Normal Numbers and the Normality Measure

In a paper published in this journal, Alon, Kohayakawa, Mauduit, Moreira and Rödl proved that the minimal possible value of the normality measure of an N-element binary sequence satisfies \begin{equation*} \biggl( \frac{1}{2} + o(1) \biggr) \log_2 N \leq \min_{E_N \in \{0,1\}^N} \mathcal{N}(E_N) \leq 3 N^{1/3} (\log N)^{2/3} \end{equation*} for sufficiently large N, and conjectured that the lower bound can be improved to some power of N. In this note it is observed that a construction of Levin of a normal number having small discrepancy gives a construction of a binary sequence EN with (EN) = O((log N)2), thus disproving the conjecture above.

A Non-Normality Measure of the Condition Number for Monitoring and Control

Because the behavior of the condition number can have highly steep and multi-modal structure, optimal control and monitoring problems based on the condition number cannot be easily solved. In this paper, a minimization problem is formulated for κ2(P), the condition number of an eigensystem (P) of a matrix in terms of the L2 norm. A new non-normality measure is shown to exist that guarantees small values for the condition number. In addition, this measure can be minimized by proper selection of controller and observer gains. Application to the design of well-conditioned controller and observer-based monitors is illustrated.