Mathematics
Mike Spivey's user avatar
Mike Spivey's user avatar
Mike Spivey's user avatar
Mike Spivey
  • Member for 13 years, 2 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
190
Why is $1^{\infty}$ considered to be an indeterminate form
Nov 15, 2010
answer
145
Intuition behind using complementary CDF to compute expectation for nonnegative random variables
Sep 13, 2011
question
141
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
127
Can I use my powers for good?
Oct 12, 2011
question
122
Nice proofs of $\zeta(4) = \frac{\pi^4}{90}$?
Mar 21, 2011
answer
115
Probability density function vs. probability mass function
Feb 23, 2011
question
109
Ways to evaluate $\int \sec \theta \, \mathrm d \theta$
Oct 13, 2010
answer
105
Sample Standard Deviation vs. Population Standard Deviation
Dec 21, 2010
answer
85
Anecdotes about famous mathematicians or physicists
Mar 24, 2011
answer
84
Sum of First $n$ Squares Equals $\frac{n(n+1)(2n+1)}{6}$
Jun 28, 2011
Top Meta posts
5
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100
Papers that originated on math.SE
58
Papers that originated on math.SE
50
Letting less-reputable people answer questions
28
Papers that originated on math.SE
27
Papers that originated on math.SE
Top network posts
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37
When does symmetry in an optimization problem imply that all variables are equal at optimality?
36
What recent discoveries have amateur mathematicians made?
27
Identifying poisoned wines
21
An intuitive/informal proof for LP Duality?
21
Does War have infinite expected length?

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