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From Computational Complexity

Baseball can go on forever, it doesn't just seem that way

 Most games have some way to make sure they cannot go on forever.1) Chess: I had thought there was a 50-move rule and a 3-times-same-position rule, but its a byte...

From Computational Complexity

An interesting serendipitous number

 Last seek I blogged about two math problems of interest to me here.One of them two people posted answers, which was great since I didn't know how to solve them...

From Computational Complexity

When are both x^2+3y and y^2+3y both squares, and a more general question

 In my last post (see here) I asked two math questions. In this post I discuss one of them. (I will discuss the other one later, probably Monday Sept 14.)For which...

From Computational Complexity

Two Math Problems of interest (at least to me)

 I will give two math problems that are of interest to me.These are not new problems, however you will have more fun if you work on them yourself and leave comments...

From Computational Complexity

A well known theorem that has not been written down- so I wrote it down- CLIQ is #P-complete

(The two proofs that CLIQ is #P-complete that I wrote up and talk about in this post are here. I think both are well known but I have not been able to find a writeup...

From Computational Complexity

Sharp P and the issue of `natural problems'

 #P was defined by Valiant as a way to pin down that the PERMANENT of a matrix is hard to compute.The definition I give is equivalent to the one Valiant gave.ghere...

From Computational Complexity

Mathematics is not commutative

In my poll of P vs NP and other issues, one of the questions was                              Is factoring in P? One of the most interesting answers was   I...

From Computational Complexity

Random Thoughts on the Pandemic

 1) Contrast the following two points and, if you have an intelligent way to fill-in-the-blank for the second one, please comment.a) When Trump says `open the schools...

From Computational Complexity

Do Senators have an Advantage for being Dem VP Nominee?

This is a non-partisan post. Even so:  I plan to vote for Joe Biden.(Lance says that whenever I write `this is a non-partisan post'  its partisan anyway.)I've had...

From Computational Complexity

Do computers make us more safe or less safe?

Norbert Weiner wrote a paper Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation in 1960. It warns of the dangers of computers in two ways: 1) If a chess program...

From Computational Complexity

Erdos-Turan for k=3 is True!

(All of the math in this post is summarized (without proofs) in a writeup by Erik Metz and myself which you can find here. It is a pdf file so you can click onGil...

From Computational Complexity

Ronald Graham: A summary of blog Posts We had about his work

To Honor Ronald Graham I summarize the blog posts we had about his work. 1) Blog post New Ramsey Result that will be hard to verify but Ronald Graham thinks its...

From Computational Complexity

Reflections on Ronald Graham by Steve Butler

Ronald Graham passed away on July 6 at the age of 84. We present reflections on Ronald Graham by Steve Butler. Getting to work with Ron Graham Ron...

From Computational Complexity

A table for Matrix Mortality- what I wanted for Hilbert's 10th problem

In this post I speculated on why I could not find anywhere a table of which cases of Hilbert's 10th problem were solvable, unsolvable, and unknown. (I then made...

From Computational Complexity

Can you name a famous living Chemist? Can anyone?

I was re-watching the  Greatest-of-all-time Jeopardy championship and the following happen (I paraphrase) ---------------------- Alex Trebek: The category isBreaking...

From Computational Complexity

Winner of Ramsey Meme Contest

My REU program had a Ramsey Meme Contest. The winner was Saadiq Shaik with this entry: I Don't Always... I challenge my readers to come up with other Ramsey...

From Computational Complexity

Presentations of Diffie-Helman leave out how to find g

When I first taught Diffie Helman I read the following 1) Alice and Bob agree on p a prime and g a generator 2) Alice picks a, sends g^a to Bob, Bob picks b, sends...

From Computational Complexity

The Committee for the Adv. of TCS- workshop coming up SOON!

(Posted by request from Jelani Nelson.) The Committee for the Advancement of Theoretical Computer Science (CATCS) is organizing a Visioning workshop.  The...

From Computational Complexity

How to handle grades during the Pandemic

In March many Colleges sent students home and the rest of the semester was online. This was quite disruptive for the students. Schools, quite reasonably, wanted...

From Computational Complexity

Oldest Living Baseball Players- can you estimate...

(The Baseball season is delayed or cancelled, so I post about baseball instead.) This post is going to ask a question that you could look up on the web. But what...
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