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Mathematical Foundations

UCSD Psychology

bossanova verifies its mathematical correctness through property-based testing: every algorithm must satisfy formal theorems for any valid input, checked automatically across thousands of random test cases. This section teaches the math behind those theorems.

You don’t need a strong linear algebra or statistics background. Each page starts with concrete examples and builds intuition before introducing formal statements. Code cells let you see the math in action.

How the pages connect

The dependency graph below shows how mathematical domains build on each other. An arrow from A to B means “understanding A helps with B.”

Reading guide

Pick a path based on what you want to understand:

GoalPages to read
“How does OLS work?”Linear AlgebraOLS
“What are p-values doing?”OLSInference
“Are my results reliable?”OLSDiagnostics
“What are marginal means?”OLSInferenceMarginal Means
“How do mixed models work?”Linear AlgebraOLSMixed Models
“Marginal vs conditional?”Mixed ModelsMarginal vs Conditional
“Bootstrap and permutation”OLSResampling
“Everything, start to finish”Read pages in order, top to bottom

Theorem coverage by page

PageTheoremsDomain
Linear AlgebraLA.1–5, LA.7Matrix decompositions
Ordinary Least SquaresOLS.1, OLS.4–7Normal equations, hat matrix
Generalized Linear ModelsWLS.1–3Weighted LS, IRLS
Statistical InferenceINF.1–2, INF.4–5SE, CI, hypothesis tests
DiagnosticsDX.1–4Leverage, influence
Marginal MeansEMM.1–2EMMs, variance propagation
Mixed ModelsLMM.1–5PLS, random effects
Marginal vs ConditionalMAR.1–7Link scale effects
ResamplingBS.1–4Bootstrap, permutation
Theorem ReferenceAllFormal statements