed into MSTD subsets. We establish rough lower and upper bounds for $R(k)$. Lastly, we provide a sufficient condition on when there exists a positive constant lower bound for the proportion of decompositions of $\{1,2,\ldots,r\}$ into $k$ MSTD subsets as $r\rightarrow \infty$.

math.NT↗

arXiv2019

On Near Perfect Numbers

The study of perfect numbers (numbers which equal the sum of their proper divisors) goes back to antiquity, and is responsible for some of the oldest and most popular conjectures in number theory. We investigate a generalization introduced by Pollack and Shevelev: $k$-near-perfect numbers. These are examples to the well-known pseudoperfect numbers first defined by Sierpiński, and are numbers such that the sum of all but at most $k$ of its proper divisors equals the number. We establish their asymptotic order for all integers $k\ge 4$, as well as some properties of related quantities.

math.NT↗

arXiv2019

Gaps of Summands of the Zeckendorf Lattice

A beautiful theorem of Zeckendorf states that every positive integer has a unique decomposition as a sum of non-adjacent Fibonacci numbers. Such decompositions exist more generally, and much is known about them. First, for any positive linear recurrence {Gn} the number of summands in the legal decompositions for integers in [Gn, Gn+1) converges to a Gaussian distribution. Second, Bower, Insoft, Li, Miller, and Tosteson proved that the probability of a gap between summands in a decomposition which is larger than the recurrence length converges to geometric decay. While most of the literature involves one-dimensional sequences, some recent work by Chen, Guo, Jiang, Miller, Siktar, and Yu have extended these decompositions to d-dimensional lattices, where a legal decomposition is a chain of points such that one moves in all d dimensions to get from one point to the next. They proved that some but not all properties from 1-dimensional sequences still hold. We continue this work and look at the distribution of gaps between terms of legal decompositions, and prove similar to the 1-dimensional cases that when d = 2 the gap vectors converge to a bivariate geometric random variable.

math.NT↗

arXiv2019

The Fibonacci Quilt Game

Zeckendorf proved that every positive integer can be expressed as the sum of non-consecutive Fibonacci numbers. This theorem inspired a beautiful game, the Zeckendorf Game. Two players begin with $n \ 1$'s and take turns applying rules inspired by the Fibonacci recurrence, $F_{n+1} = F_n + F_{n-1}$, until a decomposition without consecutive terms is reached; whoever makes the last move wins. We look at a game resulting from a generalization of the Fibonacci numbers, the Fibonacci Quilt sequence. These arise from the two-dimensional geometric property of tiling the plane through the Fibonacci spiral. Beginning with 1 in the center, we place integers in the squares of the spiral such that each square contains the smallest positive integer that does not have a decomposition as the sum of previous terms that do not share a wall. This sequence eventually follows two recurrence relations, allowing us to construct a variation on the Zeckendorf Game, the Fibonacci Quilt Game. While some properties of the Fibonaccis are inherited by this sequence, the nature of its recurrence leads to others, such as Zeckendorf's theorem, no longer holding; it is thus of interest to investigate the generalization of the game in this setting to see which behaviors persist. We prove, similar to the original game, that this game also always terminates in a legal decomposition, give a lower bound on game lengths, show that depending on strategies the length of the game can vary and either player could win, and give a conjecture on the length of a random game.

math.NT↗

arXiv2019

Categorical Co-Frequency Analysis: Clustering Diagnosis Codes to Predict Hospital Readmissions

Accurately predicting patients' risk of 30-day hospital readmission would enable hospitals to efficiently allocate resource-intensive interventions. We develop a new method, Categorical Co-Frequency Analysis (CoFA), for clustering diagnosis codes from the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) according to the similarity in relationships between covariates and readmission risk. CoFA measures the similarity between diagnoses by the frequency with which two diagnoses are split in the same direction versus split apart in random forests to predict readmission risk. Applying CoFA to de-identified data from Berkshire Medical Center, we identified three groups of diagnoses that vary in readmission risk. To evaluate CoFA, we compared readmission risk models using ICD majors and CoFA groups to a baseline model without diagnosis variables. We found substituting ICD majors for the CoFA-identified clusters simplified the model without compromising the accuracy of predictions. Fitting separate models for each ICD major and CoFA group did not improve predictions, suggesting that readmission risk may be more homogeneous that heterogeneous across diagnosis groups.

