Random Walk: A Modern Introduction (2010) [pdf]

math.uchicago.edu

48 points·Anon84··7 comments

If you prefer short video lectures, Complexity Explorer also has a Random Walks tutorial: https://www.complexityexplorer.org/courses/46-random-walks

It's a bit more visual, but still gets quite math-y enough for my taste.

I'll never figure out why people post this kind of stuff here (and then it gets upvoted). there's literally nothing "hacker" related or even novel about these notes - it's just bog standard stochastic process. like these are just notes for some grad class or something. invariably someone will pop in and respond to my complaint saying "well actually I used everything in these notes for a project 10 years ago". ok. it strikes me, strongly, as just weird virtue signaling.

It's hard to figure out human motivation if you preemptively dismiss humans explaining their motivation.

Another source of confusion: "hacker related" isn't a hard requirement.

1. I use this in my current & some previous projects. I even remember using random walk to generate mountain landscape in one of the first games I coded as a kid.

2. If u can't model the world around u, u can't design good SW

Hackers don't also work on real world problems.

They are in physics labs, hedgefunds, university departments, hospitals.

PG for example describe Richard Feynman as a hacker.

The view that a hacker is someone who's interest is restricted to computers and startups is very narrow IMHO

It is interesting to hackers, even if it is not hacking related.

RISC architecture is gonna change everything.

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