From time to time we are asked “what is the company name Win-Vector LLC referring to?” It is a cryptic pun trying to be an encoding of “we deliver victory.” The story is an inside joke referring to something really only funny to one of the founders. But a joke […]
Recently Heroku was accused of using random queue routing while claiming to supply something similar to shortest queue routing (see: James Somers – Heroku’s Ugly Secret and more discussion at hacker news: Heroku’s Ugly Secret). If this is true it is pretty bad. I like randomized algorithms and I like […]
We describe ergodic theory in modern notation accessible to interested computer scientists. The ergodic theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergodic theory (link)) is an important principle of recurrence and averaging in dynamical systems. However, there are some inconsistent uses of the term, much of the machinery is intended to work with deterministic dynamical systems […]