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Affordable as a Bus, Comfortable as a Taxi: A Promising Type of Public Transport for Large and Medium-Sized Cities.Part3

Level of difficulty Medium
Reading time 32 min
Views 678
Algorithms *Mathematics *Transport The future is here Urbanism
Opinion
Translation


Translation provided by ChatGPT, link to the original article in Russian

Link to Part 1: «Preliminary Analysis» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 2: «Experiments on a Torus» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 3: «Practically Significant Solutions» (ру / eng )
Link to «Summary» (ру / eng )

1 Playing Diplomacy


1.1 What this work is about


You're reading the third and final article in a series dedicated to minibus route schemes that would allow you to travel reasonably quickly, inexpensively, and most importantly, without any transfers, from any intersection to any other within a large city. You'll see many graphs, formulas, and figures below, but before we get to the technical part, I'd like to discuss the challenge of implementing this idea and invite you to participate in solving it.

1.2 A puzzle for the talented and brave (Eccentrics are welcome: 🎶)


I propose an adventure,
I propose a game,
I propose that you become part of a positive change in the lifestyle of almost a billion people around the planet,
I can't do this alone.
To start, I need your help with the following:
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Total votes 4: ↑3 and ↓1 +2
Comments 4

Affordable as a Bus, Comfortable as a Taxi: A Promising Type of Public Transport for Large and Medium-Sized Cities.Part2

Level of difficulty Medium
Reading time 56 min
Views 592
Algorithms *Mathematics *Transport The future is here Urbanism
Opinion
Translation

(Jean-Claude Mézières)

Translation provided by ChatGPT, link to the original article in Russian

Link to Part 1: «Preliminary Analysis» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 2: «Experiments on a Torus» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 3: «Practically Significant Solutions» (ру / eng )
Link to «Summary» (ру / eng )

Experiments on the Torus


This is the second part of a study dedicated to exploring new public transportation movement schemes. In the first part, we examined the simplest non-stop scheme and a single-transfer scheme based on it, which can be implemented in a grid city on a plane. In this part, our city model will be a grid city on a «flat» torus. Unlike a rectangle, a torus has no edge, and the positions of all points on it are absolutely equivalent. Due to the absence of an edge and (transitive) symmetry, calculations for a toroidal city are simpler, and numerical results are nearly identical to those for a rectangular city on a plane. These two conditions make a toroidal grid city an ideal testing ground for new passenger transportation movement schemes. In this article, we will explore two such schemes on the torus, and in the next one, we will return to the plane and adapt the results obtained here for use under the realistic conditions of a rectangular city.

The content of this study is not standalone and presupposes familiarity with the first part of the article. To understand Chapter 2, you will need a level of mathematics that corresponds roughly to the first two years of university; for everything else, high school level should suffice. It can be helpful to have a pencil and a piece of paper at hand while reading. If your browser displays formulas incorrectly, try refreshing the page a few times.
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Total votes 3: ↑3 and ↓0 +3
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Affordable as a Bus, Comfortable as a Taxi: A Promising Type of Public Transport for Large and Medium-Sized Cities.Part1

Level of difficulty Medium
Reading time 40 min
Views 1.1K
Algorithms *Mathematics *Transport The future is here Urbanism
Opinion
Translation

(Jean-Claude Mézières)

Translation provided by ChatGPT, link to the original article in Russian

Link to Part 1: «Preliminary Analysis» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 2: «Experiments on a Torus» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 3: «Practically Significant Solutions» (ру / eng )
Link to «Summary» (ру / eng )

1. About this series of articles


1.1 Central result


If I haven't made a critical mistake, I have discovered an astonishing passenger transportation scheme with unique characteristics. Imagine this scenario: you are in a big city and need to get from point A to point B. All you need to do is walk to the nearest intersection and indicate the destination on your smartphone or a special terminal installed there. In a few minutes, a small but spacious bus will arrive for you. The bus is designed for easy entry without bending, and you can bring a stroller, bicycle, or even a cello inside. It provides comfortable seating where you can stretch your legs. This bus will take you to the nearest intersection to point B, and you will reach your destination without any transfers. The entire journey, including waiting at the stop, will take only 25-50% more time than if you were traveling by private car. Based on my estimation, in modern metropolises, this type of transportation will be widely adopted, and the cost of a trip on such buses will be similar to the fare of a regular city bus.

