From nuclear bombs and Google’s search algorithm to the predictive text on your phone, many of modern technology’s cornerstones rely on a single mathematical concept. This idea, known as a Markov chain, wasn’t born in a Silicon Valley lab but emerged from a bitter feud between two Russian mathematicians over the nature of free will more than a century ago.
- AI
- Andrey Markov
- Claude Shannon
- computer science
- dependent events
- ENIAC
- Eugene Onegin
- free will
- history of mathematics
- independent events
- John von Neumann
- large language models
- Larry Page
- law of large numbers
- Manhattan Project
- Markov chain
- Monte Carlo method
- neutron simulation
- nuclear bomb
- PageRank
- Pavel Nekrasov
- predictive text
- probability theory
- Russian history
- search engine algorithm
- Sergey Brin
- shuffling cards
- Solitaire
- Stanislaw Ulam
- statistics
- text analysis
- veritasium
- Yahoo
- youtube
