Randomness

The Allison mixture is a random process formed by stochastically switching between two random and uncorrelated input processes. Unintuitively, these samples—independent prior to being drawn—can acquire dependence as a result of the sampling process. It has previously been shown that correlation can occur subject to certain conditions, however in general dependence does not imply correlation. In this paper we provide an initial information-theoretic analysis of the Allison mixture, and derive the autoinformation function of its sampling process as the first step towards a fuller information-theoretic analysis of its output.

Abstract-This paper presents a survey about dif-ferent types of fuzzy information measures. A number of schemes have been proposed to combine the fuzzy set theory and its application to the entropy concept as a fuzzy information measurements. The entropy concept, as a ...

It can easily be shown that the prior probability of the spontaneous formation of a living system is near zero. The same is true even for the prior probability of the spontaneous formation of a single macromolecule carrying biological information or function.

In view of such low probabilities of nucleation, three explanations of the origin of life have been put forward, each laying a different emphasis upon the respective roles of chance and law in evolution:

(1) the hypothesis of singular chance.
(2) the hypothesis of the vitalistic forces, and
(3) the molecular Darwinian approach.

An analysis based on algorithmic information theory shows that for fundamental reasons the chance hypothesis eannot be proven and that for fundamental reasons the vitalistic hypothesis cannot be disproven. Only the Darwinian approach yields of epistemological standards. The problem-solving capacity of the Darwinian approach is demonstrated with a game-theoretical model.

Prediction of stock prices using econometrics and machine learning-based approaches poses significant challenges to the research community since the movements of stock prices are essentially random in its nature. However, significant development and rapid evolution of sophisticated and complex algorithms which are capable of analyzing large volume of time series data, coupled with availability of high-performance hardware and parallel computing architecture over the last decade, has made it possible to efficiently process and effectively analyze voluminous stock market time series data in an almost real-time environment. In this paper, we propose a decomposition-based approach for time series analysis of the Indian mid cap sector and also present a highly robust and accurate prediction framework consisting of six forecasting methods for predicting the future values of the time series. Extensive results are presented on the performance of each forecasting method and the reasons why a particular method has performed better than the others have been critically analyzed.

'explain' is a game of exploring space(s); #Logica is what it is programmed in.  It is a language game of sorts, with a metaphysical twist and a lot of computation. It's a virtual machine of 2 bits fitting into 117 lines of shell script.  It's an infinite space game in a tiny little space using only natural language consisting of just 3 words: tri swap and not.  With that, you can say anything...if you define 'meta'.  But that's up to you...

Good luck.

Schizophrenia is characterized by heterogeneous pathophysiology. Using multiscale entropy (MSE) analysis, which enables capturing complex dynamics of time series, we characterized MSE patterns of blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signals across different time scales and determined whether BOLD activity in patients with schizophrenia exhibits increased complexity (increased entropy in all time scales), decreased complexity toward regularity (decreased entropy in all time scales), or decreased complexity toward uncorrelated randomness (high entropy in short time scales followed by decayed entropy as the time scale increases). We recruited 105 patients with schizophrenia with an age of onset between 18 and 35 years and 210 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers. Results showed that MSE of BOLD signals in patients with schizophrenia exhibited two routes of decreased BOLD complexity toward either regular or random patterns. Reduced BOLD complexity toward regular patterns was observed ...

Prediction of stock prices using time series analysis is quite a difficult and challenging task since the stock prices usually depict random patterns of movement. However, the last decade has witnessed rapid development and evolution of sophisticated algorithms for complex statistical analysis. These algorithms are capable of processing a large volume of time series data executing on high-performance hardware and parallel computing architecture. Thus computations which were seemingly impossible to perform a few years back are quite amenable to real-time time processing and effective analysis today. Stock market time series data are large in volume, and quite often need real-time processing and analysis. Thus it is quite natural that research community has focused on designing and developing robust predictive models for accurately forecasting stochastic nature of stock price movements. This work presents a time series decomposition-based approach for understanding the past behavior of the realty sector of India, and forecasting its behavior in future. While the forecasting models are built using the time series data of the realty sector for the period January 2010 till December 2015, the prediction is made for the time series index values for the months of the year 2016. A detailed comparative analysis of the methods are presented with respect to their forecasting accuracy and extensive results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the six proposed forecasting models.

