Michael Mitzenmacher points to two  posts of Suresh Venkatasubramanian on the issue of so called "double blind reviews" (i.e., anonymous submissions) in theory conferences. In short, both Michael and Suresh think they are a good idea. I agree with much of their motivations, but, based on my experience in both non-blinded (e.g., STOC/FOCS) and blinded (e.g., CRYPTO) … Continue reading On double blind reviews in theory conferences

(Edit: scribe notes on my lectures on this topic are now up.) Subhash Khot, Dor Minzer and Muli Safra just posted an exciting manuscript online. In it, they confirm the combinatorial hypothesis I've posted about before on the structure of non-expanding set in the degree two short-code graph (or, equivalently, in the Grassman graph).   Together with … Continue reading Unique Games Conjecture – halfway there?

This fall I taught CS 121 - "Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science" - at Harvard. This is analogous to courses known at other universities as "Introduction to the Theory of Computation", "Automata and Computability", or "Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science", and are often taught using Sipser's excellent book. However, I decided to significantly revise it … Continue reading Intro TCS course post-mortem