László Lovász's local lemma

[fflo]

lovely

Comments

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Ooops--- I did leave out the one "z". (Mr. Doemeny, please forgive me!) [Correcting text now...] "-sz" is right, though. That's his namepub and preferred name--- we follow copy with the reviewer's transliteration in many cases, unless a mathematician intervenes, when somebody's just referred to in text. We are most meticulous with names as credited at publication and have officially preferred names, with all kinds of tales about that you could probably get squirrelykat to share some time. (They decide all that stuff in our library ["BibServ"].)

[fflo.livejournal.com]

oh, and as for what the lemma is, hmmm... let's see...

well, it's "a classical and powerful tool in the probabilistic method in combinatorics" --- will that do? how about this: "The Lovász local lemma is a simple yet powerful tool for probabilistic proofs of many combinatorial results. It provides a sufficient condition for showing that the probability that none of the events $\{A_1,A_2,\cdots,A_n\}$ occurs is positive."

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i never saw this before i responded. *clearly,* there's a problem there. someone will have to tell me what it is.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

it's just ONE lemma, not a di-lemma. :]

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

right right. i never thought of that word-stem being re-opened like that. it's nice.

in serbian (and several other languages), there are only two alternatives, being that alter is "the other of the two" in latin. i still feel embarrassed when i used it in english to refer to "other alternatives."

[fflo.livejournal.com]

well, if it makes you feel better, we mis-use dilemma all the time. people think it just means something hard to figure out, but even potentially with a better choice, or a right answer.

america: where nuances of word meaning go to die. truly! or, as we would have it, literally!

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

and so laszlo is torn between two equally appealing mathematical beauties?