Category Archives: Probability

Face to face talks and recorded videotaped introductions

Posted on November 4, 2021 by Gil Kalai

Many face to face activities are now resuming. Last week I took part in a great conference on high dimensional expanders at the Simons Foundation, I recently gave real life talks with large audiences also in U. Chicago and Rutgers, … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Physics, Probability, Quantum, Updates | Leave a comment

To cheer you up in difficult times 32, Annika Heckel’s guest post: How does the Chromatic Number of a Random Graph Vary?

Posted on October 3, 2021 by Gil Kalai

This is a guest post kindly written by Annika Heckel. We first reported about Annika Heckel’s breakthrough in this post. A pdf version of this post can be found here. Pick an -vertex graph uniformly at random. Pick another one. … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Guest blogger, Probability | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Argument Against Quantum Computers – A Very Short Introduction

Posted on December 29, 2020 by Gil Kalai

Left: Gowers’s book Mathematics a very short introduction. Right C. elegans; Boson Sampling can be seen as the C. elegans of quantum computing. (See, this paper.) Update (January 6, 2021): Tomorrow January, 7, 8:30 AM Israel time, I give a … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Computer Science and Optimization, Physics, Probability, Quantum | Tagged , | 7 Comments

Open problem session of HUJI-COMBSEM: Problem #4, Eitan Bachmat: Weighted Statistics for Permutations

Posted on December 26, 2020 by Gil Kalai

This is a continuation of our series of posts on the HUJI seminar 2020 open problems. This time the post was kindly written by Eitan Bachmat who proposed the problem.  My summary: understanding of the distribution of largest increasing subsequences … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Guest blogger, Probability | Tagged | 4 Comments

Open problem session of HUJI-COMBSEM: Problem #3, Ehud Friedgut – Independent sets and Lionel Levine’s infamous hat problem.

Posted on December 12, 2020 by Gil Kalai

Here are the two problems presented by Ehud Friedgut. The first arose by Friedgut, Kindler, and me in the context of studying  Lionel Levine’s infamous hat problem. The second is Lionel Levine’s infamous hat problem. Ehud Friedgut with a few … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Computer Science and Optimization, Probability | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Photonic Huge Quantum Advantage ???

Posted on December 6, 2020 by Gil Kalai

This is a quick and preliminary post about a very recent announcement in a Science Magazine paper: Quantum computational advantage using photons by a group of researchers leaded by Jianwei Pan and Chao-Yang Lu. (Most of the researchers are from … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Physics, Probability, Quantum | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Benjamini and Mossel’s 2000 Account: Sensitivity of Voting Schemes to Mistakes and Manipulations

Posted on November 10, 2020 by Gil Kalai

Here is a popular account by Itai Benjamini and Elchanan Mossel from 2000 written shortly after the 2000 US presidential election. Elchanan and Itai kindly agreed that I will publish it here,  for the first time, 20 years later!  I … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Games, Probability, Rationality | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Test Your Intuition (46): What is the Reason for Maine’s Huge Influence?

Posted on October 26, 2020 by Gil Kalai

Very quick updates: Corona: Israel is struggling with the pandemic with some successes,  some failures, and much debate. Peace: We have peace agreements now with several Arab countries, most recently with Sudan. This is quite stunning. Internal politics: As divided … Continue reading →

Posted in Games, Probability, Statistics, Test your intuition | Tagged , | 6 Comments

This question from Tim Gowers will certainly cheeer you up! and test your intuition as well!

Posted on October 18, 2020 by Gil Kalai

I've rolled a die and not looked at it yet. The statement, "If the number I rolled equals 2+2 then it equals 5," is … — Timothy Gowers (@wtgowers) October 18, 2020 Here is a tweet from Tim Gowers  It … Continue reading →

Posted in Logic and set theory, Philosophy, Probability | Tagged | 12 Comments

Cheerful Test Your Intuition (#45): Survey About Sisters and Brothers

Posted on October 2, 2020 by Gil Kalai

You survey many many school children and ask each one: Do you have more brothers than sisters? or more sisters than brothers? or the same number? Then you separate the boys’s answers from the girls’s answers Which of the following … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Probability, Riddles, Statistics, Test your intuition | Tagged | 7 Comments