• Cutoff Phenomenon: Surprising Behaviour in Card Shuffling and other Markov Chains 

      [SNAP-2023-005-EN] Baraquin, Isabelle; Lafrenière, Nadia; Schuh, Katharina (Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, 2023-12-21)
      This snapshot compares two techniques of shuffling a deck of cards, asking how long it will take to shuffle the cards until a “well-mixed deck” is obtained. Surprisingly, the number of shuffles can be very different for ...
    • The Enigma behind the Good–Turing formula 

      [SNAP-2021-008-EN] Balabdaoui, Fadoua; Kulagina, Yulia (Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, 2021-07-16)
      Finding the total number of species in a population based on a finite sample is a difficult but practically important problem. In this snapshot, we will attempt to shed light on how during World War II, two cryptanalysts, ...
    • Invitation to quiver representation and Catalan combinatorics 

      [SNAP-2021-004-EN] Rognerud, Baptiste (Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, 2021-04-08)
      Representation theory is an area of mathematics that deals with abstract algebraic structures and has numerous applications across disciplines. In this snapshot, we will talk about the representation theory of a class ...
    • Solving inverse problems with Bayes' theorem 

      [SNAP-2022-006-EN] Latz, Jonas; Sprungk, Björn (Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, 2022-09-05)
      The goal of inverse problems is to find an unknown parameter based on noisy data. Such problems appear in a wide range of applications including geophysics, medicine, and chemistry. One method of solving them is known as ...