David MacKay: Publications: Miscellaneous work

Manuals

Early work

A Method of Increasing the Contextual Input to Adaptive Pattern Recognition Systems, Technical Report RIPR 10001487, Research Initiative in Pattern Recognition, Royal Signals and Radar Establishment, Malvern, Worcester. WR14 3PS
(My first paper on neural networks.)

DJVU files: Readable, but poor quality (130K) high-resolution version (2M) zip file containing huge tif images

connectionsM.ps.gz | PDF | |DJVU |

My first paper on statistics and neural networks,
Maximum Entropy Connections: Neural Networks,
was published in Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods, Laramie, 1990, pages 237-244.
I don't have the original postscript, but I have slapped together the above postscript document (which includes an unnecessary 7 page bibliography) to preserve the contents of the paper on line.

Mathematical recreations

A collection of puzzles for Darwin College magazine.

And a few more puzzles including physics and probability ideas.

rectangles.ps.gz. rectangles.pdf. html. abstract. | <- UK | Canada -> | rectangles.ps.gz. rectangles.pdf. html. abstract.

`Simple Proofs of a Rectangle Tiling Theorem'. (2003)
[Also, a one-page introduction to this problem is here: (pdf) (postscript)]

corner.ps.gz. corner.pdf. abstract. | <- UK | Canada -> | corner.ps.gz. corner.pdf. abstract.

` Big Things that Squeeze Round Corners '.

conway.ps.gz. conway.pdf. abstract. | <- UK | Canada -> | conway.ps.gz. conway.pdf. abstract.

I edited a 15-page book chapter, `The Power of Mathematics', by John Conway. (Another site with a lecture by Conway)

Other Fun stuff

Codes

A note about the iTap / T9 text-to-numbers code

Games

Bao: An illustration of what research in theoretical physics is like

Bayesian methods, quickies

`The pope is (probably) not an alien' | <- UK | Canada -> | html

With Sean Eddy

euro.ps.gz. euro.pdf. | euro.DJVU. abstract. | <- UK | Canada -> | euro.ps.gz. euro.pdf. | euro.DJVU. abstract.

Belgian euro coins: 140 heads in 250 tosses -- suspicious?

Teaching methods

exams.ps.gz. exams.pdf. abstract. | <- UK | Canada -> | exams.ps.gz. exams.pdf. abstract.

` Everyone Should Get an A '.

sumsquares.ps.gz. sumsquares.pdf. | sumsquares.DJVU. abstract. | <- UK | Canada -> | sumsquares.ps.gz. sumsquares.pdf. | sumsquares.DJVU. abstract.

` Numbers that are Sums of Squares in Several Ways '.
by David MacKay and Sanjoy Mahajan
(Not a highly recommended paper as it was written with no knowledge of number theory)