I take a close look at a text in Insight in which Lonergan argues that the fallacy of mechanistic determinism is down to faulty cognitional theory, in particular, that it relies on an “impoverished replica” notion of abstraction and that because the “frontiers of the abstract are not coterminous with that of the experienced” the remedy lies in a notion of abstraction that is enriching. I situate this text in the light of an intellectual conversion that recognises two concretes, and I offer a living illustration that may help to make Insight more readable.
KEYWORDS:
BERNARD LONERGAN, MECHANISTIC DETERMINISM, ABSTRACTION, GALILEO, RANDOMNESS

We introduce Parrondo's paradox that involves games of chance. We consider two fair gambling games, A and B, both of which can be made to have a losing expectation by changing a biasing parameter . When the two games are played in any alternating order, a winning expectation is produced, even though A and B are now losing games when played individually. This strikingly counter-intuitive result is a consequence of discrete-time Markov chains and we develop a heuristic explanation of the phenomenon in terms of a Brownian ratchet model. As well as having possible applications in electronic signal processing, we suggest important applications in a wide range of physical processes, biological models, genetic models and sociological models. Its impact on stock market models is also an interesting open question.

In a game of chess, pieces can sometimes be
sacrificed in order to win the overall game.
Similarly, engineers know that two unstable
systems, if combined in the right way, can
paradoxically become stable. But can two
losing gambling games be set up such that,
when they are played one after the other,
they becoming winning? The answer is yes.
This is a striking new result in game theory
called Parrondo’s paradox, after its discoverer,
Juan Parrondo

DON'T BE FOOLED
June 24, 2017 by James M
TALEB offers us life saving insights about being gullible and too trusting in misleading ideas and charlatans. Guru's sell their latest opinion about food, climate and happiness based on flawed induction and survivorship bias. They miss the randomness of any trends and the fact that no one can replicate what is obtained through chance. Taleb is famous for the Black Swan Theory where an event is a surprise (to the observer) and has a major impact. After it is rationalized by hindsight. Examples of black swans include 9/11, financial collapse, power grid failure, the internet, rapid climate change.
The book is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped the significance of chance: Yogi Berra, the baseball legend: Karl Popper, the philosopher of knowledge; Solon, the Ancient World's wisest man; the modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Ulysses.

"Intelligent, honest, and revealing. There exists a distinct Taleb way of thinking and it is contagious." Marco Avellandea, Professor of Mathematical Finance, New York University.

https://ca-en.nicebooks.com/book/963213


Anticipating the Climate Black Swan
Posted on May 2, 2011 | 465 Comments
by Judith Curry


I just received the reviews on the manuscript I submitted to special issue of the journal Climatic Change, entitled “Reasoning About Climate Uncertainty.”  Overall, the review was pretty mild.  One comment from the editor was about my paragraph that mentioned “black swans.”
The specific text from my paper:
The framework associated with setting a CO2 stabilization target focuses research and analysis on using expert judgment to identify a most likely value of sensitivity/ warming and narrowing the range of expected values, rather than fully exploring the uncertainty and the possibility for black swans (Taleb 2007) and dragon kings (Sornette 2009). The concept of imaginable surprise was discussed in the Moss-Schneider uncertainty guidance documentation, but consideration of such possibilities seems largely to have been ignored by the AR4 report. A key issue is to identify potential black swans in natural climate variation under no human influence, over time scales of one to two centuries.
The editor’s comment, linked to the last sentence:
Good point, you should elaborate how this would help science, policy
What is a black swan?
The concept of “black swan” comes from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the book “The Blacks Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,” .
The term “black swan” comes from the mistaken assumption that all swans are white. In this context a “black swan” is a metaphor for something that cannot exist. Black swans were discovered in Australia in the 18th century, thereby proving false the assumption that all swans are white. In Taleb’s context “black swans” are rare events beyond the realm of normal exprectation.
From the Wikipedia:
The Black Swan Theory or Theory of Black Swan Events is a metaphor that encapsulates the concept that The event is a surprise (to the observer) and has a major impact. After the fact, the event is rationalized by hindsight.
The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:
1. The disproportionate role of high-impact, hard to predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology
2. The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities)
3. The psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs
Unlike the earlier philosophical “black swan problem“, the “Black Swan Theory” (capitalized) refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Such events, considered extreme outliers, collectively play vastly larger roles than regular occurrences.
Examples of black swans in Taleb’s context include 9/11, financial collapse, power grid failure, the internet, rapid climate change.
A key element of “black swans” is that while they are unanticipated, in hindsight they events are rationalized to seem obvious (it could have been anticipated with better use of available information).  While we seem to be able to learn from recent black swan events, anticipating the next different black swan doesn’t get any easier…
Overall, the idea of climate black swans hasn’t been explored very much, but I think it is something that deserves further consideration.  I agree that global warming itself shouldn’t be regarded as a black swan, although if some of the more alarming sensitivity predictions were to be true with accompanying extreme weather events, then it might arguably be a black swan.
The black swan concept seems useful in the context of Ferrari’s  thesis, namely related to extreme weather events that are the opposite of what you would expect in a warming world.

