pp-adic properties of coefficients of weakly holomorphic modular forms

We examine the Fourier coefficients of modular forms in a canonical basis for the spaces of weakly holomorphic modular forms of weights 4, 6, 8, 10, and 14, and show that these coefficients are often highly divisible by the primes 2, 3, and 5.Comment: 16 page

Zeros of modular forms of half integral weight

We study canonical bases for spaces of weakly holomorphic modular forms of level 4 and weights in $\mathbb{Z}+\frac{1}{2}$ and show that almost all modular forms in these bases have the property that many of their zeros in a fundamental domain for $\Gamma_0(4)$ lie on a lower boundary arc of the fundamental domain. Additionally, we show that at many places on this arc, the generating function for Hurwitz class numbers is equal to a particular mock modular Poincar\'{e} series, and show that for positive weights, a particular set of Fourier coefficients of cusp forms in this canonical basis cannot simultaneously vanish

Monetary Policy and Uncertainty

Central banks must cope with considerable uncertainty about what will happen in the economy when formulating monetary policy. This article describes the different types of uncertainty that arise and looks at examples of uncertainty that the Bank has recently encountered. It then reviews the strategies employed by the Bank to deal with this problem. The other articles in this special issue focus on three of these major strategies.

Zeros of weakly holomorphic modular forms of levels 2 and 3

Let $M_k^\sharp(N)$ be the space of weakly holomorphic modular forms for $\Gamma_0(N)$ that are holomorphic at all cusps except possibly at $\infty$. We study a canonical basis for $M_k^\sharp(2)$ and $M_k^\sharp(3)$ and prove that almost all modular forms in this basis have the property that the majority of their zeros in a fundamental domain lie on a lower boundary arc of the fundamental domain.Comment: Added a reference, corrected typo

An asymptotic sampling formula for the coalescent with Recombination

Ewens sampling formula (ESF) is a one-parameter family of probability distributions with a number of intriguing combinatorial connections. This elegant closed-form formula first arose in biology as the stationary probability distribution of a sample configuration at one locus under the infinite-alleles model of mutation. Since its discovery in the early 1970s, the ESF has been used in various biological applications, and has sparked several interesting mathematical generalizations. In the population genetics community, extending the underlying random-mating model to include recombination has received much attention in the past, but no general closed-form sampling formula is currently known even for the simplest extension, that is, a model with two loci. In this paper, we show that it is possible to obtain useful closed-form results in the case the population-scaled recombination rate $\rho$ is large but not necessarily infinite. Specifically, we consider an asymptotic expansion of the two-locus sampling formula in inverse powers of $\rho$ and obtain closed-form expressions for the first few terms in the expansion. Our asymptotic sampling formula applies to arbitrary sample sizes and configurations.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-AAP646 the Annals of Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Computational inference beyond Kingman's coalescent

Full likelihood inference under Kingman's coalescent is a computationally challenging problem to which importance sampling (IS) and the product of approximate conditionals (PAC) method have been applied successfully. Both methods can be expressed in terms of families of intractable conditional sampling distributions (CSDs), and rely on principled approximations for accurate inference. Recently, more general Λ- and Ξ- coalescents have been observed to provide better modelling ts to some genetic data sets. We derive families of approximate CSDs for nite sites Λ- and Ξ-coalescents, and use them to obtain "approximately optimal" IS and PAC algorithms for Λ coalescents, yielding substantial gains in efficiency over existing methods