Sign variation, the Grassmannian, and total positivity
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
The <i>totally nonnegative Grassmannian</i> is the set of $k$-dimensional subspaces $V$ of &#8477;<sup>$n$</sup> whose nonzero Plücker coordinates (i.e. $k &times; k$ minors of a $k &times; n$ matrix whose rows span $V$) all have the same sign. Total positivity has been much studied in the past two decades from an algebraic, combinatorial, and topological perspective, but first arose in the theory of oscillations in analysis. It was in the latter context that Gantmakher and Krein (1950) and Schoenberg and Whitney (1951) independently showed that a subspace $V$ is totally nonnegative iff every vector in $V$, when viewed as a sequence of $n$ numbers and ignoring any zeros, changes sign fewer than $k$ times. We generalize this result, showing that the vectors in $V$ change sign fewer than $l$ times iff certain sequences of the Plücker coordinates of some <i>generic perturbation</i> of $V$ change sign fewer than $l &minus; k &plus; 1$ times. We give an algorithm which constructs such a generic perturbation. Also, we determine the <i>positroid cell</i> of each totally nonnegative $V$ from sign patterns of vectors in $V$. These results generalize to oriented matroids. La <i>grassmannienne totalement non négative</i> est l’ensemble des sous-espaces $V$ de &#8477;<sup>$n$</sup> de dimension $k$ dont coordonnées plückeriennes non nulles (mineurs de l’ordre $k$ d’une matrice $k &times; n$ dont les lignes engendrent $V$) ont toutes le même signe. La positivité totale a beaucoup été étudiée durant les deux dernières décennies d’une perspective algébrique, combinatoire, et topologique, mais a pris naissance dans la théorie analytique des oscillations. C’est dans ce contexte que Gantmakher et Krein (1950) et Schoenberg et Whitney (1951) ont indépendamment démontré qu’un sous-espace $V$ est totalement non négatif ssi chaque vecteur dans $V$, lorsque considéré comme une séquence de $n$ nombres et dont on ignore les zéros, change de signe moins de $k$ fois. Nous généralisons ce résultat, démontrant que les vecteurs dans $V$ changent de signe moins de $l$ fois ssi certaines séquences des coordonnées plückeriennes d’une <i>perturbation générique</i> de $V$ changent de signe moins de $l &minus; k &plus; 1$ fois. Un algorithme construisant une telle perturbation générique est obtenu. De plus, nous déterminons la <i>cellule positroïde</i> de chaque $V$ totalement non négatif à partir des données de signe des vecteurs dans $V$. Ces résultats sont valides pour les matroïdes orientés.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it