Optimizing Spark
Last edited: August 8, 2025In the event your domain knowledge can help you make decisions about how spark load-balances or stripes data across worker nodes.
Persistence
“you should store this data in faster/slower memory”
MEMORY_ONLY, MEMORY_ONLY_SER, MEMORY_AND_DISK, MEMORY_AND_DISK_SER, DISK_ONLY
rdd.persist(StorageLevel.MEMORY_AND_DISK)
# ... do work ...
rdd.unpersist()
Parallel Programming

option
Last edited: August 8, 2025options are derivatives which gives you the permission to make a transaction at a particular date.
There are two main types of options:
- call: gives permission to buy a security on or before the “exercise” date
- puts: gives permission to sell a security on or before the “exercise” date
For this article, we will define \(S_{t}\) to be the stock price at the time \(t\), \(K\) as the option’s strike price, \(C_{t}\) to be the price of the “call” option, and \(P_{t}\) to be the price of the “put” option at strike price \(K\); lastly \(T\) we define as the maturity date.
Option (MDP)
Last edited: August 8, 2025an Option (MDP) represents a high level collection of actions. Big Picture: abstract away your big policy into \(n\) small policies, and value-iterate over expected values of the big policies.
Markov Option
A Markov Option is given by a triple \((I, \pi, \beta)\)
- \(I \subset S\), the states from which the option maybe started
- \(S \times A\), the MDP during that option
- \(\beta(s)\), the probability of the option terminating at state \(s\)
one-step options
You can develop one-shot options, which terminates immediate after one action with underlying probability
Optogenetics
Last edited: August 8, 2025Optogenetics are a process of neurology circuit investigations:
- every neuron which expresses as specific change becomes sensitive to light
- therefore, you can shine a light on the mouse’s brain to control it
This uses a set of molecules named opsins.
Oracle Polynomial Time
Last edited: August 8, 2025Recall: Oracle Turing Machines is a machine which has oracle \(B \subseteq \Gamma^{*}\) which lets you ask “if \(z \in B\), then do something, otherwise do something else” and check that in ONE STEP.
We have:
\begin{equation} P^{B} = \qty {L \mid L \text{{ can be decided by a polynomial-time TM with oracle for $B$ }}} \end{equation}
For example \(P^{\text{SAT}}\) are languages we can decide in polynomial time once we have an oracle in SAT, and \(P^{\text{NP}}\) are languages decidable by some Oracle Polynomial Time \(TM\) for some \(B \in NP\).