Surprisingly, the reasoning behind these findings is based on relatively simple mathematics, and perhaps even a talented high school student, under fortunate circumstances, could have guessed them on their own. The practical significance of the topic and the modest level of mathematical requirements prompted me to make an effort to write the article in such a way that the reader could follow the path of discoveries, learn some research techniques, and gain a successful example to explain to their children the purpose of mathematics and how it can be applied in everyday life.
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Total votes 9: ↑7 and ↓2 +5
Comments 6

«Promising Public Transportation for Large and Medium-Sized Cities» — the main idea in a brief summary

Level of difficulty Easy
Reading time 9 min
Views 672
Algorithms *Mathematics *Transport The future is here Urbanism
Opinion
Translation

(source)

Translation provided by ChatGPT, link to the original article.

I recently published a series of articles titled 'As Cheap as a Bus, as Convenient as a Taxi...':

Link to Part 1: «Preliminary Analysis» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 2: «Experiments on a Torus» (ру / eng )
Link to Part 3: «Practically Significant Solutions» (ру / eng )

dedicated to making public transportation in large cities completely seamless, without the need for transfers. In the last article of the series, I extensively described a microbus movement scheme that allows them to operate almost like taxis while accommodating 5-10 passengers at once. Such a transportation system would enable city residents to travel from any intersection to another without any transfers, comparable in time to a personal car journey, and at a cost similar to a regular city bus ticket. However, the feedback from readers indicated that I chose an extremely ineffective way to convey the information, resulting in a failure to effectively communicate the essence of the matter.

I must admit that the previous three articles were written in a way that allowed readers to apply the acquired knowledge in practice or continue the research I started on their own. Unfortunately, my desire to 'teach' resulted in nearly 100 pages of complex mathematical text, which is clearly excessive for readers who simply wanted to familiarize themselves with the idea. Here, I will attempt to rectify this mistake and briefly, yet simply, explain the bus taxi technology.
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Total votes 6: ↑6 and ↓0 +6
Comments 0

Langton's ant: a mystery cellular automaton

Reading time 4 min
Views 1.5K
Programming *Algorithms *Mathematics *Reading room Popular science

The life of Langton's Ant seems sad and lonely, but, as we'll soon discover, he is not ready to put up with such an outrageous situation and is trying his best to escape. American scientist Christopher Langton invented his ant back in 1986. Since then, no one has been able to explain the strange behavior of this mysterious model...

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Total votes 8: ↑8 and ↓0 +8
Comments 3

The Collatz conjecture is the greatest math trick of all time

Reading time 4 min
Views 1.9K
Entertaining tasks Python *Mathematics *Popular science

On the Internet and in non-fiction literature you can often find various mathematical tricks. The Collatz conjecture leaves all such tricks behind. At first glance, it may seem like some kind of a trick with a catch. However, there is no catch. You think of a number and repeat one of two arithmetic operations for it several times. Surprisingly, the result of these actions will always be the same. Or, may be not always?

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Total votes 7: ↑7 and ↓0 +7
Comments 2

Proof's by induction using Rust's type-system

Reading time 5 min
Views 1.3K
Mathematics *Functional Programming *Rust *
Sandbox

Rust's type system is quite powerful as it allows to encode complex relationships between user-defined types using recursive rules that are automatically applied by the compiler. Idea behind this post is to use some of those rules to encode properties of our domain. Here we take a look at Peano axioms defined for natural numbers and try to derive some of them using traits, trait bounds and recursive impl blocks. We want to make the compiler work for us by verifying facts about our domain, so that we could invoke the compiler to check whether a particular statement holds or not. Our end goal is to encode natural numbers as types and their relationships as traits such that only valid relationships would compile. (e.g. in case we define types for 1 and 3 and relationship of less than, 1 < 3 should compile but 3 < 1 shouldn't, that all would be encoded using Rust's language syntax of course)

Let's define some natural numbers on the type level first.

