mathematics

Louxin Zhang

Louxin Zhang is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Louxin Zhang rather than just read about it. In short: Louxin Zhang is a Canadian computational biologist and mathematician. He is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the National University of Singapore.

Key takeaways

Louxin Zhang belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Louxin Zhang to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Louxin Zhang from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Louxin Zhang is a Canadian computational biologist and mathematician. He is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the National University of Singapore. His research interests include computational biology, bioinformatics, and discrete mathematics.His work has examined topics in combinatorial semigroup theory as well as mathematical approaches to phylogenetic trees and phylogenetic networks. Zhang has also contributed to research on spaced seeds used in sequence comparison methods within bioinformatics.

Early life Louxin Zhang was raised in Luoyang, Henan, China. He completed his undergraduate and master's degrees in mathematics at Lanzhou University. He later moved to Canada to pursue doctoral studies in computer science at the University of Waterloo. Zhang received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Waterloo with a dissertation titled "Emulations and Embeddings of Meshes of Trees and Hypercubes of Cliques.

Career After completing postdoctoral research under Ming Li, Zhang began his independent research career in 1996 at the Institute of Systems Sciences, now part of the Institute for Infocomm Research. In 1997, he was awarded a three-year Lee Kuan Yew Postdoctoral Fellowship. During his research career, Zhang has worked on topics in theoretical computer science and computational biology. His studies have introduced the application of string rewriting techniques to the word problem and conjugacy problem in special monoids. He has also conducted research on phylogenetic trees and phylogenetic networks, including work on the tree component decomposition method developed with collaborators. Zhang’s work has additionally examined evolutionary models involving gene loss, gene duplication, and incomplete lineage sorting. The technique has been used to study problems related to tree containment, the exact and asymptotic counting of tree-child networks, and methods for inferring minimum phylogenies. His research has also addressed spaced seeds for sequence comparison and methods for reconstructing ancestral genome sequences.

Selected publications Zhang has authored and co-authored a number of publications in the fields of computational biology, phylogenetics, and algorithm design. Selected works include:

Zhang L. 1991. Conjugacy in special monoids. Journal of Algebra 143: 487-497. Zhang, Louxin (November 2011). "From Gene Trees to Species Trees II: Species Tree Inference by Minimizing Deep Coalescence Events". IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. 8 (6): 1685–1691. Bibcode:2011ITCBB...8.1685Z. doi:10.1109/TCBB.2011.83. ISSN 1557-9964. PMID 21576759. S2CID 226872. Zheng, Yu; Zhang, Louxin (2017-08-17). "Reconciliation With Nonbinary Gene Trees Revisited". Journal of the ACM. 64 (4): 24:1–24:28. doi:10.1145/3088512. ISSN 0004-5411. S2CID 7715566. Gunawan, Andreas D. M.; DasGupta, Bhaskar; Zhang, Louxin (2017-02-01). "A decomposition theorem and two algorithms for reticulation-visible networks". Information and Computation. 252: 161–175. doi:10.1016/j.ic.2016.11.001. ISSN 0890-5401. Zhang, Louxin; Abhari, Niloufar; Colijn, Caroline; Wu, Yufeng (2023-01-03). "A Fast and Scalable Method for Inferring Phylogenetic Networks from Trees by Aligning Lineage Taxon Strings". arXiv:2301.00992 [q-bio.PE].

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Louxin Zhang

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Louxin Zhang claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Louxin Zhang before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Louxin Zhang ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Louxin Zhang

In research: Louxin Zhang appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Louxin Zhang in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Louxin Zhang is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Applied mathematicians, Computational biologists, Living people, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Louxin Zhang outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Louxin Zhang in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Louxin Zhang means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Louxin Zhang out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Louxin Zhang in simple terms?

Louxin Zhang is a Canadian computational biologist and mathematician. He is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the National University of Singapore.

Why does Louxin Zhang matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Louxin Zhang?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Louxin Zhang.