Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From Computational Complexity
A Game Theory Conference! That sounds like fun!
Bill: Lance just came back from Games, a conference on Game Theory. Darling: That sound like fun! From what you tell me there is some nice math behind Monopoly...
From Computational Complexity
The College Issues that are talked about/College issues that are important
The following college issues get lots of attention: Admissions- high school students PLAN to do things JUST to get them into an elite college. For example nobody...
From Computational Complexity
Solution to the Alice-Bob-Box problem.
In my last blog I solved one problem and asked another (when will it end!). Damien Roberts provided an answer in the comments to the last blog, so kudos to Damien...
From Computational Complexity
Solution to the infinite hat problem/a point/a new problem
In my last post I asked the following question (I've shortened it here but its the same really.) An infinite number of people, labelled 1,2,3,... have hats on ...
From Computational Complexity
An infinite hat problem and later a point
Problem: There are an infinite number of people. They are labelled 1,2,3,... (I am not a number, I am a free man!) There is the Master who I call The Master....
From Computational Complexity
Is determining if a poly over a finite field is 1-1 hard? Sure seems so.
When I teach cryptography to High School students I begin with shift and linear ciphers which are x --> x+s mod 26 (s is a shift, x is a letter of the alphabet...
From Computational Complexity
There is now a Bounded Discrete Envy Free Cake Cutting Protocol!
Lance: Bill, there is a new result on cake cutting that was presented at STOC! Do you want to blog about it? Bill: Do snakes have hips! Does a chicken have lips...
From Computational Complexity
There is now a Bounded Discrete Envy Free Cake Cutting Protocol!
Lance: Bill, there is a new result on cake cutting that was presented at STOC! Do you want to blog about it? Bill: Do snakes have hips! Does a chicken have lips...
From Computational Complexity
When does n divide a_n? The answer, though you already know it. The Point, though its not as strong as I wanted. Oh well.
In my last post When does n divide a_n? I gave a sequence: a(1)=0 a(2)=2 a(3)=3 for all n ≥ 4 a(n) = a(n-2) + a(n-3) and I noted that for 2 ≤ n ≤ 23 it looked...
From Computational Complexity
When does n divide a_n in this sequence?
Consider the following sequence: a(1)=0 a(2)=2 a(3)=3 for all n ≥ 4 a(n) = a(n-2)+a(n-3) Here is a table of a(n) for 2 ≤ n ≤ 23 n 2 3 4 ...
From Computational Complexity
What do Evolution, Same Sex Marriage, and Abstract Set Theory have in Common?
(This post is based on articles from 2012 so it may no longer be true. Also- to be fair- I tried finding stuff on the web BY the people who object to our children...
From Computational Complexity
New Ramsey Result that will be hard to verify but Ronald Graham things its right which is good enough for me.
If you finitely color the natural numbers there will be a monochromatic solution to x+2y+3z - 5w = 0 There is a finite coloring of the natural numbers such that...
From Computational Complexity
My third post on Gathering for Gardners
(Workshop for women in computational topology in August: see here. For a post about these kinds of workshops see here.) (I have already posted twice on stuffhere...
From Computational Complexity
Does this leak information?
Here are four fictional stories though inspired by real world events or TV shows (I forget which is which). My question is, was a confidence broken or was some...
From Computational Complexity
Math lessons from the Donald Trump Nomination (non-political)
There may be articles titled Donald Trump and the Failure of Democracy. This is NOT one of them. This is about some math questions. I drew upon many sources but...
From Computational Complexity
Some more bits from the Gathering for Gardner
I posted about the Gathering for Gardner conference and about some of the talks I saw here. Today I continue with a few more talks. Playing Penney's game with...
From Computational Complexity
Some short bits from the Gathering for Gardner Conference
I attended G4G12 (Gathering for Gardner) a conference that meets every 2 years (though the gap between the first and second was three years) to celebrate the work...
From Computational Complexity
Its hard to tell if a problem is hard. Is this one hard?
Here is a problem I heard about at the Gathering for Gardner. Is it hard? easy? boring? interesting? I don't know. Let N={1,2,3,...} PROBLEM: parameters are s...
From Computational Complexity
What Rock Band Name would you choose?
I looked up my colleague Dave Mount on Wikipedia and found that he was a drummer for the glam rock band Mud. He informed me that (a) on Wikipedia he is David and...
From Computational Complexity