Mathematics
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Mike Spivey
  • Member for 11 years, 7 months
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About

I am a math professor at the University of Puget Sound. My background is in operations research, although I also work in combinatorics. I teach typical OR courses such as optimization, modeling, and probability, as well as calculus, statistics, and differential equations.

My math blog, A Narrow Margin, includes (among other things) discussion of some of my favorite posts - of mine and of others - from math.SE.

My book, The Art of Proving Binomial Identities, includes many proofs similar to those I have posted on math.SE.

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Top posts
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All Questions Answers
Score Newest
answer
186
Why is $1^{\infty}$ considered to be an indeterminate form
Nov 15, 2010
question
136
Proving an alternating Euler sum: $\sum_{k=1}^{\infty} \frac{(-1)^{k+1} H_k}{k} = \frac{1}{2} \zeta(2) - \frac{1}{2} \log^2 2$
Jan 11, 2013
answer
130
Intuition behind using complementary CDF to compute expectation for nonnegative random variables
Sep 13, 2011
answer
127
Can I use my powers for good?
Oct 12, 2011
question
116
Nice proofs of $\zeta(4) = \frac{\pi^4}{90}$?
Mar 21, 2011
answer
106
Probability density function vs. probability mass function
Feb 23, 2011
question
103
Ways to evaluate $\int \sec \theta \, \mathrm d \theta$
Oct 13, 2010
answer
100
Sample Standard Deviation vs. Population Standard Deviation
Dec 21, 2010
answer
84
Anecdotes about famous mathematicians or physicists
Mar 24, 2011
answer
81
Sum of First $n$ Squares Equals $\frac{n(n+1)(2n+1)}{6}$
Jun 28, 2011
Top Meta posts
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Papers that originated on math.SE
57
Papers that originated on math.SE
50
Letting less-reputable people answer questions
28
Papers that originated on math.SE
26
Papers that originated on math.SE
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36
What recent discoveries have amateur mathematicians made?
33
When does symmetry in an optimization problem imply that all variables are equal at optimality?
27
Identifying poisoned wines
20
Does War have infinite expected length?
19
An intuitive/informal proof for LP Duality?

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