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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
Guest post on Tom Cover by Yoav Freund
(Details on registration and student travel awards for the 2012 IEEE Conference on Computational Complexity in Porto available at here. New York Area Theory...
From Computational Complexity
Trick question or Stupid question?
April fool days Blogs or Columns may present an open problem as closed, present a closed problems as open, make us wonder if it's a joke or not, (Lance...
From Computational Complexity
"Math was a mistake- I made it too hard"
(REMINDER- IF you are a STUDENT who wants to GOTO STOC 2012 but needs money to go then you should GOTO the STOC 2012 homepage and click on Travel Support. Deadline...
From Computational Complexity
What is an Elegant Proof?
What is an elegant proof? I do not know and I doubt it can be well defined; however, we all know it when we see it. I welcome comments on the topic; however, Ihere...
From Computational Complexity
Judea Pearl wins Turing Award
(In this age of lightenting fast communication I suspect you all already know that Judea Pearl won the Turing Award. Even so, it is worth posting about.) Judea...
From Computational Complexity
How do legit fields of knowledge decide between competing fields? How does Astrology?
Euler was born April 15, 1707. Hence by the Western Astrology that we all ignore he is an Aries. However, I recently heard about another way (also worth ignoring)...
From Computational Complexity
When a+b is harder than b+a
Is 1+4 a harder calculation than 4+1? It may be if you are 2+3 years old. I asked my 7-2 year old great niece Noelle the following sequence of questions. I include...
From Computational Complexity
The Erdos- de Bruijn theorem
The mathematician Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn passed away on Feb 17, 2012. The number of things named after him is quite large. I will discuss the Erdos-de Bruijn...
From Computational Complexity
Presidents Day Poll- what does the youth of american think about....
(In honor of President's day which was two days ago.) On Presidents Day last year I had my classes fill out a form saying who they thought was the best, second...
From Computational Complexity
People solve math problems for the prize money! NOT!
Why do people or organizations offer Prize Money for mathematics? Paul Erdos: He offered money to solve problems that he found interesting. I assume he wanted...
From Computational Complexity
STOC 2012 accepts are posted
STOC 2012 paper accepts are posted here. Travel support for grad students (which I am involved with) is posted here. On a quick glance: I tried counting thehere...
From Computational Complexity
The 17x17 problem SOLVED! (also 18x18)
THE 17x17 PROBLEM HAS BEEN SOLVED!!!!! On Nov 30, 2009 I posted here the following challenge: If someone emails me a 4-coloring of 17x17 with no monochromatic...
From Computational Complexity
Dusting off my bookshelf I find a book on FORTRAN
The following quote is from the back of a book that I dusted off and took off of my shelf recently: FORTRAN is one of the oldest high-level languages and remains...
From Computational Complexity
A result of Specker in Recursive Combinatorics
Ernst Specker passed away in December. He has 91. He was not the oldest living mathematician. That title likely belongs to Sergey Nikolsky. A former student ofhere...
From Computational Complexity
Guest post on ITCS by Chazelle
(Requested announcement: Calling all Women PhD Students (and a few undergrads) We will be having our bi-annual Women in Theory (WIT) Workshop this year in Princeton...
From Computational Complexity
Teaching an Honors Section of Discrete Mathematics
A few years ago I was assigned to teach the HONORS section of Discrete Math (a course for sophomores who have had a year of programming and a year a calculus). They...
From Computational Complexity
How important are the Fib numbers in math? in Nature? In History of Math books?
The following quotes is from In the book Algebra in Ancient and Modern Times by V.S. Varadarajan. Fibonacci numbers thus grow very fast with N, indeed in geometric...
From Computational Complexity
The Conjunction Paradox
In Yesterday's post you were told about Susan: Susan is 31 years old, single, outspoken and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student she was deeply...
From Computational Complexity
Rank these possibilities by probability
Readers- I want you to answer this question and post your answers as comments. I will tell you WHY I am asking tommorow. Susan is 28 years old, single, outspoken...
From Computational Complexity