Yuri Gurevich shares an anecdote about beginnings which he refers to as "Research-Life Prehistory" ------------ Mathematics is the last refuge of platonism. In what sense, mathematical objects – from real numbers to Banach spaces – exist? Where are they to be found, detected by experimental means? Mathematical platonism comes very naturally to working mathematicians. When you … Continue reading Research-Life Stories – Yuri Gurevich
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Research-Life Stories – Omer Reingold
As promised, I am writing the first post in our research-life stories project. I will start today with a few stories about my first steps in research. Nothing special in them, but I hope they will become more interesting in the context of other’s stories (which I hope will follow). So, tell us, how was your beginning? … Continue reading Research-Life Stories – Omer Reingold
FOCS 2013 – CFP
The FOCS 2013 main site is up, and the CFP is coppied below too. --- CALL FOR PAPERS 54th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2013) Berkeley, California, October 27-29, 2013. The 54th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2013), sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Mathematical Foundations … Continue reading FOCS 2013 – CFP
From Discrepancy to Privacy, and back Part 2: Approximating Hereditary Discrepancy
In a previous blog post, we saw how ideas from differential privacy can be used to prove a lower bound on the hereditary discrepancy for the Erdös Discrepancy problem. This lower bound happened to be nearly tight. It turns out that this tightness is no accident. The connection between hereditary discrepancy and privacy is in … Continue reading From Discrepancy to Privacy, and back Part 2: Approximating Hereditary Discrepancy
ICALP deadline approaching
Quick Reminder: the deadline for ICALP is Feb 15th. Time to rev up your latex engines. The call for papers is here.
Alt Equals
I recently discovered that some colleagues are unaware of the math typesetting capabilities in PowerPoint, and so as a responsible Microsoft employee I thought it my duty to inform the public of these potentially time-saving and slides-beautifying features. This is also for my own benefit, as I seem to always forget where to find the … Continue reading Alt Equals
Away with Page Limits on Submissions
The FOCS 2013 PC is currently working on the call for papers (cfp). Our basis is the FOCS 2012 cfp. The main change we are contemplating is getting rid of the page limit for submissions. In fact, FOCS 2012 and previous conferences already took a step in this direction. For example FOCS 2012 cfp says: “There … Continue reading Away with Page Limits on Submissions
Call for Research-Life Stories
A research career is different from most other jobs in its characteristic and challenges: Long period of education and training which is packed with uncertainty (Am I good enough? Will all this effort be rewarded by a suitable position in a suitable location to live in?), the tension between collaboration and competition, preserving creativity and … Continue reading Call for Research-Life Stories
FOCS 2013 – The Beginning
I was honored and, at the same time, penalized to be invited to serve as the program chair of FOCS 2013 (to be held in Berkeley, October 27-29, 2013). Reading blog discussions in the past about FOCS/STOC (and conferences in general), I realize that there is a lot of misunderstanding and mystification regarding the program committee (PC) … Continue reading FOCS 2013 – The Beginning
Privacy Loss as a Random Variable
This post will be about differential privacy (DP), with a focus on what is often referred to in the differential privacy literature (often colloquially) as "privacy loss". A brief recap of the setting: a trusted data curator has a database of sensitive information about individuals. The curator wants to release aggregate statistical information about the … Continue reading Privacy Loss as a Random Variable
Windows On Theory 