Category Archives: Updates

Quantum computers: amazing progress (Google & IBM), and extraordinary but probably false supremacy claims (Google).

Posted on September 23, 2019 by

A 2017 cartoon from this post. Update (October, 18, 2019): To the best of my judgement the results on quantum supremacy in the Google paper are fundamentally flawed. The researchers apparently calibrated parameters of the quantum computer as to improve … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Computer Science and Optimization, Quantum, Updates | Tagged | 57 Comments

Computer Science and its Impact on our Future

Posted on September 4, 2019 by

A couple of weeks ago I told you about Avi Wigderson’s vision on the connections between the theory of computing and other areas of mathematics on the one hand and between computer science and other areas of science, technology and … Continue reading →

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

A sensation in the morning news – Yaroslav Shitov: Counterexamples to Hedetniemi’s conjecture.

Posted on May 10, 2019 by

Two days ago Nati Linial sent me an email entitled “A sensation in the morning news”. The link was to a new arXived paper by Yaroslav Shitov: Counterexamples to Hedetniemi’s conjecture. Hedetniemi’s 1966 conjecture asserts that if and are two … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Open problems, Updates | Tagged , | 15 Comments

Gothenburg, Stockholm, Lancaster, Mitzpe Ramon, and Israeli Election Day 2019

Posted on April 17, 2019 by

Lancaster – Watching the outcomes of the Israeli elections (photo: Andrey Kupavskii) Sweden I just came back from a trip to Sweden and the U.K. I was invited to Gothenburg to be the opponent for a Ph. D. Candidate  Malin … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Probability, Updates | 1 Comment

Bob Sedgewick’s Free Online Courses on Analysis of Algorithms and Analytic Combinatorics.

Posted on March 2, 2019 by

Philippe Flajolet 1948-2011   I am  happy to forward the announcement on two free online courses (Mooks) by Bob Sedgewick  Analysis of Algorithms and Analytic Combinatorics. Analysis of Algorithms  page provides access to online lectures, lecture slides, and assignments for … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Computer Science and Optimization, Teaching, Updates | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Dan Romik Studies the Riemann’s Zeta Function, and Other Zeta News.

Posted on February 28, 2019 by

Updates to previous posts: Karim Adiprasito expanded in a comment to his post on the g-conjecture on how to move from vertex-decomposable spheres to general spheres. Some photos were added to the post: Three pictures. Dan Romik on the Zeta … Continue reading →

Posted in Number theory, Updates | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Amazing: Karim Adiprasito proved the g-conjecture for spheres!

Posted on December 25, 2018 by

Karim in his youth with a fan Congratulations, Karim! Update: Here is the link to the paper From the arXive, Dec 26, 2018. (Link will be added tomorrow.) COMBINATORIAL LEFSCHETZ THEOREMS BEYOND POSITIVITY by Karim Adiprasito Abstract: Consider a simplicial complex … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Updates | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Nima Anari, Kuikui Liu, Shayan Oveis Gharan, and Cynthia Vinzant Solved the Mihail-Vazirani Conjecture for Matroids!

Posted on December 12, 2018 by

  Milena Mihail and Umesh Vazirani I thank Nati Linial, Dan Spielman and Karim Adiprasito for sharing the news with me. The Mihail-Vazirani conjecture for matroids and Feder-Mihail’s theorem Consider a collection of vectors. A basis is a subset of … Continue reading →

Posted in Combinatorics, Computer Science and Optimization, Updates | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Igor Pak will give the 2018 Erdős Lectures

Posted on December 5, 2018 by

  Next week Igor Pak will give the 2018 Erdős Lectures (delayed from June) Here is the poster   Combinatorics — Erdos lecture: Igor Pak (UCLA) “Counting linear extensions” Monday December 10  11:00-13:00 Location:  IIAS Hall 130, Feldman building,  Givat Ram     … Continue reading →

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PCP fest, Tel Aviv University, 18-20 December 2018

Posted on November 26, 2018 by

Conference web site The study of Probabilistically Checkable Proofs, starting with the discovery of the PCP Theorem, is a cornerstone of modern computer science, with impact on complexity theory, algorithms, and cryptography. Born as a purely theoretical notion, mostly used … Continue reading →

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