(See also pdf version , and these lecture notes) The divide between frequentists and Bayesians in statistics is one of those interesting cases where questions of philosophical outlook have actual practical implications. At the heart of the debate is Bayes’ theorem: $latex \Pr[A|B] = \Pr[A \cap B ]/\Pr[B]\;.$ Both sides agree that it is correct, but they disagree … Continue reading Bayesianism, frequentism, and the planted clique, or do algorithms believe in unicorns?
Stanford, Here I Come
Most of the stories in the research-life story project (including mine) are already processed and often told with some well-packaged perspective the teller wants to share. Today I am sharing a moment as it unfolds: Come next fall, I’ll be joining the Stanford CS Department. I’m very excited. Since the closing of MSR-SV, I’ve been … Continue reading Stanford, Here I Come
Chaining Method workshop – travel funding
Jelani Nelson tells me there's travel funding for the workshop at http://toc.seas.harvard.edu/cmacs for postdocs and students, but the deadline to apply is next Friday (April 1). Instructions to apply are at the link above.
The iPhones of terrorists
On December 5, 2015, Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik entered the banquet room in the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California wearing ski masks and holding semi-automatic pistols and rifles. They shot and killed 14 people- parents, spouses, children who will never return to their loved ones. It is the right, and indeed the duty of … Continue reading The iPhones of terrorists
Chaining methods continued (guest post by Jelani Nelson)
[This is the sequel to Jelani's previous post on chaining method; for more, see the post STOC workshop on this topic --Boaz] 1. A case study: (sub)gaussian processes To give an introduction to chaining, I will focus our attention on a concrete scenario. Suppose we have a bounded (but possibly infinite) collection of vectors $latex {T\subset \mathbb{R}^n}&fg=000000$. … Continue reading Chaining methods continued (guest post by Jelani Nelson)
Hopes, Fears, and Software Obfuscation
Following the exciting paper of Garg, Gentry, Halevi, Raykova, Sahai and Waters, the world of cryptography has been ablaze with "obfuscation fever" with many longstanding questions succumbing to obfuscation-based constructions. At the same time, our understanding of the computational assumptions required for these constructions is still very much incomplete (e.g., see these two recent works and the … Continue reading Hopes, Fears, and Software Obfuscation
Workshop on Chaining Methods (guest post by Jelani Nelson)
[Jelani Nelson is organizing a post-STOC workshop on Chaining Methods and their applications, and agreed to write a 2-post series about these methods here. --Boaz] 1. Workshop details Assaf Naor and I (Jelani Nelson) are organizing a two-day workshop ``Chaining Methods and their Applications to Computer Science (CMACS)'' June 22--23, 2016, immediately after STOC 2016. It … Continue reading Workshop on Chaining Methods (guest post by Jelani Nelson)
Highlights of Algorithms 2016
Guest post by Aleksander Mądry This summer, on June 6-8 in Paris, we will be having a new algorithmic event: Highlights of Algorithms 2016 (HALG 2016) conference This conference will be quite unlike the conferences we are all used to. First of all, it will consist mainly of invited talks and tutorials, accompanied by a … Continue reading Highlights of Algorithms 2016
Speaking about unspeakables
[Below is the transcript of a talk I gave at the Harvard Lectures that Last event (see video). This was a talk for a general (non technical) audience, but I still thought some people might find it interesting. For some more technical discussion of the notion of "computational Bayesian probabilities" I hint at toward the end, … Continue reading Speaking about unspeakables
Teaching cryptography
This term I am teaching cryptography at Harvard. There had been several advances in crypto since I last taught this course at Princeton, and so I will do several things differently. The slow but steady progress towards constructing quantum computers has caused the NSA to announce that users should transition away from RSA, Diffie-Hellman and … Continue reading Teaching cryptography
Windows On Theory 