R-O-S-E- May 30, 2008 Rose Sloan, daughter of UIC theorist Robert Sloan, is one of a dozen finalists in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The finals will be broadcast tonight on the ABC network at 8 PM Eastern. Good luck Rose! Update: Rose lasted until round 11 and ended up tied for fourth. Congratulations! Final standings here.http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/05/r-o-s-e.html Would you buy a math book for $160.00- May 30, 2008 (REMINDER: Complexity 2008 early-reg deadline is early-reg deadline is June 1.) I recently needed a copy of Mathematical Gems III by Ross Honsberger since I found out that a problem I was working on has a variant that is in that book. I didn't mind getting a copy since I have some of his other books and they have lots of nice math problems and concepts. When I went to amazon I found the following website with one difference- there was also a copy available for $10.00, which I bought. Now...http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/05/would-you-buy-math-book-for-16000.html Completeness Does Not Imply Complexity- May 29, 2008 I've heard discussions in PC meetings, job interviews or just someone trying to talk me into attending a seminar: Jane has a complexity result, she shows left-handed 6-SAT is NP-complete. Sorry, completeness results are algorithms. They are proved by algorithms people using algorithmic techniques. There is simple-minded view that upper bounds are algorithms and lower bounds are complexity. But that doesn't reflect reality: Upper bound results like the PCP theorem or SL=L are complexity. It's..http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/05/completeness-does-not-imply-complexity.html Gdel Prize- May 28, 2008 The ACM has just announced that Dan Spielman and Shang-Hua Teng will receive the Gödel prize at ICALP for their paper Smoothed Analysis of Algorithms: Why the Simplex Algorithm Usually Takes Polynomial Time.http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/05/g-prize.html Elsevier Happenings- May 28, 2008 Why do I remain on the editorial board of the Elsevier journal Information and Computation Partly as loyalty to Albert Meyer, the long time editor-in-chief, who gave me my first major editorial position. But also because I believe that one can change some of the policies in Elsevier by talking to Elsevier instead of just boycotting them. And we've made some small progress. Elsevier papers are being (slowly) added to search sites like Google Scholar. And Elsevier recently announced a...http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/05/elsevier-happenings.html CCC2008 ACM dissertation awards 2007- May 27, 2008 Two links of interest: Complexity 2008 deadline for early registration is JUNE 1- so sign up NOW! ACM Dissertation Awards What is of interest is that the winner and two of the three runnerups are in THEORY- the winner and one of the runner ups is in Cryptography Actually the winners are often theorists though this year it is more striking. Are theorists producing the best PhDs in computer science I would not say that; however, for a theory PhD (and perhaps for theory in general) its...http://weblog.fortnow.com/2008/05/ccc2008-acm-dissertation-awards-2007.html |