My daughter learned about square roots and she did her homework taking those roots using a calculator. She asked me how to compute the square root without...
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Jan 16, 2007 12:59 pm
It is a conference ritual as far back as I remember. Your arrive at the conference and receive the proceedings, all the papers to be presented at the...
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Jan 15, 2007 1:26 pm
Richard Ladner wants me to remind my readers about the SIGACT student research competition. From his chair letter in the last SIGACT news. There will be a new...
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Jan 12, 2007 11:44 am
A cute problem that I got off Steve Fenner's door that he got from FOM . Let x and y be two integers with 1<x<y and x+y100. Sally is given only their sum x+y...
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Jan 11, 2007 2:20 pm
While Luca suffers in Hong Kong, I am visiting beautiful Columbia, South Carolina. (The ribs are better here) Next week a day in Bloomington, Indiana and the ...
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Jan 10, 2007 4:27 pm
Why do so many scientists wear glasses? Thirty years ago this question was essentially equivalent to "Why so many scientists have bad eyesight?" I don't have a...
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Jan 9, 2007 3:27 am
Suresh and Jeff cover the SODA Conference currently meeting in New Orleans. Suresh talked about a lecture given by Luc Devroye giving techniques that might...
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Jan 8, 2007 3:36 am
A graduate student asks What should I wear for an academic job interview? Most computer scientists won't notice and will completely forget what you wore when...
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Jan 5, 2007 2:37 pm
Jan van Leeuwen runs down many of the anniversaries coming up this year. Reading your post 2006 Year in Review , I was reminded of a number of memorable things...
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Jan 4, 2007 12:20 pm
An economist, a physicist and a computer scientist were sitting at a table. A true story, not the beginning of a joke. One of them said We were solving...
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Jan 3, 2007 2:55 pm
The New York Times reports on a possible merger of the two major US satellite radio companies. This would resolve one of the great dilemmas as XM carries the...
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Jan 2, 2007 1:35 pm
As we begin January so begins the hiring season. In January CS departments start sifting through candidates deciding whom to bring in for interviews. Don't...
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Dec 28, 2006 5:18 pm
The paper of the year goes to Settling the Complexity of 2-Player Nash-Equilibrium by Xi Chen and Xiaotie Deng which finished characterizing the complexity of...
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Dec 27, 2006 3:32 pm
As we start thinking about our Theoretical Foundations proposals, a few related items from the theory community. Joan Feigenbaum and Michael Mitzenmacher have...
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Dec 26, 2006 2:19 pm
From about early December to late January the academic world takes a little breather as many universities end their fall quarters and start their spring. Many...
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Dec 22, 2006 8:24 pm
December 22, 2006 Dear Recruiting Committee: George Henry is among the top fifty computational complexity theorists on the market this year and you should...
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Dec 21, 2006 8:53 pm
Last month the University of Chicago faculty received an email from new president Robert Zimmer and soon-to-be-provost Thomas Rosenbaum about discussions on...
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Dec 20, 2006 9:39 pm
Can a CS degree propel you to a major acting role on a popular new TV series? Worked for this person . I heard a complaint that in the movie Deja Vu they used ...
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Dec 19, 2006 4:30 pm
Now that most of the FCRC Deadlines have passed, I would again suggest that you post your papers on a public archive like the Electronic Colloquium on...
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Dec 18, 2006 2:30 pm
Chicago will be invaded by economists in early January, coming to the American Economic Association39;s Annual Meeting . At the same time the mathematicians meet...
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Dec 14, 2006 10:19 pm
You can tell a lot about a field by how researchers motivate their results in papers and talks. Pure mathematics often gives little or no motivation starting a...
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Dec 13, 2006 5:40 pm
The NSF has a new Theoretical Foundations solicitation. Due date is February 19. Theory of Computing has its own component within this cluster. But not all NSF...
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Dec 12, 2006 11:29 pm
In the ninth Complexitycast , Bill Gasarch and I answer reader's questions . MP3 (25 minutes, 4.3MB) In the podcast we mentioned posts on finding jobs and the...
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Dec 12, 2006 12:01 am
This past year I listed my favorite computational complexity theorems from 1975-1984. Alternation (Chandra-Kozen-Stockmeyer) Relativization...
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Dec 10, 2006 4:57 pm
Standa Zivny asks I'd like to ask you about CLIQUESAT reduction. The reduction 3-SATCLIQUE is a standard one from undergrad course. Since SAT is NP-Complete,...
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Dec 8, 2006 9:01 pm
An Off-Broadway tale of beauty and the geeks . Vickie Martin is ber-popular. She's also wicked smart. Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen demonstrates that chaos...
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Dec 7, 2006 4:07 pm
The Church-Turing thesis roughly states that everything computable is computable by a Turing machine. I strongly believe the Church-Turing thesis and have...
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Dec 6, 2006 12:17 pm
At a community concert last Sunday the host said he was pleased with the attendance given the competition with the Bears game. He also said someone had...
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Dec 5, 2006 11:27 am
How do you take a twenty page research paper and condense its essence into a few words? A couple of title don'ts with some (made up) examples. Starting a title...
803
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Dec 4, 2006 3:26 pm
Friday morning I IM'd a co-author in India, in the evening I Skyped to Hong Kong. A Dutch professor emailed me about a paper we have with co-authors in Russia...