Issue's Column Research Articles

Open Problems Column

This issue's Open Problems column we revisit three prior columns for which progress was made on the open problems posed.

Open Problems Column

This Issue's Column! This issue's Open Problem Column is by Josh Burdick. It is about an approach to lower bounds on circuits for variants on the CLIQUE problem. Request for Columns! I invite any reader who has knowledge of some area to contact me and arrange to write a column about open problems in that area. That area can be (1) broad or narrow or anywhere inbetween, and (2) really important or really unimportant or anywhere inbetween.

Open Problems Column

This Issue's Column! This issue's Open Problem Column is by William Gasarch, Auguste Gezalyan, and Don Patrick. It is about permutable and compatible primes.

Open Problems Column

This Issue's Column! This issue's Open Problem Column is by Erika Melder. It is about lower bounds on approximating set cover. The overarching question is: are there easier proofs?

SIGACT news complexity theory column 114

This issue's column (which comes immediately after some memories of and comments on Juris Hartmanis, who passed away a few days ago), by Eleni Bakali, Aggeliki Chalki, Andreas Göbel, Aris Pagourtzis, and Stathis Zachos, is a tour--- A Panorama of Counting Problems the Decision Version of which is in P ---of the exciting world of counting functions whose decision version (the set of inputs on which the function evaluates to zero) is in P.

SIGACT News Complexity Theory Column 111

This issue's complexity theory column is by Ben Lee Volk on algebraic natural proofs. My warmest thanks to Ben Lee for his terrific article.

SIGACT News Complexity Theory Column 109

Warmest thanks to Alexander Knop, Shachar Lovett, Sam McGuire, and Weiqiang Yuan for this issue's guest column, \Models of computation between decision trees and communication." (Their article came in early, and I wrote back thanking them for being three days early, mentioning that that happens surprisingly rarely. Then two days later, I said, \Wow!", as I realized that they actually had somehow|even during a remote-teaching, social-distancing time period|prepared and sent in their article a month and three days early.)

SIGACT News Complexity Theory Column 108

Warmest thanks to Rafael Pass and Muthu Venkitasubramaniam for this issue's guest column, "Average-Case Complexity Through the Lens of Interactive Puzzles." When I mentioned to them that my introduction would have a section on Alan Selman's passing, they immediately wrote back that they were very sorry to hear of Alan's passing, and mentioned (as you will see discussed in the second page of their article), "The main problem that we are addressing actually goes back to a paper of Even, Selman, and Yacobi from 1984: "The Complexity of Promise Problems with Applications to Public-Key Cryptography'." It is beautiful, and a tribute to the lasting influence of Alan's research, that in the 2020s his work from many decades earlier is helping shape the field's dialogue.

Open Problems Column Edited by William Gasarch This Issue's Column!

In this column we state a class of open problems in Ramsey Theory. The general theme is to take Ramsey-type statements that are false and weaken them by allowing the homogenous set to use more than one color. This concept is not new, and the theorems we state and/or prove are not new; however, the open questions that request easier proofs of the known theorems (or weaker versions) may be new. We use the phrase an elementary proof. This is not meant to be a technical or rigorous term. What we really mean is a proof that can be taught in an undergraduate combinatorics course. A good example of what we mean is the proof of Theorem 9.3.

Passages

Robert K. Merton's On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript - The Post-Italianate Edition, or, henceforth, OTSOG, is our (ostensible) topic for this issue's Passages column. [[What follows after this double-bracketed 'introduction' is a failure, an attempt to recommend this book by, in miniature, aping its style and form. In my opinion, it doesn't really work. I ask the reader who has ever enjoyed a book read because it was recommended in this column to bear with me through it, however, for there is a point to be made, and a remarkable book to recommend.

New and Noteworthy: Staying Inspired in Difficult Times

This issue's column suggests a few new releases to prompt professional reflection and renewal.

A Tragedy of Errors: Tales of Innumeracy

This issue's column is quite inside baseball, or because of the distinct Danish angle inside handball. It contains several examples of innumeracy by people who should know better. That's just no cricket.

Open Problems Column

This Issue's Column! This issue's Open Problem Column is by William Gasarch and is A Problem on Linked Sequences Inspired by an Oliver Roeder Column Request for Columns! I invite any reader who has knowledge of some area to contact me and arrange to write a column about open problems in that area. That area can be (1) broad or narrow or anywhere inbetween, and (2) really important or really unimportant or anywhere inbetween.

Verification column

Like the photograph, this issue's verification column may not be entirely formal and horizontal, but like the tea, it is refreshingly authentic and inspiring. I think it will serve the community well in years to come!

Open Problems Column

This issue's Open Problems Column is by Dana Moshkovitz. It is titled: Sliding Scale Conjec- tures in PCP. The PCP theorem has been around since 1992, but some of the most fundamental questions about it are still open. This column explains the questions, their importance, and why we're stuck. We quote Dana's column: The \Sliding Scale Conjecture" and related conjectures capture our beliefs about the PCP theorems we should aspire to, and they are the focus of this column.

SIGACT News Complexity Theory Column 101

This issue's column brings to a close the half-year of Bill in the Complexity Theorem Column. In particular, the previous issue's Complexity Theory Column was Bill Gasarch's third P versus NP poll, and this issue's column is Bill, Erik, Jacob, and Scott's article on the muffin problem. Warmest thanks to Bill, Erik, Jacob, and Scott for their splendid baking! Quite naturally given that their article is rich in conjectures, this article is brought to you not just by the Complexity Theory Column, but in fact is a joint production with the Open Problems Column, the letter M, and the number 157 286 .

Measuring Systems and Architectures: A Sustainability Perspective

This issue's Practioners' Digest column reports on the 2018 Measurement and Metrics for Green and Sustainable Software Systems Workshop (MeGSuS), the ACM/IEEE 21st International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS), and the 12th European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA).

Distributed Computing Column 73 SPAA 2018 Review

This issue's column contains a review of the 2018 ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA) by Laxman Dhulipa. Laxman has provided an insightful overview of the keynote lectures and highlights of the contributed presentations, that I hope will inspire you to track down and read the papers, if you haven't done so already.

SIGACT News Complexity Theory Column 100

This is column number 100, and Bill Gasarch has very kindly made it an event! In particular, this issue's column is the third of Bill Gasarch's series of polls on the eld's thoughts on P vs. NP (and other central issues in complexity). The rst two polls in the series appeared as SIGACT News Complexity Theory Columns 36 and 74. Warmest thanks to Bill Gasarch for having undertaken the huge task of creating the poll, gathering the responses, analyzing them, and writing this article on what the poll reveals, and to Clyde Kruskal who was Bill's magical elf on proofreading, polishing, and even knocking on doors to ask people what they think of P versus NP. (Psst: Bill and Clyde's 2019 book, "problems with a Point: Exploring Math and Computer Science" (https://www.worldscienti c.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/11261), sounds absolutely fascinating!)

The Big Picture: Big Data and Privacy

When thinking about the topic of this issue's column, I batted various ideas around in my mind before settling on the theme of privacy in the age of Big Data. I knew I was on to something when, a f...