It is shown there that an infinite connected planar graph with a uniform upper bound on vertex degree and rapidly decreasing Green's function (relative to the simple random walk) has infinitely many pairwise finitely-intersecting geodesic rays starting at each vertex. We then demonstrate the existence of nonconstant bounded harmonic functions on the graph.

Let G be a countable group and u a symmetric and aperiodic probability measure on G . We show that G is amenable if and only if every positive superharmonic function is nearly constant on certain arbitrarily large subsets of G. We use this to show that if G is amenable, then the Martin boundary of G contains a fixed point. More generally, we show that G is amenable if and only if each member of a certain family of G-spaces contains a fixed point.

Given a simple random walk on an undirected connected graph, the commute time of the vertices x and y is defined as C(x,y) = ExTy+EyTx. We give a new proof, based on the optional sampling theorem for martingales, of the formula C(x,y) = 1/(Π(y)e(y,x)) in terms of the escape probability e(y,x ) (the probability that once the random walk leaves x, it hits y before it returns to x) and the stationary distribution Π(·). We use this formula for C(x,y) to show that the maximum commute time among all barbell-type graphs in N vertices is attained for the lollipop graph and its value is O[(4N3)/27]

Let p be a quadratic polynomial over a splitting field K, and S be the set of zeros of p. We define an associative and commutative binary relation on G ≡ K ∪ {∞ } -S so that every Moebius transformation with fixed point set S is of the form x plus" c for some c. This permits an easy proof of Aitken acceleration as well as generalizations of known results concerning Newton's method, the secant method, Halley's method, and higher order methods. If K is equipped with a norm, then we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the iterates of a Moebius transformation m to converge (necessarily to one of its fixed points) in the norm topology. Finally, we show that if the fixed points of m are distinct and the iterates of m converge, then Newton's method converges with order 2, and higher order generalizations converge accordingly.

The curvatures of four mutually tangent circles with disjoint interior form what is called a Descartes quadruple. The four smallest curvatures of circles in an Apollonian circle packing form what is called a root Descartes quadruple and, if the curvatures are relatively prime, we say that it is a primitive root quadruple. We prove a conjecture of Mallows by giving a closed formula for the number of primitive root quadruples with minimum curvature -n. An Apollonian circle packing is called strongly integral if every circle has curvature times center a Gaussian integer. The set of all such circle packings for which the center of the largest circle is in the unit square and for which curvature plus curvature times center is congruent to 1 modulo 2 is called the standard super-gasket. These centers are in oneto-one correspondence with the primitive root quadruples and exhibit certain symmetries first conjectured by Mallows. We prove these symmetries; in particular, the centers are symmetric around y = x if n is odd, around x = 1/2 if n is an odd multiple of 2, and around y = 1/2 if n is a multiple of 4.

We classify, under reasonable assumptions, all differentiable functions f for which the 'secant method' [xf(y)- yf(x)]/[f(y)- f(x)] is continuous and associative. Further, we classify all differentiable functions for which the similar type of addition xf(y) + yf(x) is associative.

We investigate several of the many interesting properties of the title sequence. In particular, we focus on the combinatorics of the sequence (e.g., what the numbers count), some parallels with the Fibonacci sequence, some connections with Minkowski's question-mark function, and some geometric aspects.

Sums across the rows of Pascal's triangle yield powers of 2 while certain diagonal sums yield the Fibonacci numbers which are asymptotic to powers of the golden ratio. Sums across other diagonals yield quantities asymptotic to powers of c where c depends on the direction of the diagonals. We generalize this to the continuous case. Using the gamma function, we generalize the binomial coefficients to real variables and thus form a generalization of Pascal's triangle. Integration of these generalized binomial coefficients over various families of lines and curves yield quantities asymptotic to powers of some c where c can be determined explicitly. Finally, we revisit the discrete case.

Newton's method applied to a quadratic polynomial converges rapidly to a root for almost all starting points and almost all coefficients. This can be understood in terms of an associative binary operation arising from 2 x 2 matrices. Here we develop an analogous theory based on 3 x 3 matrices which yields a two-variable generally convergent algorithm for cubics.

Lester Ford introduced Ford Circles in 1938 in order to geometrically understand the approximation of an irrational number by rational numbers. We shall construct Ford circles by a recursive geometric procedure and by a (well-known) parameterization by rational numbers. We introduce a new parameterization in terms of relatively prime integer solutions of (a + b + c)² = a² + b² + c².