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Monthly Archives: January 2010
Fundamental Examples
It is not unusual that a single example or a very few shape an entire mathematical discipline. Can you give examples for such examples? I’d love to learn about further basic or central examples and I think such examples serve … Continue reading
Posted in What is Mathematics
15 Comments
Michael Schapira: Internet Routing, Distributed Computation, Game Dynamics and Mechanism Design II
This post is authored by Michael Schapira. (It is the second in a series of two posts.) In thse two post, I outline work on Internet routing and sketch important areas for future work, both on routing itself and, more broadly, on mechanism … Continue reading
Randomness in Nature II
In a previous post we presented a MO question by Liza about randomness: What is the explanation of the apparent randomness of high-level phenomena in nature? 1. Is it accepted that these phenomena are not really random, meaning that given enough … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Physics, Probability
Tagged foundation of probability, Philosophy, Physics, Randomness
18 Comments
Polymath5 – Is 2 logarithmic in 1124?
Polymath5 – The Erdős discrepancy problem – is on its way. Update (September 2015): Terry Tao have now solved Erdos discrepancy problem and proved that indeed the discrepancy tends to infinity. See also this blog post on Tao’s blog. Update: Gowers’s … Continue reading
Translation, Machine Translation, and a Crowded Seminar
I gave in several places a talk entitled “Analytic and Probabilistic Properties of Boolean Functions.” This is a fairly large area so the talks can differ quite a bit. The lecture at the NYU CS theory seminar was described over a Chinese blog entitled … Continue reading
Posted in Computer Science and Optimization
Tagged Google-translation, Hanoch Kalai, Machine translation, Tovna
7 Comments
Rodica Simion: Immigrant Complex
Rodica Simion immigrated to the United States from Romania. She was a Professor of Mathematices at George Washington University untill her untimely death on January 7, 2000. Her poem “Immigrant complex” appeared in : “Against Infinity”, An Anthology of Contemporary … Continue reading
Futures Trading as a Game of Luck
A recent interesting article by Ariel Rubinstein entitled “Digital Sodom” (in Hebrew) argues that certain forms of futures trading (and Internet sites where these forms of trading take place) are essentially gambling activities. The issue of “what is gambling” is very intereting. In an earlier … Continue reading
Posted in Economics, Games, Law
9 Comments
Michael Schapira: Internet Routing, Distributed Computation, Game Dynamics and Mechanism Design I
This post is authored by Michael Schapira. (It is the first in a series of two posts.) In this post, I’ll outline work on Internet routing and sketch important areas for future work, both on routing itself and, more broadly, on … Continue reading
Posted in Computer Science and Optimization, Economics, Guest blogger
Tagged incentive compatibility, Internet, Routing, Security
4 Comments
Mathematics Professor Trying To Teach at Junior High School
Mathematical education and the role of mathematicians in mathematical education is a very important, loaded, and controversial subject. An old friend and fellow combinatorialist Ron Aharoni tried to teach mathematics at a junior high school. Here is Ron’s account of the … Continue reading
Posted in Education
7 Comments
Combinatorics and more 
