Let $p^{\text{'}}$ and $q^{\text{'}}$ be points in ${ℝ}^n$. Write $p^{\text{'}}\sim q^{\text{'}}$ if $p^{\text{'}}-q^{\text{'}}$ is a multiple of $(1,...,1)$. Two different points $p$ and $q$ in ${ℝ}^n/\sim$ uniquely determine a tropical line $L(p,q)$ passing through them and stable under small perturbations. This line is a balanced unrooted semi-labeled tree on $n$ leaves. It is also a metric graph. If some representatives $p^{\text{'}}$ and $q^{\text{'}}$ of $p$ and $q$ are the first and second columns of some real normal idempotent order $n$ matrix $A$, we prove that the tree $L(p,q)$ is described by a matrix $F$, easily obtained from $A$. We also...

Point estimators based on minimization of information-theoretic divergences between empirical and hypothetical distribution induce a problem when working with continuous families which are measure-theoretically orthogonal with the family of empirical distributions. In this case, the $\phi$-divergence is always equal to its upper bound, and the minimum $\phi$-divergence estimates are trivial. Broniatowski and Vajda [3] proposed several modifications of the minimum divergence rule to provide a solution...

 Let $F_i=1,...,N$ be affine mappings of ${ℝ}^n$. It is well known that if there exists j ≤ 1 such that for every ${\sigma }_1,...,{\sigma }_j\in 1,...,N$ the composition (1) $F_{\sigma 1}\circ ...\circ F_{{\sigma }_j}$ is a contraction, then for any infinite sequence ${\sigma }_1,{\sigma }_2,...\in 1,...,N$ and any $z\in {ℝ}^n$, the sequence (2)$F_{\sigma 1}\circ ...\circ F_{{\sigma }_n}\left(z\right)$ is convergent and the limit is independent of z. We prove the following converse result: If (2) is convergent for any $z\in {ℝ}^n$ and any $\sigma ={\sigma }_1,{\sigma }_2,...$ belonging to some subshift Σ of N symbols (and the limit is independent of z), then there exists j ≥ 1 such that for every $\sigma ={\sigma }_1,{\sigma }_2,...\in \Sigma$ the composition (1) is a contraction....

1. Introduction. Let p be a prime number and ${\mathbb{Z}}_p$ the ring of p-adic integers. Let k be a finite extension of the rational number field ℚ, $k_{\infty }$ a ${\mathbb{Z}}_p$-extension of k, $k_n$ the nth layer of $k_{\infty }/k$, and $A_n$ the p-Sylow subgroup of the ideal class group of $k_n$. Iwasawa proved the following well-known theorem about the order $A_n$ of $A_n$: Theorem A (Iwasawa). Let $k_{\infty }/k$ be a ${\mathbb{Z}}_p$-extension and $A_n$ the p-Sylow subgroup of the ideal class group of $k_n$, where $k_n$ is the $n$th layer of $k_{\infty }/k$. Then there exist integers $\lambda =\lambda (k_{\infty }/k)\ge 0$, $\mu =\mu (k_{\infty }/k)\ge 0$, $\nu =\nu (k_{\infty }/k)$, and n₀ ≥ 0...

The note develops results from [5] where an invariance under the Möbius transform mapping the upper halfplane onto itself of the Weinstein operator $W_k:=\Delta +\frac{k}{x_n}\frac{\partial }{\partial x_n}$ on ${ℝ}^n$ is proved. In this note there is shown that in the cases $k\ne 0$, $k\ne 2$ no other transforms of this kind exist and for case $k=2$, all such transforms are described.

An efficient estimator for the expectation $\int fP̣$ is constructed, where $P$ is a Gibbs random field, and $f$ is a local statistic, i. e. a functional depending on a finite number of coordinates. The estimator coincides with the empirical estimator under the conditions stated in Greenwood and Wefelmeyer [6], and covers the known special cases, namely the von Mises statistic for the i.i.d. underlying fields and the case of one-dimensional Markov chains.