I taught my first class last quarter and it was an enjoyable and eye-opening experience at many levels. First some background. The class was undergraduate algorithms or as popularly known in UCLA - CS180. There were 129 students (kind of like jumping into the deep end to test the waters). Like most other CS curricula, it is a … Continue reading Doing a 180 and still spinning
Month: June 2015
Historical Papers in Cryptography: Umesh Vazirani on Quantum and Post-Quantum Cryptography
The cryptography semester at the Simons Institute is well on its way. Last week we had a fascinating workshop on securing computation: thanks to Hugo Krawczyk and Amit Sahai for organizing. You can find the program and video links here (covering, among many other topics, everything you always wanted to know about obfuscation but were afraid … Continue reading Historical Papers in Cryptography: Umesh Vazirani on Quantum and Post-Quantum Cryptography
Do It Yourself Theoryfestival Design – Guest Post By Sanjeev Arora
Sanjeev suggesting an interesting exercise, in our series on the design of a Theory Festival as part of STOC 2017: --------------- Throughout our conference design process we often observe big shifts in people’s opinions as they engage with the issues and the mathematical constraints. So if you have strong opinions about the theory festival, I … Continue reading Do It Yourself Theoryfestival Design – Guest Post By Sanjeev Arora
More fun at the theory festival: plenary sessions – guest post by Sanjeev Arora
Towards the business meeting, another personal post in our series (this one by Sanjeev Arora): -------------- An important part of the plan for theory festival ---which everybody involved agrees upon---is the need for a substantial plenary component. The festival organizing committee would select the plenary program based upon inputs from various sources. Plenary sessions will include about … Continue reading More fun at the theory festival: plenary sessions – guest post by Sanjeev Arora
STOC Festival Design: Improving interaction and fun factor; reducing information overload – guest post by Sanjeev Arora
[Yet another personal post in our series] STOC Festival Design: Improving interaction and fun factor; reducing information overload. Sanjeev Arora How can we increase the value added by a conference in today’s information-rich world, when papers have been available on arxiv for months to the experts in that area? These are some personal thoughts (ie … Continue reading STOC Festival Design: Improving interaction and fun factor; reducing information overload – guest post by Sanjeev Arora
Why Doesn’t ACM Have a SIG for Theoretical Computer Science? – Guest post by Moshe Vardi
[Boaz's note - this is another in the series of personal posts on STOC/FOCS reform, this time from Moshe Vardi, a renowned theoretical computer scientist who is also the editor in chief of the communications of the ACM. See also the discussion that's still going on in the comment section of Omer Reingold's post, as well … Continue reading Why Doesn’t ACM Have a SIG for Theoretical Computer Science? – Guest post by Moshe Vardi
Can We Get Serious?
This post represents my personal opinion (and only my opinion) with respect to turning STOC 2017 into a “Theory Festival.” FOCS and STOC is where the entire theory community is supposed to come together for the benefit of the fruitful exchange of ideas between sub-areas of theory (which as Boaz mentioned, has been one of … Continue reading Can We Get Serious?
Imagining a theory festival – a personal post
This is a personal post, not representing the other members of our working group. While future discussion will naturally talk about (important) technical details such as amount of parallelism, scheduling of talks, number of days and length of breaks, I wanted to talk a bit about the broader vision. I hope other members will also … Continue reading Imagining a theory festival – a personal post
Windows On Theory 