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Ask HN: What is your favorite mathematical law or scientific principle? Why?
I am always absorbing more and more about the cosmos, what a joy and a blessing to feel like a kid in an adult's body.
HN is the brightest and most productive group of people I have access to currently, every day I am reminded of just how much I have to learn but also how far I have come.
Where better than here to ask this question and get quality responses from people who see the obvious value of math and science?
- jblindsay 8y agoTobler's first 'law' of geography: All things are related but nearer things are more related than distant things. This is the concept that describes regularity and order to all spatially variable phenomenon. It is essentially the concept of spatial autocorrelation. Without it, the world would be a chaotic place. Imagine if moving from one room to another meant you could encounter a 100-degree drop in temperature or if you had to regularly face a 100 m drop in elevation when walking 100 m down a road. It also means that we can infer an underlying spatial distribution from a sub-sample of point measurements, which is central to understanding most geographical phenomena.
- NedIsakoff 8y ago"No free lunch in search and optimization" --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_op...
- daxat_staglatz 8y agoPower laws in economics [0]: Many of the insights of economics seem to be qualitative, with many fewer reliable quantitative laws. However a series of power laws in economics do count as true and nontrivial quantitative laws—and they are not only established empirically, but also understood theoretically. I will start by providing several illustrations of empirical power laws having to do with patterns involving cities, firms, and the stock market. I summarize some of the theoretical explanations that have been proposed. I suggest that power laws help us explain many economic phenomena, including aggregate economic fluctuations. I hope to clarify why power laws are so special, and to demonstrate their utility. In conclusion, I list some power-law-related economic enigmas that demand further exploration. [0] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.30.1.185 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.30.1.185