Back to the Climatic Change article
So after pondering the black swan-climate nexus some more, I have decided to add the following text to paragraph cited at the beginning of the post:
A key issue is to identify potential black swans in natural climate variation under no human influence, over time scales of one to two centuries.  This would entail  understanding and analysis of the regional climate dynamics of extreme events on timescales of decades to centuries.  Such an understanding is needed as the background against which dangerous climate change is assessed.  The unexpected cold, snowy northern hemisphere winter (2010/2011) and the flooding (2011) in drought stricken Queensland highlights how our expectations of extreme events in a warmer world can be soundly trumped by natural variability of weather processes.  Such variability has important implications for the assessment of dangerous climate change and for reducing vulnerability to weather disasters.
https://judithcurry.com/2011/05/02/anticipating-the-climate-black-swan/

Stock price movements being random in its nature, prediction of stock prices using time series analysis presents a very difficult and challenging problem to the research community. However, over the last decade, due to rapid development and evolution of sophisticated algorithms for complex statistical analysis of large volume of time series data, and availability of high-performance hardware and parallel computing architecture, it has become possible to efficiently process and effectively analyze voluminous and highly diverse stock market time series data effectively, in real-time. Robust predictive models are being built for accurate forecasting of values of highly random variables such as stock price movements. This paper has presented a highly reliable and accurate forecasting framework for predicting the time series index values of the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector in India. A time series decomposition approach is followed to understand the behavior of the FMCG sector time series for the period January 2010 till December 2016. Based on the structural analysis of the time series, six methods of forecast are designed. These methods are applied to predict the time series index values for the months of 2016. Extensive results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed decomposition approaches of time series and the efficiency of the six forecasting methods.

FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS. “CHAOS IN THE ATMOSPHERE”
BEAR ATTACKS ARE LIKE CLIMATE CHANGE - RANDOM, CHAOTIC AND UNPREDICTABLE.

Black bear kills man at Alaskan gold mine, day after teen runner fatally mauled  POSTED JUNE 20, 2017.
BY TANDA GMITER
The day after a teenage runner was fatally mauled by a black bear during a race near Anchorage, a worker at a gold mine near Fairbanks was also attacked and killed.
Alaskan authorities are dealing with the second fatal mauling of a person by a black bear in two days.

Teenage runner killed during race texted family that bear was chasing him
Authorities say a black bear killed a 16-year-old runner while he was competing in an Alaska race on Sunday.
Monday's deadly attack came at the Pogo Mine, where one contract employee was killed and another was injured and had to be airlifted from the scene, according to The Associated Press.
The two workers were taking geological samples at the underground mine, which is about 90 miles southeast of Fairbanks.
"Right now we have more questions than answers. Everyone on site is concerned for those involved," Chris Kennedy, general manager at Pogo Mine, said in a statement, according to Alaska Dispatch News. "Our condolences have been shared with our contractor and our hearts go out to the individuals, their colleagues, and their families."
Mine personnel killed the bear.
Little bear activity had been seen in the area before the attack.
Black swan theory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The black swan theory or theory of black swan events is a metaphor that describes an event that comes as a surprise, has a major effect, and is often inappropriately rationalized after the fact with the benefit of hindsight. The term is based on an ancient saying which presumed black swans did not exist, but the saying was rewritten after black swans were discovered in the wild.
The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:
1. The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.
2. The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).
3. The psychological biases which blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event's massive role in historical affairs. W

Opacity: What We Do Not See
A Philosophical Notebook, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.


