Monthly Archives: January 2006
Permissive Actions
Steven M. Bellovin gave a fascinating talk yesterday on a subject he knows nothing about. Okay, I should rephrase that. Bellovin knows everything you can know about his subject without actually knowing anything, but he’s careful to point out that … Continue reading
Posted in computing
Comments Off
Best Friends
Among children of a certain age, everyone has a best friend—and exactly one. Ideally, the best-friend relationship is symmetric: If I am your best friend, then you are my best friend, too. But symmetry is not guaranteed, and it can … Continue reading
Posted in problems and puzzles
1 Comment
First Bites
In the game of Chomp, the player who moves first always has a guaranteed winning strategy. This fact might seem to take all the suspense out of the game, but it doesn’t. Except in the smallest and simplest games, no … Continue reading
More Math Notes from San Antonio
I went to the Joint Mathematics Meetings two weeks ago with the idea that I would post reports live and on location from San Antonio. I was dazzled by the mere possibility of doing this. Sitting in a lecture hall, … Continue reading
Posted in mathematics
Comments Off
San Antonio: Still More Talks
Graph Limits and Graph Homomorphisms. Laszlo Lovasz (Microsoft). The field of graph theory has been transformed by recent interest in understanding properties of very large graphs, most notably those that describe communications networks such as the Internet and the Web. … Continue reading
Posted in mathematics
1 Comment
San Antonio: Two Talks on Primes
Small Gaps between Prime Numbers: The Work of Goldston-Pintz-Yildirim. Kannan Soundarajan (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). Soundarajan began by pointing out that it’s been quite a good millennium, so far, for work on prime numbers. In the first few years … Continue reading
Posted in mathematics
Comments Off
San Antonio: Alternating Subsequences
Longest alternating subsequences of permutations. Richard P. Stanley (MIT). In the past decade or so, there’s been a surprisingly big fuss over what might seem to be a very small question: What is the distribution of the longest increasing subsequence … Continue reading
Posted in mathematics
Comments Off
From the Lonely Star State
“It would have been a very enjoyable ride altogether, that evening’s spin along the banks of the Rhine, if I had not been haunted at the time by the idea that I should have to write an account of it … Continue reading
Posted in mathematics
1 Comment
Now boarding row N
I am at gate C21 at Houston Intercontinental, en route to San Antonio. The flight is late and overbooked; there’s a crowd of hopeful standbys at the podium. The first-class plutocrats are already aboard, and now the rest of us … Continue reading
Posted in modern life
2 Comments