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A Good Problem to Have
From My Biased Coin

A Good Problem to Have

Last year's enrollment for CS 124 was 53.  So far, current enrollment for this year:  119. I imagine a few are still just taking a look and might drop.  But a doubling...

Faculty Applications
From My Biased Coin

Faculty Applications

An anonymous commenter asked how we evaluate faculty applications.  While it's a little late, it's a valid question, so here are some high-level thoughts.  Here...

Collective Coordination of Conferences?
From My Biased Coin

Collective Coordination of Conferences?

Around this time of year, I get a number of messages from students:  I want to take your class, but there's a conflict with this other class I want to take, what...

January Flying By...
From My Biased Coin

January Flying By...

I'm enjoying a relatively snow-free January, but despite the extra time I've had on my hands from not having to shovel, I've had little time for blogging.  Reasons...

ITCS, Day 2
From My Biased Coin

ITCS, Day 2

I stopped a while by ITCS, before having to deal with other meetings. I saw fellow blogger Claire Mathieu, who told me my post on day 1 was negative.  To be clear...

ITCS, Day 1
From My Biased Coin

ITCS, Day 1

I spent much of today at ITCS (Innovations in Computer Science) 2012, over at MIT.  Justin gave an excellent talk on our work (with Graham Cormode) on Practical...

Chernoff-Hoeffding Bounds for Markov Chains
From My Biased Coin

Chernoff-Hoeffding Bounds for Markov Chains

We (Kai-Min Chung, Henry Lam, Zhenming Liu and myself) have a STACS paper on Chernoff-Hoeffding bounds for Markov chains (arxiv version here).  Such bounds areLarge...

Pointer, to Cash for Citations
From My Biased Coin

Pointer, to Cash for Citations

I'm disturbed to find that nobody is offering to pay me large sums just to have me affiliated with them for the purposes of raising their citation count.  WhatCrooked...

New Year's Thanks
From My Biased Coin

New Year's Thanks

There are many things I'm thankful for this year.  Perhaps most notably, the new year marks the halfway point of my 3-year stint as "Area Dean for Computer Science"...

Cross-Cultural Learning Curve: Sending a Paper to Science
From My Biased Coin

Cross-Cultural Learning Curve: Sending a Paper to Science

We decided to submit our paper on MIC and MINE to Science it's a venue that my co-authors were familiar with and very interested in applying to.  I was happy to...

Some of The Fun of Collaborating...The Other People
From My Biased Coin

Some of The Fun of Collaborating...The Other People

One of the things I enjoy most about working in algorithms is the breadth of work I get to do.  And while I've worked on a variety of things, almost all have been...

Wasted Hour(s)
From My Biased Coin

Wasted Hour(s)

Last night I was running some code for a queuing simulation related to some research I'm doing.  This is the Nth time I've used this code;  I wrote up the basic...

MIC and MINE, a short description
From My Biased Coin

MIC and MINE, a short description

I thought I should give a brief description of MIC and MINE, the topic of our Science paper.  Although you're probably better off, if you're interested, looking...

Congratulations to Hanspeter Pfister
From My Biased Coin

Congratulations to Hanspeter Pfister

Despite our really very good track record for the last decade or so, there are some people out there who remain under the misimpression that it's impossible toHanspeter...

This Week, I Am A Scientist
From My Biased Coin

This Week, I Am A Scientist

This week, I am a scientist;  I know this, because I have an article in Science.  It's nice to have something to point to that my parents can understand.  I don't...

Consulting
From My Biased Coin

Consulting

As I've probably mentioned, I generally enjoy my consulting work.  Besides the obvious remunerative aspects, consulting provides challenges, insights, and experiences...

Grading
From My Biased Coin

Grading

Some folks at the NSDI meeting were nice enough to say that it was nice that I was blogging again.  Sadly, I've been under-the-gun busy for the last several weeks...

Plane Work
From My Biased Coin

Plane Work

I dislike flying, but I have a few flights coming up.I find that engaging in "real thinking" about problems while on a plane is generally beyond me.  (I'm jealous...

The End (of the Semester) is Nigh
From My Biased Coin

The End (of the Semester) is Nigh

If you've missed it (which probably means you're not a theorist and/or a blog-reader), you should check out the (entertaining) controversies of the last week or...

Letters of Recommendation Time.  Ugh.
From My Biased Coin

Letters of Recommendation Time. Ugh.

I don't mind writing letters of recommendation for students.  It's part of the job.  It's a good thing to do. I just mind dealing with the new e-application sites...
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