stat.AP↗

arXiv2019

Generalizations of a Curious Family of MSTD Sets Hidden By Interior Blocks

A set $A$ is MSTD (more-sum-than-difference) or sum-dominant if $|A+A|>|A-A|$, and is RSD (restricted-sum dominant) if $|A\hat{+}A|>|A-A|$, where $A\hat{+}A$ is the set of sums of distinct elements in $A$. We study an interesting family of MSTD sets that have appeared many times in the literature (see the works of Hegarty, Martin and O'Bryant, and Penman and Wells). While these sets seem at first glance to be ad hoc, looking at them in the right way reveals a nice common structure. In particular, instead of viewing them as explicitly written sets, we write them in terms of differences between two consecutive numbers in increasing order. We denote this family by $\mathcal{F}$ and investigate many of its properties. Using $\mathcal{F}$, we are able to generate many sets $A$ with high value of $\log|A+A|/\log|A-A|$, construct sets $A$ with a fixed $|A+A|-|A-A|$ more economically than previous authors, and improve the lower bound on the proportion of RSD subsets of $\{0,1,2,\dots,n-1\}$ to about $10^{-25}$ (the previous best bound was $10^{-37}$). Lastly, by exhaustive computer search, we find six RSD sets with cardinality $15$, which is one lower than the smallest cardinality found to date, and find that $30$ is the smallest diameter of RSD sets.

math.NT↗

arXiv2019

Distribution of Eigenvalues of Random Real Symmetric Block Matrices

Random Matrix Theory (RMT) has successfully modeled diverse systems, from energy levels of heavy nuclei to zeros of $L$-functions. Many statistics in one can be interpreted in terms of quantities of the other; for example, zeros of $L$-functions correspond to eigenvalues of matrices, and values of $L$-functions to values of the characteristic polynomials. This correspondence has allowed RMT to successfully predict many number theory behaviors; however, there are some operations which to date have no RMT analogue. The motivation of this paper is to try and find an RMT equivalent to Rankin-Selberg convolution, which builds a new $L$-functions from an input pair. For definiteness we concentrate on two specific families, the ensemble of palindromic real symmetric Toeplitz (PST) matrices and the ensemble of real symmetric (RS) matrices, whose limiting spectral measures are the Gaussian and semicircle distributions, respectively; these were chosen as they are the two extreme cases in terms of moment calculations. For a PST matrix $A$ and a RS matrix $B$, we construct an ensemble of random real symmetric block matrices whose first row is $\lbrace A, B \rbrace$ and whose second row is $\lbrace B, A \rbrace$. By Markov's Method of Moments, we show this ensemble converges weakly and almost surely to a new, universal distribution with a hybrid of Gaussian and semicircle behaviors. We extend this construction by considering an iterated concatenation of matrices from an arbitrary pair of random real symmetric sub-ensembles with different limiting spectral measures. We prove that finite iterations converge to new, universal distributions with hybrid behavior, and that infinite iterations converge to the limiting spectral measures of the component matrices.

