Monthly Archives: September 2017

Layish

Posted on September 27, 2017 by Gil Kalai

This story is implicitly referred to in the 2008 opening post of this blog. ———– It was high time to raise the level of the discussion, I thought. Princeton, Fall 1995. We were a group of mathematicians at the IAS … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Computer Science and Optimization, Games, Mathematics to the rescue, Philosophy, Rationality, Sport, Taxi-and-other-stories | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Some Mathematical Puzzles that I encountered during my career

Posted on September 24, 2017 by Gil Kalai

Recently, I gave some lectures based on a general-audience personal tour across four (plus one) mathematical puzzles that I encountered during my career. Here is a paper based on these lectures which is meant for a very wide audience (in … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Computer Science and Optimization, Quantum | Tagged | 1 Comment

Friendship and Sesame, Maryam and Marina, Israel and Iran

Posted on September 19, 2017 by Gil Kalai

Happy new (Jewish) year everybody. Amazing scientific partnership  between Jordan, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East) is a “third-generation” synchrotron light source that was officially opened in Allan (Jordan) on 16 May 2017. … Continue reading →

Posted in Obituary, Updates, Women in science | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Elchanan Mossel’s Amazing Dice Paradox (your answers to TYI 30)

Posted on September 8, 2017 by Gil Kalai

TYI 30 asked Elchanan Mossel’s Amazing Dice Paradox (that I heard from Yuval Peres yesterday) You throw a die until you get 6. What is the expected number of throws (including the throw giving 6) conditioned on the event that all throws … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Probability, Test your intuition | Tagged , | 83 Comments

TYI 30: Expected number of Dice throws

Posted on September 7, 2017 by Gil Kalai

Test your intuition: You throw a dice until you get 6. What is the expected number of throws (including the throw giving 6) conditioned on the event that all throws gave even numbers. follow-up post

Posted in Combinatorics, Probability, Test your intuition | Tagged , | 46 Comments

Test your intuition 29: Diameter of various random trees

Posted on September 5, 2017 by Gil Kalai

Both trees in general and random trees in particular are wonderful objects. And there is nothing more appropriate to celebrate Russ Lyons great birthday conference “Elegance in Probability” (taking place now in Tel Aviv) than to test your intuition, dear … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Probability, Test your intuition | Tagged , | 19 Comments