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From Computational Complexity

Two hat problems you may or may not have seen but I have a point to make about one of them

Hat problems are fun and often require clever solutions. I have posted about one type of hat problem here. In this post I ask three. For two of them I have a point...

From Computational Complexity

Harvard revokes admission of students based on what was said in a private(?) chat room

Harvard revoked the admission of 10 students (see here) based on what the students said in a private (can't have been too private) chat room. Normally I wouldThe...

From Computational Complexity

Climate Change: The Evolution of the Deniers/Does Paul Ryan Hate His Grandchildren?

I went to the Mach for Science and then Drumpf pulled out of the Paris Accords. Causation or Correlation? I then posted about climate change (CC). That's caustation...

From Computational Complexity

Big News on W(3,r) !

This is a JOINT POST with   Evangelos Georgiadis who brought this problem to my attention.) In 2010 I posted about how dense a set of integers has to be before...

From Computational Complexity

Google Scholar thinks my Hilbert Number is 1

(I want to thank Lane Hemaspaandra for bringing this to my attention.) When I google: google scholar  William Gasarch I get  this (I wonder if what you get...

From Computational Complexity

If an ugrad asks `is field X worth studying' the answer is almost always yes

An undergraduate Freshman recently emailed me that he was very interested in Quantum Computing and wanted to know 1) Who on the fCS aculty works in QC (Answer:...

From Computational Complexity

Students try to memorize rather than understand! Who knew! (everyone)

Discrete Math. Required for CS majors, taken mostly by Sophmores.  Goal is to teach them how to think  rigorously. Topics are logic, number theory (not much),...

From Computational Complexity

A Celebration of Computer Science at Harvard in Honor of Harry Lewis's 70th Bday

My adviser Harry Lewis turned 70 recently. I blogged about how things have changed since I got my Phd in this post. I now post on A celebration of Computer Science...

From Computational Complexity

I was at the March for Science on Saturday

(Will blog on Harry Lewis's 70th Bday next week-- Today's post is more time sensitive.) I was on the March for Science on April 22. Here are some Kolmogorov random...

From Computational Complexity

Will talk about Harry Lewis 70th bday conference later but for now- that was then/this is now

On Wed April 19 I was at the Harry Lewis 70th birthday celebration! I will blog on that later. Harry Lewis was my thesis adviser. Odd to use the past tense- I...

From Computational Complexity

What is William Rowan Hamilton know for- for us? for everyone else?

I found the song William Rowan Hamilton that I used in my April fools day post because I was working on a song about Hamiltonian Circuits to the tune of Alexander...

From Computational Complexity

Proving Langs not Regular using Comm Complexity

(My notes on this are at my course website: here They are notes for my ugrad students so they may be longer and more detailed than you want.) While Teaching...

From Computational Complexity

William Rowan Hamilton- The Musical!

With the success of Hamilton,the musical on broadway (for all of the songs and the lyrics to them see here- I wonder who would buy the CD since its here for free)...

From Computational Complexity

If you want to help your bad students DO NOT give an easy exam

1) When I was a grad student TAing Formal Lang Theory we had a final ready to give out but noticed that one problem was too hard. So we changed it. But we made...

From Computational Complexity

Other fields of math don't prove barrier results- why do we?

Before FLT was solved did some people prove theorems like: FLT cannot be proven using techniques BLAH. This is important since all current proofs use BLAH. Ihere...

From Computational Complexity

why are regular expressions defined the way they are

BILL: The best way to prove closure properties of regular languages is to first prove  the equiv of DFA's, NDFA's and Reg Expressions. Then, if you want to prove...

From Computational Complexity

Should we learn from the Masters or the Pupils (Sequel)

A while back I had a blog entry Should we learn from the Masters of the Pupils? The Masters may have more insights but he Pupils may have a better view aided by...

From Computational Complexity

The benefits of Recreational Mathematics

Why study Recreational Mathematics? Why do recreational Mathematics? 1)  The line between recreational and serious mathematics is thin. Some of the problems in...

From Computational Complexity

Raymond Smullyan: Logician, Recreational math writer, Philosopher, passed away

Raymond Smullyan was born on May 25 1919 and passed away recently at the age of 97.  He was a logician (PhD from Princeton under Alonzo Church in 1959) who didThe...

From Computational Complexity

The Hardness of Reals Hierarchy

In my last post (here) I defined the following hierarchy (which I am sure is not original- if someone has a source please leave a comment on it) Z_d[x] is theProblems...
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