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Principal Component Analysis: Three Examples and some Theory Very often, especially in applications to the life sciences, useful low-dimensional projections exist and allow humans to grasp a data set that would otherwise be inscrutable. Tony Phillips Stony Brook University Introduction Principal component analysis (PCA), an algorithm for helping us understandRead More →

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Completing the Square The prehistory of the quadratic formula Completing the square is the essential ingredient in the generation of our handy quadratic formula. And for all the years before the formula existed, that was how quadratic equations were solved… Tony Phillips Stony Brook University Quadratic equations have been consideredRead More →

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Tony Phillips’ Column Archive Here are Tony Phillips’ older Feature Columns. Tony’s newest columns may be found here. November 2020 – Completing the Square (History of Mathematics) May 2019 – Topology and Elementary Electric Circuit Theory, II: Duality (Geometry and Topology, Math and the Sciences) October 2018 – Topology andRead More →