All the lowest order PDE for spectral gaps of Gaussian matrices

Tracy-Widom (TW) equations for one-matrix unitary ensembles (UE) (equivalent to a particular case of Schlesinger equations for isomonodromic deformations) are rewritten in a general form which allows one to derive all the lowest order equations (PDE) for spectral gap probabilities of UE without intermediate higher-order PDE. This is demonstrated on the example of Gaussian ensemble (GUE) for which all the third order PDE for gap probabilities are obtained explicitly. Moreover, there is a {\it second order} PDE for GUE probabilities in the case of more than one spectral endpoint. This approach allows to derive all PDE at once where possible, while in the method based on Hirota bilinear identities and Virasoro constraints starting with different bilinear identities leads to different subsets of the full set of equations.Comment: 22 pages, references corrected, remark adde

Generating dynamic higher-order Markov models in web usage mining

Markov models have been widely used for modelling users’ web navigation behaviour. In previous work we have presented a dynamic clustering-based Markov model that accurately represents second-order transition probabilities given by a collection of navigation sessions. Herein, we propose a generalisation of the method that takes into account higher-order conditional probabilities. The method makes use of the state cloning concept together with a clustering technique to separate the navigation paths that reveal differences in the conditional probabilities. We report on experiments conducted with three real world data sets. The results show that some pages require a long history to understand the users choice of link, while others require only a short history. We also show that the number of additional states induced by the method can be controlled through a probability threshold parameter

Testing Born's Rule in Quantum Mechanics with a Triple Slit Experiment

In Mod. Phys. Lett. A 9, 3119 (1994), one of us (R.D.S) investigated a formulation of quantum mechanics as a generalized measure theory. Quantum mechanics computes probabilities from the absolute squares of complex amplitudes, and the resulting interference violates the (Kolmogorov) sum rule expressing the additivity of probabilities of mutually exclusive events. However, there is a higher order sum rule that quantum mechanics does obey, involving the probabilities of three mutually exclusive possibilities. We could imagine a yet more general theory by assuming that it violates the next higher sum rule. In this paper, we report results from an ongoing experiment that sets out to test the validity of this second sum rule by measuring the interference patterns produced by three slits and all the possible combinations of those slits being open or closed. We use attenuated laser light combined with single photon counting to confirm the particle character of the measured light.Comment: Submitted to the proceedings of Foundations of Probability and Physics-5, Vaxjo, Sweden, August 2008. 8 pages, 8 figure