math.PR↗

arXiv2019

Rank and Bias in Families of Hyperelliptic Curves via Nagao's Conjecture

Let $\mathcal{X} : y^2 = f(x)$ be a hyperelliptic curve over $\mathbb{Q}(T)$ of genus $g\geq 1$. Assume that the jacobian of $\mathcal{X}$ over $\mathbb{Q}(T)$ has no subvariety defined over $\mathbb{Q}$. Denote by $\mathcal{X}_t$ the specialization of $\mathcal{X}$ to an integer $T=t$, let $a_{\mathcal{X}_t}(p)$ be its trace of Frobenius, and $A_{\mathcal{X},r}(p) = \frac{1}{p}\sum_{t=1}^p a_{\mathcal{X}_t}(p)^r$ its $r$-th moment. The first moment is related to the rank of the jacobian $J_\mathcal{X}\left(\mathbb{Q}(T)\right)$ by a generalization of a conjecture of Nagao: $$\lim_{X \to \infty} \frac{1}{X} \sum_{p \leq X} - A_{\mathcal{X},1}(p) \log p = \operatorname{rank} J_\mathcal{X}(\mathbb{Q}(T)).$$ Generalizing a result of S. Arms, Á. Lozano-Robledo, and S.J. Miller, we compute first moments for various families resulting in infinitely many hyperelliptic curves over $\mathbb{Q}(T)$ having jacobian of moderately large rank $4g+2$, where $g$ is the genus; by Silverman's specialization theorem, this yields hyperelliptic curves over $\mathbb{Q}$ with large rank jacobian. Note that Shioda has the best record in this directon: he constructed hyperelliptic curves of genus $g$ with jacobian of rank $4g+7$. In the case when $\mathcal{X}$ is an elliptic curve, Michel proved $p\cdot A_{\mathcal{X},2} = p^2 + O\left(p^{3/2}\right)$. For the families studied, we observe the same second moment expansion. Furthermore, we observe the largest lower order term that does not average to zero is on average negative, a bias first noted by S.J. Miller in the elliptic curve case. We prove this bias for a number of families of hyperelliptic curves.

math.NT↗

arXiv2019

Classification of crescent configurations

Let $n$ points be in crescent configurations in $\mathbb{R}^d$ if they lie in general position in $\mathbb{R}^d$ and determine $n-1$ distinct distances, such that for every $1 \leq i \leq n-1$ there is a distance that occurs exactly $i$ times. Since Erdős' conjecture in 1989 on the existence of $N$ sufficiently large such that no crescent configurations exist on $N$ or more points, he, Pomerance, and Palásti have given constructions for $n$ up to $8$ but nothing is yet known for $n \geq 9$. Most recently, Burt et. al. had proven that a crescent configuration on $n$ points exists in $\mathbb{R}^{n-2}$ for $n \geq 3$. In this paper, we study the classification of these configurations on $4$ and $5$ points through graph isomorphism and rigidity. Our techniques, which can be generalized to higher dimensions, offer a new viewpoint on the problem through the lens of distance geometry and provide a systematic way to construct crescent configurations.

math.CO↗

arXiv2018

On algorithms to calculate integer complexity

We consider a problem first proposed by Mahler and Popken in 1953 and later developed by Coppersmith, Erdős, Guy, Isbell, Selfridge, and others. Let $f(n)$ be the complexity of $n \in \mathbb{Z^{+}}$, where $f(n)$ is defined as the least number of $1$'s needed to represent $n$ in conjunction with an arbitrary number of $+$'s, $*$'s, and parentheses. Several algorithms have been developed to calculate the complexity of all integers up to $n$. Currently, the fastest known algorithm runs in time $\mathcal{O}(n^{1.230175})$ and was given by J. Arias de Reyna and J. van de Lune in 2014. This algorithm makes use of a recursive definition given by Guy and iterates through products, $f(d) + f\left(\frac{n}{d}\right)$, for $d \ |\ n$, and sums, $f(a) + f(n - a)$, for $a$ up to some function of $n$. The rate-limiting factor is iterating through the sums. We discuss potential improvements to this algorithm via a method that provides a strong uniform bound on the number of summands that must be calculated for almost all $n$. We also develop code to run J. Arias de Reyna and J. van de Lune's analysis in higher bases and thus reduce their runtime of $\mathcal{O}(n^{1.230175})$ to $\mathcal{O}(n^{1.222911236})$. All of our code can be found online at: https://github.com/kcordwel/Integer-Complexity.

math.NT↗

arXiv2018

Summand minimality and asymptotic convergence of generalized Zeckendorf decompositions

