what an attractor is all about

It appears that the eigenvalue distribution is an attractor. That is, for a broad range of different input models (distributions of the random matrices), you get the same output--the same eigenvalue distribution--as the sample size becomes large. This is interesting, and it's hard to prove. (At least, it seemed hard to prove the last time I looked at it, about 20 years ago, and I'm sure that it's even harder to make advances in the field today!)

Now, to return to the news article. If the...