• ### arXiv-search (the sad goodbye-for-now post)

May 14, 2018

• ### A synchronized dance of eigenvalues

September 26, 2017

• ### The arrow of time in RIS

January 18, 2017

I gave an informal talk today on the arrow of time in repeated interaction systems and I thought I’d write about it here.

• ### The traveling salesman and 10 lines of Python

October 25, 2016

Update (21 May 18): It turns out this post is one of the top hits on google for “python travelling salesmen”! That means a lot of people who want to solve the travelling salesmen problem in python end up here. While I tried to do a good job explaining a simple algorithm for this, it was for a challenge to make a progam in 10 lines of code or fewer. That constraint means it’s definitely not the best code around for using for a demanding application, and not the best for learning to write good, readable code. On the other hand, it is simple and short, and I explain each line. So stick around if you’re up for that. Otherwise, while I haven’t used it myself, Google has a library “OR-Tools” that has a nice page about solving the travelling salesmen problem in python via their library. So maybe check that out!

• ### Setting up SublimeText

October 14, 2016

I’m setting up a new laptop and figured it was a good chance to document setting up SublimeText for LaTeX, as quasi follow up to my recent post about live LaTeXing. However, installing LaTeX can be hard, and configuring the SublimeText package LaTeXTools to work with LaTeX has the potential to be hard (often just works, but if not, can be confusing), and I won’t write about those parts, because they are better documented elsewhere. So this is simply the easy part (configuring SublimeText) to try to remove a barrier from those who might be looking to switch.

• ### Live notetaking with LaTeX

September 24, 2016

A friend suggested I write a guide about live notetaking in LaTeX, since it’s pretty useful and something I have a fair amount of experience with. I had been making attempts at live-LaTeXing course notes for a year or two before I was able to make it through a semester long class; the first course I fully LaTeX’d was Vojkan Jaksic’s excellent Analysis 3 (introduction to metric spaces and topology)PDF available here. Not my best work, but it did the job. . Most recently, I wrote notes for Sergey Norin’s Combinatorics course which I submitted as a project for the classPDF available here. Probably my best work. .

• ### Landauer's Principle and the balance equation

February 29, 2016

I’ve been working on my thesis over reading week, and I think I’ve finished my introduction to Landauer’s Principle. I ended up writing a pretty detailed derivation of the balance equation, and thus Landauer’s bound, so I thought it might be useful to post here.

Landauer's principle states that there is a minimal energetic cost for a state transformation $\sysstate\init \to \sysstate\fin$ on a system $\sys$ via the action of a thermal reservoir $\env$ at temperature $(k_B\beta)\inv$.

• ### Cantor's Set and Cantor's Function

February 9, 2016

I’m giving tutorials for McGill’s honours analysis 2 course this semester, and I wrote some notes on Cantor’s Set and Cantor’s Function; I thought they might be helpful to others, so I’ll post them hereMcGill has its own MyCourses system where I put the notes for students in the class, but I think it’s better to be in the habit of posting work in a publicly-accessible place. .

I’ve given upfor now on actually converting my LaTeX to something web-native, so I’ll just put the pdf here.

• ### Completeness I

January 1, 2016

Last semester, I helped a friend review McGill's Analyis 3 course by trying to provide a better feel for completeness; this post will be a slightly edited version of that. Originally, I wanted to write about both completeness and compactness, and their connections, but I ended up only getting to completeness, and actually not everything I wanted to talk about. So I'll call this Completeness I, leaving open the possibility for more of these in the future. Hopefully the style is casual and expository without being misleading.

• ### New blog

December 13, 2015

I started a “coffee blog” a month or so ago but only posted once (I think I’ll bring that post over here, too). I do like the idea though, and want to write about math and my research. So this should become a place for me to do that.

blog - Eric Hanson