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Total votes 6: ↑6 and ↓0 +6
Comments 1

The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences today

Reading time 14 min
Views 1.1K
Mathematics *Social networks and communities

You can encounter integer sequences all around combinatorics, number theory, and recreational mathematics. And if there is a multitude of objects of the similar form, then one can create an index for these objects. The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OEIS, is such an index.

This is a translation of my article The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences in 2021, published in Mat. Pros. Ser. 3 28, 199–212 (2021).

This article covers the On-Line Encyclopedia inclusion criteria, its editorial process, its role in mathematics, and its future.

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Methodology for calculating results of a task set: taking into account its level of difficulty

Reading time 3 min
Views 2.2K
IT Infrastructure *Mathematics *Statistics in IT IT-companies

In the world of academic knowledge evaluation, objective calculation of large data presents a serious problem. Can a student studying in an Advanced Maths class and getting B-marks be evaluated equally with another student, getting B-marks in a General Maths class? Can we create a system that would take into account the level of difficulty those students face?

This article will describe a system of independent evaluation we have been using for school olympics in five subjects (Mathematics, English Language, Russian Language, Tatar Language, Social Science) for students grades 1 to 11. In each academic year we organise six qualification tournaments, with about 15,000 students from different regions of Russia. Then we select the top ten participants in each subject and each grade for their future participation in the final (seventh) tournament, where only the best of the best are chosen. It means that 550 participants compete in the final tournament, which is about 5.5% of all participants in the academic year. 

It is obvious that those multiple tournaments cannot be absolutely homogenous, and inevitably the levels of difficulty for each set of tasks vary. Therefore, it is critical for us to take into consideration those variations of difficulty and calculate the results in the most objective manner.

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Let’s Discuss the Lorentz Transforms – Part the Last: The Real Derivation, or The Nail in the Casket

Reading time 9 min
Views 830
Mathematics *Physics

In this post there are a lot of references to the previous one – it is essential that you read it before getting down to this.

In my previous posts (see the list below below) I tried to express my doubts whether there is a real physical substrate to the Lorentz transforms. The assumptions about the constancy of the speed of light, the homogeneity of space-time, and the principle of relativity do not and cannot lead to the deduction of the Lorentz transforms – Einstein himself, for one, gets quite different transforms, and from those he goes over directly to the Lorentz transforms obviously missing a logical link (see Einstein p. 7, and also Part 1 of this discussion). As for the light-like interval being equal to zero, we saw that it can be attached to such assumptions only in error and cannot in itself be a foundation of a theory. I have to conclude that all that fine, intricately latticed construction of scientifictitious, physics-like arguments with the air of being profound is nothing but a smokescreen creating the appearance of a physical foundation while there is none.

What is then the real foundation of the Lorentz transforms? Let’s start from the rear end, the Minkowski mathematics. Historically, this appeared later than special relativity as a non-contradictory model of the Lorentz mathematical world; previously mentioned Varićak was among those who took part in its creation. Notwithstanding its coming later in history, it can be used as the starting point for derivation of the Lorentz transforms.

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Total votes 3: ↑3 and ↓0 +3
Comments 0

Let’s Discuss the Lorentz Transforms – Intermission: Rapidity, and What it Means

Reading time 4 min
Views 654
Mathematics *Physics

I thought my previous post rather funny, and was surprised seeing it initially receive so few views. I thought the entertainment flopped, but fortunately I was wrong. I therefore feel it my duty before my readers to address the subject of the Landau & Lifschitz proof of the invariance of the interval.

