Epictetus comments on Beyond Statistics 101 - Less Wrong

19 Post author: JonahSinick 26 June 2015 10:24AM

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Comment author: btrettel 27 June 2015 12:41:29PM *  2 points [-]

This is a great point. Other than fairly easy geometric and time symmetries, do you have any advice or know of any resources which might be helpful towards finding these symmetries?

Here's what I do know: Sometimes you can recognize these symmetries by analyzing a model differential equation. Here's a book on the subject that I haven't read, but might read in the future. My PhD advisor tells me I already know one reliable way to find these symmetries (e.g., like how to find the change of variables used here), so reading this would be a poor use of time in his view. This approach also requires knowing a fair bit more about a phenomena than just which variables it depends on.

Comment author: Epictetus 27 June 2015 04:40:35PM 3 points [-]

The book you linked is the sort of thing I had in mind. The historical motivation for Lie groups was to develop a systematic way to use symmetry to attack differential equations.