This blog post is a book review of sorts for the following two books: To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science by Steven Weinberg (2016) The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science by Michael Strevens (2020). Both books cover (in different proportions) the history and philosophy of science. By the end of … Continue reading Philosophy of science and the blockchain: A book review
Brian Conrad takes down the CMF
I've written before on the California Math Framework, but must admit that I have only read parts of this 900+ page document. Brian Conrad (Professor of Mathematics and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Stanford) has read the entire thing, and chased down many citations, reading the original papers. The results are not pretty. In a … Continue reading Brian Conrad takes down the CMF
A personal FAQ on the math education controversies
I was a contact person for the open letter on K-12 math education, and am in strong support of the recent letter on the role of data science in math education (and would encourage readers that are faculty members in California to sign it). Since I tend to see the same questions and objections arise … Continue reading A personal FAQ on the math education controversies
TCS Women Spotlight Workshop at STOC 2022: Travel grants and call for speaker nominations. (Guest post by Mary Wooters)
[Mary Wooters shares the following information - I highly recommend attending the TCS Women Spotlight workshop at any time, but especially when it's in Rome! --Boaz]You are cordially invited to the TCS Women Spotlight Workshop! The workshop will be held on Monday, June 20, 2022, in Rome, Italy, as part of the 54th Symposium on Theory of … Continue reading TCS Women Spotlight Workshop at STOC 2022: Travel grants and call for speaker nominations. (Guest post by Mary Wooters)
Cool projects from my crypto class
This fall, I taught my course CS 127: Cryptography, based on my lecture notes: "An intensive introduction to cryptography". This is a course that starts with no background knowledge, and gets to advanced concepts including lattice-based (aka "post quantum") encryption, fully homomorphic encryption, zero-knowledge proofs, multiparty secure computation, software obfuscation, quantum computing and crypto, and … Continue reading Cool projects from my crypto class
HALG 2022 Call for submissions: Guest post by Keren Censor Hillel
The 7th Highlights of Algorithms conference (HALG 2022)London, June 1-3, 2022https://www.lse.ac.uk/HALG-2022 The Highlights of Algorithms conference is a forum for presenting the highlights of recent developments in algorithms and for discussing potential further advances in this area. The conference will provide a broad picture of the latest research in algorithms through a series of invited talks, … Continue reading HALG 2022 Call for submissions: Guest post by Keren Censor Hillel
Call for Gödel prize nominations (guest post by David Zuckerman and Samson Abramsky)
We'd like to encourage everyone to nominate outstanding papers in any area of theoretical computer science for the 2022 Gödel Prize. In short, papers that first appeared since 2009 (in any form) and appeared in a refereed journal by 2021 are eligible. If you wish to nominate a paper, or might wish to do so, or … Continue reading Call for Gödel prize nominations (guest post by David Zuckerman and Samson Abramsky)
ITC 2022: Call for papers (guest post by Benny Applebaum)
Deal friends, We are happy to announce the third edition of the conference on Information-Theoretic Cryptography (ITC). Information-theoretic cryptography studies security in the presence of computationally unbounded adversaries and covers a wide array of topics at the intersection of cryptography, coding theory, information theory and theory of computation. Notable examples include randomness extraction and privacy … Continue reading ITC 2022: Call for papers (guest post by Benny Applebaum)
Mini course on “What is Computation? From Turing Machines to Blackholes and Neurons” – guest post by Chi-Ning Chou
[Cross posted on Chi-Ning's blog, the course is open also to non-Harvard people. Chi-Ning is my amazing grad student, who has worked on several aspects related to the course, including quantum computation and neurally-plausible computation. He assembled a great collection of guest speakers and so this course looks like it will be very exciting. . … Continue reading Mini course on “What is Computation? From Turing Machines to Blackholes and Neurons” – guest post by Chi-Ning Chou
Call for talk nominations – HALG 2022
[Guest post by Keren Censor-Hillel] 7th Highlights of Algorithms conference (HALG 2022) LSE London, June 1-3, 2022The HALG 2022 conference seeks high-quality nominations for invited talks that will highlight recent advances in algorithmic research appearing in a paper in 2021 or later. To nominate, please email halg2022nominations@gmail.com the following information in plaintext only: Basic details: … Continue reading Call for talk nominations – HALG 2022
Windows On Theory 