You can find the summary of it in Wikipedia. Making their starting point the light-like interval always being equal to zero, Landau & Lifschitz seem to make a great fuss about it. The Wikipedia article even says: ‘This is the immediate mathematical consequence of the invariance of the speed of light.’ No, it is not.

I beg everyone’s pardon, but the light-like interval always being equal to zero is nothing else but the following statement: ‘The length of a ray of light will always be equal to the length of this ray of light’. Sounds like a cool story, bros and sis, but I cannot see what further inferences can be drawn from it. The ‘proof’ of this truism cannot fail under any circumstances whatever – whether you keep the speed of light invariant, or keep or change the metric of space or time or both – or make both metric and speed of light change – the light-like interval will remain equal to zero. I am okay with anyone wanting to prove it if they feel like it, but you cannot make it an ‘immediate mathematical consequence of the invariance of the speed of light’. Neither is it possible to make the constancy of the speed of light a consequence of the invariance of the light-like interval for the reason already mentioned: this is a truism. It does not prove anything, nor can it be a consequence of anything. When Landau & Lifschitz insist that this is a consequence of the constancy of the speed of light, that is either an error or a downright subterfuge, a means employed to create a spectre of logical connection between two unconnected notions, and charge this ghostly connection with pretended significance. And, since the following proof of invariance of an arbitrary interval hangs on the invariance of the light-like interval, we can altogether dismiss it: the necessity of introduction of such a measure as interval cannot be derived from the statement that a length of something will be equal to itself in whatever frame of reference it is measured.

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Total votes 3: ↑3 and ↓0 +3
Comments 2

Let’s Discuss the Lorentz Transforms – Part 2: The Equation of the Sphere, or Is It?

Reading time 5 min
Views 813
Mathematics *Physics

The previous discussion done, we have surmounted the difficult waters and are now sailing into something much more pleasure-like and hopefully even entertaining.

As I promised, we will be discussing the invariance of the interval, that is to say, the following relation:

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Total votes 3: ↑3 and ↓0 +3
Comments 0

Let’s Discuss the Lorentz Transforms – Part 1: Einstein’s 1905 Derivation

Reading time 6 min
Views 884
Mathematics *Physics

Even as I am posting this, I can see that my previous post received a hundred and twenty plus views, but no comments yet. I am saying again that my pursuit is not to give an answer, but to ask a question. I only wonder if there is in fact no answer to the questions I am asking – but anyway, I will continue asking them. If you know how to deal with the problems I am setting – or happen to understand they are not problems at all, I will be most grateful for a constructive input in the comments section. I am sorry to say I was unable to make this post sound as light and unpretentious as the previous one. This one deals with harder questions, is a little wordy, and requires at least elementary knowledge of calculus to be read properly.

In my previous post we discussed the ‘Galilean’ velocity composition used for introduction or substantiation of relative simultaneity. It is not the only point where Einstein resorts to sums c + v or c – v: he does that actually to deduce the Lorentz transforms, notwithstanding the fact that a corollary of the Lorentz transforms is a different velocity composition which makes the above sums null and void. It looks like the conclusions of this deduction negate its premises – but this is not the only strange thing about Einstein’s deduction of the Lorentz transforms undertaken by him in his famous 1905 article.

In Paragraph 3 of that paper Einstein is considering the linear function τ (the time of the reference frame in motion) of the four variables x′ = x – vt, y, z, and t (the three spatial coordinates and time of the frame of reference at rest) and eventually derives a relation between the coefficients of this linear function.

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Total votes 3: ↑3 and ↓0 +3
Comments 0

Let’s Discuss Relativity of Simultaneity

Reading time 4 min
Views 749
Mathematics *Physics
Sandbox

There is one only too obvious problem with relativity of simultaneity in the way it is normally introduced, and I have never found an answer to it – what’s more, I never read or heard anyone formulate it. I will be grateful for an enlightening discussion.

The framework of the thought experiment introducing relativity of simultaneity is this. Two rays of light travel in opposite directions and reach their destination simultaneously in one frame of reference and at different moments in the other.

For example, in the Wikipedia article on the subject you can read:

‘A flash of light is given off at the center of the traincar just as the two observers pass each other. For the observer on board the train, the front and back of the traincar are at fixed distances from the light source and as such, according to this observer, the light will reach the front and back of the traincar at the same time.

‘For the observer standing on the platform, on the other hand, the rear of the traincar is moving (catching up) toward the point at which the flash was given off, and the front of the traincar is moving away from it. As the speed of light is finite and the same in all directions for all observers, the light headed for the back of the train will have less distance to cover than the light headed for the front. Thus, the flashes of light will strike the ends of the traincar at different times’.

I am always not a little surprised at the modesty displayed by the authors of such illustrations. If we grant the statement ‘the light headed for the back of the train will have less distance to cover than the light headed for the front’ to be true – how then do we evaluate the magnitude of the effect? Or, in other words, how much longer is one distance in comparison to the other?

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Total votes 3: ↑2 and ↓1 +1
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FL_PyTorch is publicly available on GitHub

Reading time 2 min
Views 1.1K
Mathematics *Machine learning *Artificial Intelligence

FL_PyTorch: Optimization Research Simulator for Federated Learning is publicly available on GitHub.

FL_PyTorch is a suite of open-source software written in python that builds on top of one of the most popular research Deep Learning (DL) frameworks PyTorch. We built FL_PyTorch as a research simulator for FL to enable fast development, prototyping, and experimenting with new and existing FL optimization algorithms. Our system supports abstractions that provide researchers with sufficient flexibility to experiment with existing and novel approaches to advance the state-of-the-art. The work is in proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Distributed Machine Learning DistributedML 2021. The paper, presentation, and appendix are available in DistributedML’21 Proceedings (https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3488659.3493775).

The project is distributed in open source form under Apache License Version 2.0. Code Repository: https://github.com/burlachenkok/flpytorch.

To become familiar with that tool, I recommend the following sequence of steps:

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Total votes 1: ↑0 and ↓1 -1
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What are neural networks and what do we need them for?

Reading time 4 min
Views 2.7K
Mathematics *Machine learning *Data Engineering *

Explaining through simple examples

For a long time, people have been thinking on how to create a computer that could think like a person. The advent of artificial neural networks is a significant step in this direction. Our brain consists of neurons that receive information from sensory organs and process it: we recognize people we know by their faces, and we feel hungry when we see delicious food. All of this is the result of brain neurons working and interacting with each other. This is also the principle that artificial neural networks are based on, simulating the processes occurring in the human brain.

What are neural networks

Artificial neural networks are a software code that imitates the work of a brain and is capable of self-learning. Like a biological network, an artificial network also consists of neurons, but they have a simpler structure.

If you connect neurons into a sufficiently large network with controlled interaction, they will be able to perform quite complex tasks. For example, determining what is shown in a picture, or independently creating a photorealistic image based on a text description.

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Total votes 1: ↑1 and ↓0 +1
Comments 1

Riddles of the fast Fourier transform

Reading time 10 min
Views 1.2K
Programming *Algorithms *Mathematics *Sound Visual programming *
Tutorial

• The method of phase-magnitude interpolation (PMI)

• Accurate measure of frequency, magnitude and phase of signal harmonics

• Detection of resonances

The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm is an important tool for analyzing and processing signals of various nature.

It allows to reconstruct magnitude and phase spectrum of a signal into the frequency domain by magnitude sample into the time domain, while the method is computationally optimized with modest memory consumption.

Although there is not losing of any information about the signal during the conversion process (calculations are reversible up to rounding), the algorithm has some peculiarities, which hinder high-precision analysis and fine processing of results further.

The article presents an effective way to overcome such "inconvenient" features of the algorithm.

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