TL;DR: New notes on introduction to theoretical computer science are available at http://www.introtcs.org. This fall I will be teaching CS 121 at Harvard: Introduction to Theoretical Computer Science. This type of "intro theory" course is taught at many universities, sometimes under the name "introduction to the theory of computation" or "computability and automata", typically using … Continue reading Rethinking the “Intro Theory” course

(Guest post by Sanjeev Arora on behalf of the TheoryFest 2017 organizing committee) Having entered into the organization of TheoryFest 2017 with some trepidation, we organizers were very relieved to see feedback such as  “Best. STOC. Ever”. This post shares with you the feedback we got from attendees, and our plans for the next couple … Continue reading TheoryFest 2017: Organizers’ take (guest post)

The ITCS 2018 Call For Papers is now available!   ITCS is a conference that stands apart from all others. For a decade now, it has been celebrating the vibrancy and unity of our field of Theoretical Computer Science. See this blog post for a detailed discussion of what makes ITCS so cool and the brief description of ITCS’17 … Continue reading ITCS 2018 (guest post by Anna Karlin)

Tomorrow is the last day of TheoryFest. My sense is that it was very successful in the most important metric that it was a great event for the people that attended it.  However, we will know more about this once we send out a questionnaire to attendees next week. (Please respond when you get it!) … Continue reading TheoryFest + wutorial updates

I arrived to Montreal tonight and already marked the talks I want to attend on the STOC mobile app. I am looking forward to a great program. I am already seeing several times that I would like to attend two or three of the talks that occur in parallel. One day where this would definitely … Continue reading TheoryFest begins

[Guest post from Seth Pettie and the SOSA steering committee. --Boaz] Attendees of the SODA’17 business meeting may recall our proposal for an algorithms conference dedicated to simplicity and elegance. We appreciate all the encouragement that we received from the community. Thanks to the support from SIAM, the First Symposium on Simplicity in Algorithms (SOSA) will happen, and will be co-located … Continue reading The 1st Symposium on Simplicity in Algorithms (guest post)

[This is a guest post by Eli Ben-Sasson, mentioning only some of the fascinating TCS connections to crypto-currencies. If you're interested in more then you should check out the TheoryFest talks that Eli mentions. --Boaz] What is Bitcoin? Why should TCS care? Eli Ben-Sasson In Crypto We Trust You probably heard of Bitcoin, the crypto-currency … Continue reading Bitcoin and Theoretical Computer Science (guest post by Eli Ben-Sasson)

(Guest post by Anna Karlin) As you know there will be a panel on "Theoretical Computer Science: The Next Decade" on Wednesday morning at STOC 2017. The panelists are Andy Yao, Russell Impagliazzo, Cynthia Dwork, Dan Spielman, Tim Roughgarden and Ankur Moitra. As moderator, I'd love to hear any specific questions/topics you'd like to hear … Continue reading “TCS: The Next Decade” Panel at STOC 2017

When I taught my crypto course in the spring of 2016, I motivated the study of lattice-based cryptography by presenting the following spoofed NYTimes headline from four years into the future: It seems like Google is trying to achieve this much earlier:   If and when a convincing "quantum supremacy" demonstration emerges, it would be … Continue reading Two years ahead of schedule?

[Guest post by Sanjeev Arora. Action items: register, book your hotel and flight, and consider submitting a poster.] ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing Is morphing this year into a 5-day Theory Fest, as announced earlier. This is going to be a new and exciting kind of event for the theory community, with talks covering a … Continue reading TheoryFest update