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
Trump, Facebook, and ComplexityBlog
I care about the Facebook decision to ban Trump, but I do not have a strong opinion about it. I have heard arguments on both sides now, from up and down, and still...
From Computational Complexity
The Mythical Man-Month, Hen-Day, and Cat-Minute (Fred Brooks Turned 90)
The Mythical Man-Month is a great book which talks about the (obvious in retrospect) fact that putting more people on a project may slow it down. It was by Fred...
From Computational Complexity
Ferrer's Diagrams can be used to prove X theorems about partitions. What is X?
1978: I took an excellent ugrad course in combinatorics from James C Frauenthal (he sometimes wrote his name as the biniomial cofficient (J choose F)) and hehere...
From Computational Complexity
An Investment Puzzle and Speculation as to Why Some Think it's Hard
This is a Guest Post by David Marcus. He gives a puzzle and its solution, which is interesting, and then speculates as to why some people get it wrong. ---...
From Computational Complexity
Is the following reaction to getting the first COVID shot logical?
Alice works at a charity that puts together bag and box lunches for children.They all wear masks and they are 12 feet apart and very careful, and nobody thereI...
From Computational Complexity
Do any NP-reductions use deep mathematics? Non-rhetically
BILL: Lets say we didn't know that FACTORING NPC --> NP=coNP.then what direction would we think Factoring in P or NPC? STUDENT: In P. After all, Number Theory...
From Computational Complexity
The key to my Taylor series problem: Buddy can you spare a penny, nickel, dime, or quarter
In my last blog post I posed a question about finding the coeff of x^100 in a particular Taylor Series. The question and answer are given here:The key to the...
From Computational Complexity
A Taylor Series Problem
I post a problem today and its solution on Thursday.Comments are fine, though if you don't want to get a hint, don't read them. Find the coefficient of x100 in...
From Computational Complexity
I didn't understand The Art Market before the NFT sale, and I understand it less now
(This post is a sequel to my post from Feb 13, 2007 which you can find here. While the gap from 2007 until 2021 seems large, its not as long as the gap between...
From Computational Complexity
When do I need to warn about Spoilers?
In a recent post here I mentioned in passing a plot point from the last season of The Big Bang Theory. Note that the last season was in 2019. WARNING- do not read...
From Computational Complexity
Using number-of-PhD's as a measure of smartness is stupid.
In Thor:Ragnorak Bruce Banner mentions that he has 7 PhDs. Gee, I wonder how he managed to slip that into a conversation casually. Later in the movie:Bruce: IDouble...
From Computational Complexity
Good Names and Bad Names of Game Shows and theorems
In my post on Alex Trebek, see here, I noted that Jeopardy! is not a good name for the game show since it doesn't tell you much about the show. Perhaps Answers...
From Computational Complexity
Two examples of Journalists being... Wrong. One BIG one small
Journalists sometimes get things wrong.This is not news, but it is interesting when you KNOW they are wrong. 1) Scott Aaronson has a GREAT example regarding an...
From Computational Complexity
The Victoria Delfino Problems: an example of math problems named after a non-mathematician
If you Google Victoria Delfino you will find that she is a real estate agent in LA (well, one of the Victoria Delfino's you find is such). After this blog isVictoria...
From Computational Complexity
Grading policies during Covid-No easy answers
Because of COVID (my spellecheck says covid and Covid are not works, but COVID is) various schools have done various things to make school less traumatic. Students...
From Computational Complexity
Answers to the Prez Quiz, and some interesting history
I posted a presidential quiz (that is, a quiz about presidents, not a quiz that is so majestic it can be called presidential) on Thursday Jan 21.Here is the link...
From Computational Complexity
Presidential Quiz: Three ways to take it
Every four years around the time of the inaugural I post a presidential Quiz! I do that today, and I will post the answers on Monday. I am tempted to joke that...
From Computational Complexity
The ACM History Committee call for proposals looks wrong
In November I (and prob everyone in the ACM) got an email that was a call for proposal from the ACM History committee. Here is a pointer to it. One of the passages...
From Computational Complexity
My Survey on Hilbert's 10th for particular (d,n) is ready for you to help me on!
Hilbert's 10th problem is (in modern terminology) to find an algorithm that will, given a poly p(x1,...,xn) in Z[x1,...,xn], determine if it has a solution in...
From Computational Complexity