Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2014
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Regression On Arithmetic Progressions
How far can trivial ideas go? Klaus Roth is famous for many results, but two stand out above all others. One sets limits on Diophantine approximations to algebraic numbers, and the other sets limits on how dense a set can be…
From Computational Complexity
Contribute to the Martin Gardner Centennial
Dana Richards emailed us about a place to write how Martin Gardner influenced you. You can leave such comments here. I left a comment there, but I expand it for this blog entry. When I got interested in mathematics in highhere…
From Schneier on Security
CSEC Surveillance Analysis of IP and User Data
The most recent story from the Snowden documents is from Canada: it claims the CSEC (Communications Security Establishment Canada) used airport Wi-Fi information to track travelers. That's not really true. What the top-secret…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 3 February 2014
Starting the second week of a new semester today. Last week was interesting. It was a major adjustment because with a new group of students I had to reset my expectations. I had to transition from a group of students who hadI…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Facebook Ethnographically
On a report that has gone viral. Teens are leaving Facebook as their parents send them friend requests. " ... Comprehensive study has found teens are moving to services like Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp and are not concerned…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Analytics
In CIO Insight:The future of analytics Is Streaming in the Cloud:" ... Business analytics is becoming more prescriptive and making information available in real-time so it can be directly applied to a specific transaction orBusiness…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Discern Analytics
Just brought to my attention, with some former colleagues in its management: Discern Analytics. They write:" ... We love data. Massive amounts of it.Our cloud-based data analytics platform allows us to collect and organize data…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Fair Use
In TechDirt: Good extended piece on recent hearings on copyright and fair use. A concept often made use of in this blog. " .... It is twenty years since the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its landmark decision…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Getting People to Share Knowledge
Big issue in the enterprise. A good gook at the topic. Actual implementation is tougher." ... 9 steps to get people to share knowledge ... From launching a community of practice through to e-learning events to embedding knowledge…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Why Counting CS as a Foreign Language Credit is a Bad Idea
Sometimes what seems like a very good idea in principle, even a good idea put forward with the best intensions, can turn out to be a very bad idea in practice. This is definitely the case with the idea of allow students to count…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Onboarding Users
On how to onboard new users. Its harder that you think. Different users have very different expectations of how they expect to be introduced to your great idea. The comments contain additional useful examples and ideas.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Seeking Data Cubes
Data Cubes came up in a meeting yesterday and though I knew in general what they were, I sought out a more general and useful definition. I found this. Comments welcome.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Simplify Outdated Corporate Processes
In the HBR, where registration for full text is now required. Yes, simplify is always good to consider. " ... rebuilding your processes from the ground up with a focus on simplicity is a powerful way to improve your competitiveness…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predicting Product Success
Predicting Product Launch success. We worked on this using a number of simulation based methods. Interesting case study here: " ... Back in May, Kaggle ran a competition with hack/reduce and dunnhumby focused on using big…