43 Fooled by Randomness, Medical Claims, and Historicism
Thank you Stan Young. I received vindication for the main idea of Fooled by Randomness, the idea of false pattern detection that I later developed into the narrative fallacy, which I summarize as follows: statistical nonexperimental knowledge derived from looking at data is bunk, partly since researchers are very likely to show spurious patterns and regularities (or  nonexperimental research leads to pseudoknowledge). Technology makes false patterns easy to detect, abundance of data make them more likely to be salient. If you have a million random and unskilled traders, you will see many people with Warren Buffet’s performance –all of whom, you would be told, “could not have been doing so well out of randomness” and “have a statistically significant performance”. If you look hard enough at large datasets you will see some “nonrandom” regularity somewhere that will fool you, the result of searching and testing and the immensity of the datasets now available to us.



JamesMatkin


Sad story for victims.  Fortunately, fatal bear attacks are very rare and mostly unpredictable and random.  Other causes are one million times more liilely to cause death than bear attacks. See http://bucktrack.blogspot.ca/2011/02/bears-should-you-be-afraid.html. Photo is from grizzly meeting in Alaska.  I survived two face-to-face grizzly bear encounters hiking from Cameron Lake to Waterton.  In both cases I froze in fright - did not run - stood my ground. By chance at that moment a noise in the under brush below distrated the bear and he lumbered off. Here is advice from expert - "Lived in Alaska for 21 years, married to a bear biologist who taught safety classes. Running triggers the predator/prey response in animals because the runner looks like prey trying to escape. Even an animal which has recently eaten will often give chase and cache the kill for a later meal. No one can outrun a bear. Bears climb trees."  Stay safe.

http://www.mlive.com/news/us-world/index.ssf/2017/06/black_bear_kills_man_at_alaska.html

From early cinematic depictions of quotidian urban life and “cinematic exploration of city space” like Charles Sheeler’s 'Manhatta' (1921) and Dziga Vertov’s 'Man with a movie camera' (1929) to dystopic masterpieces such as Ridley Scott’s 'Blade Runner' (1982) or Michael Radford’s '1984' (1984) the urban experience has inspired a large number of cinematic narrations through which the built environment – our cities – has been celebrated and social topics problematized. This paper attempts to focus on and analyse genuine urban films under a specific scope; randomness as the defining narrative element and urban deviation as the eventual spatial and cinematic practice. By this I am referring to films where the protagonists engage into a series of chance events which derive from the complexity and multiplicity of architectural/spatial and social situations encountered in the city – setting. These situations act as stimulis and therefore define the protagonists’ engagement with the urban milieu as well as the movie’s development. Which sociological and spatial aspects of New York and Los Angeles are prompted through movies like Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) and Schumacher’s 'Falling Down' (1993)? What is the relation between the Baudelairean flâneur and Antonioni’s 'Al di lá delle nuvole' (1995)? And how Tati’s 'Playtime' (1967) perceives and problematizes on the perplexing nature of post-modern architecture and the consequent alienation?

This document is the full version of the paper presented for the annual meeting of the working group "Sociology of Arts" (Sites of Interest conference) that was held in Berlin, 11-13/5/2017

Rancière’s sentiments in The Hatred of Democracy echo those of Sorrey (2015) in her work, A State of Insecurity; namely, neoliberalism’s capacity to normalize precarity gravely undermines the potential of dissensus and dissensual emergence. Whereas precarity is traditionally understood as a negative ontology (e.g., “instability” or “insecurity”), neoliberalism’s valorization of precarity—and precarity’s concomitant effects on citizens—requires a positive ontology if it is to be used for emergent, dissensual (pro)activity. Simply put, if citizens must subsist in a perma-precarious livelihood, little-to-no attention can be paid on the part of the citizens to undermine neoliberalism’s inequalities, to resist, when precarity becomes the “new normal” and an instrument for neoliberal power. However, what neoliberalism cannot fully normalize is a positive precarity, whereby the citizen advantageously leverages instability for dissent. It is the argument of this paper that a positive precarity only exists with a necessary element of randomness, such that randomness evades the “measuring/measurement/categorizing” commitments of neoliberal regimes. Given the rise of dissensual activity over the last few years—and especially the last few months—addressing how and what randomness is possible within precarity should come to the fore if any dissensual emergence is still possible itself, thus ensuring Rancièrean dissent could have positive, lasting effects on contemporary resistance.