Given a recurrence sequence $H$, with $H_n = c_1 H_{n-1} + \dots + c_t H_{n-t}$ where $c_i \in \mathbb{N}_0$ for all $i$ and $c_1, c_t \geq 1$, the generalized Zeckendorf decomposition (gzd) of $m \in \mathbb{N}_0$ is the unique representation of $m$ using $H$ composed of blocks lexicographically less than $σ= (c_1, \dots, c_t)$. We prove that the gzd of $m$ uses the fewest number of summands among all representations of $m$ using $H$, for all $m$, if and only if $σ$ is weakly decreasing. We develop an algorithm for moving from any representation of $m$ to the gzd, the analysis of which proves that $σ$ weakly decreasing implies summand minimality. We prove that the gzds of numbers of the form $v_0 H_n + \dots + v_\ell H_{n-\ell}$ converge in a suitable sense as $n \to \infty$, furthermore we classify three distinct behaviors for this convergence. We use this result, together with the irreducibility of certain families of polynomials, to exhibit a representation with fewer summands than the gzd if $σ$ is not weakly decreasing.

math.NT↗

arXiv2018

Limiting Distributions in Generalized Zeckendorf Decompositions

An equivalent definition of the Fibonacci numbers is that they are the unique sequence such that every integer can be written uniquely as a sum of non-adjacent terms. We can view this as we have bins of length 1, we can take at most one element from a bin, and if we choose an element from a bin we cannot take one from a neighboring bin. We generalize to allowing bins of varying length and restrictions as to how many elements may be used in a decomposition. We derive conditions on when the resulting sequences have uniqueness of decomposition, and (similar to the Fibonacci case) when the number of summands converges to a Gaussian; the main tool in the proofs here is the Lyaponuv Central Limit Theorem.

math.NT↗

arXiv2018

Gaussian Behavior in Zeckendorf Decompositions From Lattices

Zeckendorf's Theorem states that any positive integer can be written uniquely as a sum of non-adjacent Fibonacci numbers. We consider higher-dimensional lattice analogues, where a legal decomposition of a number $n$ is a collection of lattice points such that each point is included at most once. Once a point is chosen, all future points must have strictly smaller coordinates, and the pairwise sum of the values of the points chosen equals $n$. We prove that the distribution of the number of summands in these lattice decompositions converges to a Gaussian distribution in any number of dimensions. As an immediate corollary we obtain a new proof for the asymptotic number of certain lattice paths.

math.NT↗

arXiv2018

The Zeckendorf Game

Zeckendorf proved that every positive integer $n$ can be written uniquely as the sum of non-adjacent Fibonacci numbers. We use this to create a two-player game. Given a fixed integer $n$ and an initial decomposition of $n = n F_1$, the two players alternate by using moves related to the recurrence relation $F_{n+1} = F_n + F_{n-1}$, and whoever moves last wins. The game always terminates in the Zeckendorf decomposition, though depending on the choice of moves the length of the game and the winner can vary. We find upper and lower bounds on the number of moves possible. The upper bound is on the order of $n\log n$, and the lower bound is sharp at $n-Z(n)$ moves, where $Z(n)$ is the number of terms in the Zeckendorf decomposition of $n$. Notably, Player 2 has the winning strategy for all $n > 2$; interestingly, however, the proof is non-constructive.

math.NT↗

arXiv2018

The Generalized Zeckendorf Game

Zeckendorf proved that every positive integer $n$ can be written uniquely as the sum of non-adjacent Fibonacci numbers; a similar result, though with a different notion of a legal decomposition, holds for many other sequences. We use these decompositions to construct a two-player game, which can be completely analyzed for linear recurrence relations of the form $G_n = \sum_{i=1}^{k} c G_{n-i}$ for a fixed positive integer $c$ ($c=k-1=1$ gives the Fibonaccis). Given a fixed integer $n$ and an initial decomposition of $n = n G_1$, the two players alternate by using moves related to the recurrence relation, and whomever moves last wins. The game always terminates in the Zeckendorf decomposition, though depending on the choice of moves the length of the game and the winner can vary. We find upper and lower bounds on the number of moves possible; for the Fibonacci game the upper bound is on the order of $n\log n$, and for other games we obtain a bound growing linearly with $n$. For the Fibonacci game, Player 2 has the winning strategy for all $n > 2$. If Player 2 makes a mistake on his first move, however, Player 1 has the winning strategy instead. Interestingly, the proof of both of these claims is non-constructive.

math.NT↗