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A polynomial that is a statistical prism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Mike Osborne  and
Mark Osborne
Mike Osborne
Affiliation:
HRPP, 6-3, Gulf International Bank, Al Dowali Building, 3 Palace Avenue, PO Box 1017, Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain. email: mosborne@batelco.com.bh
Mark Osborne
Affiliation:
Lindy Boggs Center, Dept of Chemical Engineering, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118 USA. email: mosborne@tulane.edu
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Extract

The roots of a polynomial can be represented as points in the complex plane. The time value of money (TVM) equation that is commonly used in finance is a polynomial equation. (See the appendix for a short description of the TVM equation and an example of its use in finance.) In [1] and [2] it is shown that concepts from financial mathematics can be obtained from the pattern of the roots of the TVM equation. The concepts are given in terms of distances between the roots and other salient points in the plane. This note shows that this particular polynomial, and the technique, can be applied more generally. When a series of data is fed into the coefficients of the polynomial, the mean and standard deviation of the data are seen in the complex plane as combinations of distances between the roots and other salient points. The results are aesthetically pleasing as well as mathematically interesting.

Type
Articles
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 87 , Issue 508 , March 2003 , pp. 76 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 2003

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