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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
Luddite or not?
My first ever guest post for Lance was on Are you a luddite. I certainly am to some extent a luddite, but there are some things where it not clear if they are luddite...
From Computational Complexity
The Complexity of NIM. Open?
Recall 1-pile NIM: Let A be a finite set of Naturals. NIM(A) is the following game: There are n stones on the board. Players I and II alternate removing a\in A...
From Computational Complexity
Dagstuhl on Algebra in Computational Complexity
(Reminder- Theory day at UMCP: here is the link. ) There was a Dagstuhl on Algebra in Computational Complexity Sept 22-26. I learned stuff in the talks, over meals...
From Computational Complexity
Gentry and Lurie and Zhang can say they are genius's without bragin'- MacArthur Genius's
(If I mispell anything in this post, well, that"s why I'm not a MacArthur Genius, or any other kind of Genius.) Craig Gentry, of homomorphic encryption fame, won...
From Computational Complexity
Maryland Theory Day October 10!
Univ of Maryland at College Park is having a Theory Day Friday October 10. Free Registration and Free Lunch! (there are no economists coming to tell us therehere...
From Computational Complexity
A Statistical oddity ?
I keep a list of people that are famous-to-me that are old so that if someone dies I won't be surprised. When Lauren Bacall died recently I (1) knew who she...
From Computational Complexity
How hard is changing fields? Ask Sheldon!
In the last season of The Big Band Theory Sheldon wants to change field from String theory to something else (I don't recall if he settled on what it would be,...
From Computational Complexity
Quetions that arose teaching HS students crypto
I taught a 3-week, 3-hours-a-day course to HS student titled Computer Science: A Hands Off Approach. Given that time constraints and the fact that some already...
From Computational Complexity
The n^{1/3} barrier for 2-server PIR's broken! A lesson for us all!
Recall: PIR stands for Private Information Retrieval. Here is the model: A database is an n-bit string (my wife tells me this is not true). The user wants to find...
From Computational Complexity
How I know Moneyball is a true story. Do we clean up theorems and life too much?
A few years ago I saw the movie Moneyball about how the Oakland A's used intelligent statistics to... win? No, but to do better-than-expected. Even if I didn't...
From Computational Complexity
How NOT to bet
(True Story, but names are changed for no good reason.) Alice, Bob, and Carol are betting on who will be the Republican Nominee in 2016. Alice bets on Jeb Bush...
From Computational Complexity
The Change Problem and the Gap between Recreational and Serious Mathematics
In a prior post (here)I discussed the change problem: given a dollar, how many ways can you make change using pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters (and generalize...
From Computational Complexity
Need some book reviewed- faster than usual
I have been the SIGACT NEWS book review editor since 1997. I have tried to get about 10 books reviewed per column. I have succeeded- perhaps too well! I have gotten...
From Computational Complexity
What to call the top and bottom part of (n choose k)
In my last post I asked for candidates for names for the top and bottom part of (n choose k) . Here are the candidates and my comments on them and ... the winner...
From Computational Complexity
Is there a word for the top part of a binomial coefficient?
Consider the sequence: x/y, (x+1)/y, (x+2)/y, ..., (x+z)/y one could say in this sequence of fractions the numerators goes through z-1 consecutive numbers. ...
From Computational Complexity
3000 lunches
Last week fortune smiled on two of my friends: Ken Regan made the cover of Chess Life for his work on catching chess cheaters. (See here.) Jacob Lurie who I mentored...
From Computational Complexity
How many ways can you make change of n cents?
(For a related post see my post on Schur's theorem. The paper THIS post refers to is here.) (ADDED LATER: A commenter pointed to Graham-Knuth-Patashnik forhere...
From Computational Complexity
Ref/info request for an obvious approach to GI
Talking about Graphi Isom with some students they came up with the following idea which is certainly not new; however, I couldn't quite find much about it on the...
From Computational Complexity
Fair question? Trick question?
The following problem was on my final for Formal Lang theory (Reg, P, NP, Dec, c.e.) For this problem you may assume P\ne NP and NP\ne coNP. For each of the following...
From Computational Complexity