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Category Archives: Computer Science and Optimization
Inaugural address at the Hungarian Academy of Science: The Quantum Computer – A Miracle or Mirage
(Picture: János Pach) The Quantum Computer – A Miracle or Mirage inaugural address of Gil Kalai honorary member of the MTA, Budapest, 15 June, 2022, 15:00 Abstract: On February 12, 2002, Michel Devoret’s lecture entitled “The Quantum Computers: Miracle or … Continue reading
Posted in Academics, Computer Science and Optimization, Physics, Quantum
Tagged Noise-sensitivity, Noise-stability, Quantum computers
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Bo’az Klartag and Joseph Lehec: The Slice Conjecture Up to Polylogarithmic Factor!
Bo’az Klartag (right) and Joseph Lehec (left) In December 2020, we reported on Yuansi Chen breakthrough result on Bourgain’s alicing problem and the Kannan Lovasz Simonovits conjecture. It is a pleasure to report on a further fantastic progress on these … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Computer Science and Optimization, Convexity, Geometry, Probability
Tagged Bo'az Klartag, Joseph Lehec
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ICM 2022. Kevin Buzzard: The Rise of Formalism in Mathematics
In this post I would like to report on Kevin Buzzard’s spectacular lecture on moving mathematics toward formal mathematical proofs. (Here are the slides.) The picture above is based on images from the other spectacular Saturday morning lecture by Laure … Continue reading
ICM 2022 awarding ceremonies (1)
Hugo Duminil-Copin, June Huh, James Maynard and Maryna Viazovska were awarded the Fields Medal 2022 and Mark Braverman was awarded the Abacus Medal 2022. I am writing from Helsinki where I attended the meeting of the General Assembly of the … Continue reading
Is HQCA Possible? A conversation with Michael Brooks
Here is a short email interview from April 2021 with Michael Brooks from “New Scientist”. Dear Professor Kalai, I’m writing a short feature for New Scientist magazine on the theme “Will we ever have a useful quantum computer?”. I’m aware … Continue reading
Good Codes papers are on the arXiv
Here are some links to the breakthrough papers about error correcting codes that I mentioned in this post. The results about locally testable codes with constant rate distance and locality was achieved independently in papers 1 and 2. 1) Locally … Continue reading
Dream a Little Dream: Quantum Computer Poetry for the Skeptics (Part II, The Classics)
Quantum poetry for the skeptics had long roots, and, also here, Peter Shor along with Jennifer Shor had a pioneering role. Volker Strassen’s response is the earliest poem known to me on the skeptics’ side. We will start with Jennifer … Continue reading
To Cheer you up in difficult times 30: Irit Dinur, Shai Evra, Ron Livne, Alex Lubotzky, and Shahar Mozes Constructed Locally Testable Codes with Constant Rate, Distance, and Locality
The Simons Institute announces an October 6, 2021 lecture by Irit Dinur with the result in the title. This is a wonderful breakthrough. I am glad to mention that I have altogether 170 combined years of friendships with the authors. … Continue reading
Posted in Combinatorics, Computer Science and Optimization
Tagged Alex Lubotzky, Irit Dinur, Ron Livne, Shahar Mozes, Shai Evra
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To cheer you up in difficult times 23: the original hand-written slides of Terry Tao’s 2015 Einstein Lecture in Jerusalem
In 2015 Terry Tao gave the Einstein lecture of the Israeli Academy for Science and Humanities. We got hold of the original signed hand-written slides of Terry’s lecture and we are happy to share them with you. The title of … Continue reading
The probabilistic proof that 2^400-593 is a prime: a revolutionary new type of mathematical proof, or not a proof at all?
Avi Wigderson gave a great CS colloquium talk at HUJI on Monday (a real auditorium talk with an audience of about 200 people). The title of the talk was The Value of Errors in Proofs – a fascinating journey from … Continue reading
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