The competition–colonization trade-off is an ecological concept that describes a balance between two key strategies that species can adopt in a given environment: competition for resources and the ability to colonize new habitats. 1. **Competition**: This refers to how well a species can compete with others for limited resources like food, space, or light. Species that are good competitors are often better at exploiting resources in existing habitats, allowing them to thrive in those areas.
Two-dimensionalism is a philosophical theory primarily developed within the context of the philosophy of mind and language, particularly concerning the nature of meaning, reference, and understanding. The theory seeks to provide a framework for understanding how sentences acquire meaning and how mental states relate to the external world.
Bremermann's limit is a theoretical maximum on the computational speed of a system, based on the principles of physics, particularly those related to energy and information processing. It is named after Hans Bremermann, who proposed the limit in the context of information theory and quantum mechanics. The limit essentially states that the maximum rate of information processing or computation that can be achieved by a physical system is constrained by the amount of energy available to that system.
The Mimetic Theory of speech origins, primarily associated with the work of the French philosopher and anthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan, posits that human language originated from gestures and imitative actions. The theory suggests that early humans communicated not through structured language as we understand it today, but rather through a form of "mimetic" expression, where actions and gestures imitated real-life phenomena to convey meaning.
Charles Sanders Peirce, an American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist, is often regarded as one of the founders of semiotics, the study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior. Peirce developed a complex and nuanced semiotic theory that revolves around the relationship between signs, their meanings, and the processes of interpretation.
In the context of cryptography, "advantage" typically refers to the measure of the effectiveness or success of an adversary in breaking a cryptographic scheme. It is often used in formal security definitions and proofs to quantify how much better an adversary can perform than simply guessing.
The Correspondence Theory of Truth is a philosophical concept that posits that the truth of a statement or proposition is determined by how accurately it reflects or corresponds to reality or the actual state of affairs. In simpler terms, a statement is considered true if it matches or aligns with the facts or the way things actually are. For example, the statement "The sky is blue" is true if, in fact, the sky is blue at a given time and place.
The terms "abstract" and "concrete" can be understood in various contexts, including philosophy, art, language, and more. Here's a brief overview of each: ### In Philosophy: - **Abstract**: Refers to concepts or ideas that are not tied to specific instances or tangible objects. Examples include ideas like love, freedom, or justice. These are often theoretical or not easily defined by physical characteristics.
Digital physics is a theoretical framework that posits that the universe can be understood as an informational or computational structure. This perspective suggests that physical reality can be modeled or represented using digital information, and phenomena in the universe can be viewed as processes involving computation or information processing. Key ideas within digital physics include: 1. **Information as Fundamental**: It suggests that information is a fundamental constituent of physical reality, akin to how traditional physics views matter and energy.
A transcomputational problem refers to a type of computational problem that exceeds the capabilities of any Turing machine or, more broadly, exceeds the limits of computability as defined by the Church-Turing thesis. This means that such problems cannot be solved by any algorithm or computational process that can be performed by a Turing machine, which serves as a fundamental model of computation in computer science.
Undecidable problems are problems for which no algorithm can be constructed that will always lead to a correct yes-or-no answer. This means that there is no general procedure or method that can solve these problems for all possible inputs. Here is a list of some well-known undecidable problems: 1. **Halting Problem**: Given a description of a program and an input, determine whether the program will eventually halt (finish running) or continue to run forever.
A *nondeterministic algorithm* is a theoretical model of computation that allows multiple possibilities for each decision point in its execution. In other words, rather than following a single, predetermined path to reach a solution, a nondeterministic algorithm can explore many different paths simultaneously or choose among various possibilities at each step.
The Reachability problem is a fundamental question in the field of computer science, particularly in the study of graph theory and formal languages. It addresses the problem of determining whether there exists a path from one node (or state) to another node in a graph or a state in an automaton.
"Real computation" typically refers to the study of computation involving real numbers and real-valued functions. It can encompass a variety of areas, including mathematical analysis, numerical analysis, and theoretical computer science. Here are a few key points about real computation: 1. **Computational Models**: Real computation often investigates models that can manipulate real numbers as opposed to just discrete values, such as integers or binary digits. This may involve using real number representations like floating-point arithmetic or even more abstract representations.
Plaintext-aware encryption refers to a type of encryption scheme that is designed to be sensitive to the structure and properties of the plaintext being encrypted. This means that the encryption process considers some characteristics of the plaintext, such as its size, format, or specific patterns, to generate the ciphertext. The main goal of plaintext-aware encryption is to prevent specific types of attacks that exploit the knowledge of the plaintext's properties.
The Two Generals' Problem is a classic problem in computer science and distributed systems that illustrates the challenges of achieving consensus and coordination between two parties (or "generals") in the presence of unreliable communication. ### Scenario: Imagine two generals, each leading their own army, located on opposite sides of a valley. They want to coordinate an attack on a common enemy located in the valley.
In programming and mathematics, the term "undefined" refers to a value that is not specified or cannot be determined. Depending on the context, it can indicate various things: 1. **Mathematics**: - An operation that does not produce a valid result, such as division by zero (e.g., \( \frac{1}{0} \)), is considered undefined. In this case, there is no real number that represents that operation.
Differential privacy is a mathematical framework designed to provide a rigorous privacy guarantee when sharing or analyzing data that may contain sensitive information about individuals. The primary goal of differential privacy is to enable the release of useful statistical information while ensuring that the privacy of individual data points is preserved. The core idea is to ensure that the outcome of a data analysis (like a query or a statistical result) does not significantly change when any single individual's data is added or removed from the dataset.
The "socialist millionaire problem" is a thought experiment in the field of cryptography and secure multi-party computation. It addresses how two parties (often referred to as "millionaires") can learn which of them is richer without revealing their actual wealth to each other. The classic formulation involves two millionaires, Alice and Bob, who want to determine who has more money. They would prefer not to disclose their exact fortunes, only the information about who is wealthier.
Eötvös rule, named after Hungarian physicist Loránd Eötvös, is an empirical rule in geophysics that describes the relationship between the density of a fluid and the gravitational force acting on it. Specifically, it states that the gravitational attraction of a fluid is proportional to its density when considering the gravitational potential difference over a vertical column of that fluid.

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 2.
    You can publish local OurBigBook lightweight markup files to either https://OurBigBook.com or as a static website
    .
    Figure 3.
    Visual Studio Code extension installation
    .
    Figure 4.
    Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation
    .
    Figure 5.
    Web editor
    . 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.
    Video 4.
    OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo
    . Source.
  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