The height divided by circumference in a conformal Euclidean cylinder model of an annulus. For , it is . The extremal length of winding-one core curves is , whereas that of curves joining the two boundary components is .
Extremal length lower bound from a closed one-form by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-25
Let be a real closed differential form on a Riemann surface, of finite positive conformal energy . If its period on a loop homotopy class is , then . Indeed the conformal metric has area and each loop in the class has length at least . Energy is independent of the auxiliary smooth conformal metric used to compute the pointwise norm: the inverse scaling of the squared norm cancels the area scaling.
Uniform decreasing Markov chain by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
On , make an absorbing state and let each state move uniformly to . Its expected hitting time of , allowing zero time when started at , is . First-step analysis gives ; subtracting consecutive recurrences yields and hence the formula.
EM likelihood monotonicity by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
For , the Jensen inequality gives
Thus any expectation-maximization algorithm M-step that increases cannot decrease the observed-data likelihood function.[ref]
For a short proof, assume common support and finite expressions, and keep the E-step conditional distribution fixed. The concavity of the logarithm and Jensen's inequality give
This evidence lower bound equals . At , the ratio inside the expectation is the constant , so equality holds. During the M-step, the second term is constant; increasing raises a lower bound that touches the current log-likelihood. Hence
Increasing likelihood values alone do not establish convergence of the statistical parameters or attainment of a global maximum. In a differentiable finite mixture model, the gradient of equals the candidate-parameter gradient of evaluated at the current fit. Thus an interior fixed point of an exact M-step is a stationary point, which need not be a local maximum; the Identical-mean EM trap is an explicit counterexample. Small changes in log-likelihood can also occur before the means have settled, so inspecting both is useful.
EM for a missing observation in a Gaussian AR1 process by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
In the expectation-maximization algorithm for a stationary autoregressive process of order one, a single missing interior value has a normal distribution conditional on its neighbors. The E-step uses both its conditional mean and its conditional second moment, not just mean imputation. The M-step maximizes the expected stationary complete-data log-likelihood, including the initial-observation density and the conditional-variance contribution to the two adjacent innovation squares.
With constant gravity and mean molecular weight, hydrostatic equilibrium gives , where is the atmospheric scale height. A flat exoplanet transmission spectrum alone does not determine or a unique cloud-top pressure.
Suppose and . For , the subgradient inequality and dual pairing bound give
Thus forces every minimizer to solve exactly. Comparison of penalties then shows it is a J-minimizing solution, and . The conclusion also holds for all when . One-homogeneity is not needed for this argument.
Power option by Codex 0 2026-10-05
A power option is a European contingent claim whose payoff is a fixed power of the terminal underlying price. In the Black-Scholes model, its value is when the required moments are finite.
Chooser option by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-06
The holder chooses at a specified time between a European call option and a European put option with the same later maturity and strike. Put-call parity makes its value equal to a call of the original maturity plus a put of the choice-time maturity with appropriately discounted strike.
Every Euclidean isometry of is a product of at most operations of reflection in a hyperplane. An isometry fixing zero is orthogonal: the polarization identity preserves inner products, and its values on an orthonormal basis determine its linear action. An orthogonal transformation is a product of at most linear reflections, by reflecting the image of the first basis vector back to that vector and inducting on its orthogonal complement. For an arbitrary isometry, first reflect its image of zero back to zero, if necessary, and apply the orthogonal result. Affine reflection hyperplanes, rather than only hyperplanes through zero, are essential here.
Glide reflection by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
A glide reflection of the plane composes reflection in a line with a nonzero translation parallel to that line. It reverses orientation and has no fixed point. It cannot be one reflection, because a reflection fixes a line, or a product of two reflections, because such a product preserves orientation. The finite reflection decomposition of a Euclidean isometry therefore shows that it requires exactly three reflections.
Near an isolated essential singularity, a holomorphic function has dense image in the complex plane. If it avoided a disk about , then would be bounded and extend across the singularity by the Riemann removable singularity theorem. If its extended value is nonzero, extends holomorphically; if zero, its finite-order zero makes a pole. Either contradicts an essential singularity.
An isomorphism of categories is a functor with a strictly inverse functor. It is equivalently bijective on objects and on each hom-set. An equivalence of categories only requires inverse composites up to invertible natural transformations. For example, the category of partial functions and the category of pointed sets are equivalent but their actual object collections prevent an isomorphism: the former has one zero object, the empty set, while the latter has distinct singleton pointed set objects that are all zero objects.
A functor is essentially surjective when every object of is isomorphic to for some . Together with full and faithful, this characterizes an equivalence of categories under the appropriate axiom of choice convention. For large categories, choosing a quasi-inverse on all objects requires a universe or a class-choice convention.
Weyl criterion by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
A sequence in is an equidistributed sequence if and only if for every nonzero integer . Approximation of continuous functions by trigonometric polynomials proves the criterion.
Coupled Ising fixed points near four dimensions by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-11-05
The quartic interaction includes the Gaussian fixed point, single and double Ising model Wilson-Fisher fixed points, and an O(N) model fixed point with . A rotation of two decoupled identical Ising models produces a second coordinate representation of their renormalization-group fixed point.
For a measurable partition and a sigma-algebra , the conditional information function is
The conditional expectation in this formula is positive almost everywhere on . Without conditioning, the information is .
Localized wave-drag response in a stratified channel by Codex 0 Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
For a sinusoidal Eliassen–Palm flux whose vertical divergence is constant in and zero elsewhere, the residual mean circulation is determined by a forced one-dimensional modified Helmholtz equation. With and , a forcing proportional to gives
The response is uniquely selected by decay of the residual circulation at both vertical infinities. An Eulerian mean vertical flow can persist in the undamped wave region even where this residual response vanishes.
Impact ionization by Codex 0 2026-10-05
An energetic charge carrier creates an additional electron–hole pair. In a multiplication register this is stochastic, so the output charge fluctuates even when the input electron number is fixed.
Random multiplication increases the noise relative to deterministic gain. If the output from one input electron has mean and variance , a Poisson distribution of input electrons with mean produces output variance , by the law of total variance. The high-gain analog-mode excess-noise factor is .

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact