- QEC11 – Save the Date
The Second International Conference on Quantum Error Correction (QEC11) will be held Dec. 5-9, 2011 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California USA. The Second International Conference on Quantum Error Correction, hosted by the USC Center for … Continue reading →
QSpeak Announcements for Week Ending 12/24/2010
- TQC 2011
========================================= CALL FOR PAPERS The 6th Conference on Theory of Quantum Computation, Communication, and Cryptography —- TQC 2011 —- Universidad Complutense de Madrid Madrid, Spain 24 – 26 May 2011 http://gcc.ls.fi.upm.es/tqc2011/ ======================================================================= Quantum computation, quantum communication, and quantum cryptography are … Continue reading →
- QCRYPT 2011 – Save the Date
Save the Date: QCRYPT 2011 – First Annual Conference on Quantum Cryptography September 12-16, 2011 ETH Zurich www.qcrypt.net
TQC 2011 and a Bonus! Rant!
So most of my conference announcements are going out on qspeak now (and will be digested every week in a post here.) But since I’m helping out with this one it, I thought I’d post a separate note here. TQC 2011 will be held in Madrid, Spain from May 24 to May 26. The important deadline is January 24, 2011 for submissions. Website here.
Note that TQC has a proceedings (for those who care about the politics of getting a job in a computer science department, the fact that QIP does not have have a proceedings is not good for the field of quantum computing. The lack of best paper and best student paper awards at conferences is even worse. But that’s just silly politics of, you know, getting a job. Does it matter to the science of the conference? No. Does it matter if you don’t want the field to disappear from the face of the earth because universities won’t hire faculty in the area? Probably. Of course people will argue that a QIP proceedings would prohibit STOC and FOCS submissions, but seeing as how exactly one quantum paper made it to FOCS this year…)
Consequence of the Concept of the Universe as a Computer
The ACM’s Ubiquity has been running a symposium on the question What is Computation?. Amusingly they let a slacker like me take a shot at the question and my essay has now been posted: Computation and Fundamental Physics. As a reviewer of the article said, this reads like an article someone would have written after attending a science fiction convention. Which I think was supposed to be an insult, but which I take as a blessing. For the experts in the audience, the fun part starts at the “Fundamental Physics” heading.
Seth Lloyd at IQC
Some fun short clips of Seth Lloyd at the IQC. Love the first one. Disagree with the second one. The third is a great hope. Disagree strong with the fourth one (since I think the definition of a computer must include fault-tolerance.) The fifth one is a great ad!
And the music. Well the intro and final music is…awesome.
A Mathematical Definition of News?
Lately I’ve been thinking about the news. Mostly this involves me shouting obscenities at the radio or the internet for wasting my time with news items the depth of which couldn’t drown an ant and whose factual status makes fairy tales look like rigorous mathematical texts (you know the kind labeled “Introductory X”.) But also (and less violently) I’ve been pondering my favorite type of question, the quantification question: how would one “measure” the news?
Part of motivation for even suggesting that there is a measure of “news” is that if someone asked me if there was a measure of “information” back when I was a wee lad, I would have said they were crazy. How could one “measure” something so abstract and multifaceted as “information?” However there is a nice answer to how to measure information and this answer is given by the Shannon entropy. Of course this answer doesn’t satisfy everyone, but the nice thing about it is that it is the answer to a well defined operational question about resources.
Another thought that strikes me is that, of course Google knows the answer. Or at least there is an algorithm for Google News. Similarly Twitter has an algorithm for spotting trending topics. And of course there are less well known examples like Thoora which seeks to deliver news that is trending in social media. And probably there is academic literature out there about these algorithms, the best I could find with some small google-fu is TwitterMonitor: trend detection over the twitter stream. But all of this is very algorithm centered. The question I want to ask is what quantity are these services attempting to maximize (is it even the same quantity?)
The first observation is that clearly news has a very strong temporal component. If I took all of the newspapers, communications, books, letters, etc. that mankind has produced and regarded it without respect to time you wouldn’t convince many that there is news in this body of raw data (except that there are some monkeys who can type rather well.) Certainly also it seems that news has a time-frame. That is one could easily imagine a quantity that discusses the news of the day, the news of the week, etc.
A second observation is that we can probably define some limits. Suppose that we are examining tweets and that we are looking for news items on a day time scale. We could take the words in the different day’s tweets and make a frequency table for all of these words. A situation in which there is a maximum amount of news on the second day is then a situation where on the first day the frequency distribution over words is peeked one one word, while the second day is all concentrated on another word. One could probably also argue that, on the day time scale, if both frequency distributions were peaked on the same word, then this would not be (day scale) news (it might be week scale news, however.)
This all suggests that our friend, the news, is nothing more than the total variation distance. For two probability distributions $latex p(x)$ and $latex q(x) $, the variation distance between these distribution is $latex d(p,q)=frac{1}{2} sum_{x} |p(x)-q(x)|$ . This is also equal to $latex sup_{E subset X} |P(E)-Q(E)|$ where $latex P(E)=sum_{x in E} p(x)$ and similarly for $latex Q(E)$. Ah, so perhaps this is not as exciting as I’d hoped 🙂 But at least it gives me a new way to talk about the variational distance between two probability distributions: this is a measure of the news that we could associate with changing from one probability distribution to another.
Of course this is just one approach to thinking about how to quantify “news.” What are the drawbacks for my method and what should a real measure have that this one lacks? I mean whats the worst that could happen in thinking about this problem. Okay, so maybe you would learn how many holes it takes
to fill the Albert Hall.
QSpeak Announcements for Week Ending 12/10/2010
- Job opportunity in Quantum Information Science at HRL
An email from Richard at HRL about a job opportunity at HRL: Dear colleagues and friends, We would like to inform you of an immediate job opening for a staff member position in the area of quantum information science. We … Continue reading →
- University of Waterloo Faculty Positions
The Institute for Quantum Computing is now inviting applications for tenured or tenure-track faculty positions in all areas of quantum information research. Positions are available for cross-appointment in the Faculty of Mathematics, the Department of Chemistry and the Department of … Continue reading →
- CRM Quantum Information Postdoctoral Fellowships
The Centre de Recherches Mathematiques in Montreal will be hosting a theme semester on quantum information in fall 2011. The semester will attract researchers from around the world to participate in workshops on quantum algorithms, cryptography, information theory, foundations, and … Continue reading →
- Postdocs at Georgia Tech
Two postdoc positions are available in the Brown lab at Georgia Tech. The first position is for an experimentalist to work on an ion trap quantum computation project. The second position is for a quantum information theorist. More information about … Continue reading →
- Announcing the Quantum Information Science Announcement List
Back in the early days of quantum computing, one could almost keep up with the entire field by attending a few select conferences, reading the arXiv, and keeping in contact with a few colleagues. Quantum information science (quantum computing, quantum … Continue reading →
Balancing the Budget, One NSF Grant at a Time
Now THIS is the kind of idea we pay our Republican house representatives to come up with. A website where we can go through NSF grants and identify the ones we think should not be funded, balancing the budget, one NSF grant at a time.But clearly this is barking up the wrong tree! The NSF budget is only $7 billion-ish (and there is no WAY that this budget pays for itself by barely maintaining the most innovative economy in the world. Psah you say!) So…
Anyone want to help me build a website where we go around and identify senior citizens that are collecting social security but have not contributed enough in their life to merit this money? Grandpa can appear on youtube where he’ll describe what exact it is that he did in his life that merits his current social security check. Too young to fight in world war two, that no good lazy bum, cut his check! BAM, social security solved!
Next we can expand into hospitals where we will be able to identify tons of cost cutting measures. Does little Suzy really need that surgery? See little Suzy via a snazzy web interface. Ask her questions. Find out she is a very unproductive member of society, what with her 3rd grade reading skills and 4th grade math skills. No surgery for you little Suzy! BAM, Medicare problem solved!
Moving down the budget we get to the military. My first suggestion was that we take all members of the armed forces, count the number of people they have killed, sort the list, and start chopping from the bottom up. BAM, military spending cut! Okay that doesn’t use the web and well qualified internet surfers to help us solve this problem. We could have the surfers do the sorting (internet sort is a less well studied sorting algorithm taking 2N time to sort a list of length N, and usually results in the death of far too many neurons.) So instead we could put up videos of every member of the military and vote on whether they are dangerous enough looking to merit their pay. BAM, military spending cut! For a second time! And we’d win wars just by glancing menacingly at our enemies!
And what about income tax rates? Well I suggest we make a great tool where people can vote on what they’d like marginal tax rates to be. And then we can exactly INVERT the results. BAM, income distribution problem fixed!
Okay, enough with reason number 1231 why I am not a Republican.
P.S. If you go to the website for this spirited effort, http://republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/Review.htm, the web form doesn’t appear to verify that you’ve submitted a valid email address or a grant, and well, you know that those don’t have to be real anyway. Just saying. 😉
Quantum Job of the Teleportation Kind
teleportation technologists seek talented MBA (SOMA / south beach)
Date: 2010-12-03, 2:45PM PST
Reply to: [Errors when replying to ads?]
We are two engineers, brothers (both CalTech grads), who have developed and built a novel teleportation device. Over the last twelve months, we have tested our prototype system with up to 800 kg payloads, over distances of 300 miles. It is portable, safe, but does require a substantial (1800 W) power supply at both sending and receiving locations.
We believe our teleportation device could substantially disrupt many “last-mile” transit technologies and generate extraordinary returns for investors.
The only missing piece is YOU! We are looking for one or two newly-minted MBAs to help us develop critical assets — a logo, a Powerpoint deck, and Excel projections — needed to attract venture capital. In return, we would seek to retain a minority stake in the final venture.
Please send a resume and any other information that may set you apart from other MBAs with pitch experience. Can’t wait for you to join our team!
Life, Death, and the World is Such a Wonderful Place
I am not a big fan of THE NEWS. But then again, some days the universe just tees up some fun stuff. NyTimes obit, Frank W. Lewis, Master of the Cryptic Crossword, Dies at 98.
The younger Mr. Lewis attended secretarial school and the University of Utah (later earning a degree in absentia) and passed the federal government’s civil service test. He then headed for Washington, where he earned a master’s degree in music from the Catholic University of America and took government secretarial jobs.
Col. William Friedman, who ran the Army’s cryptography operations, was looking for very smart people on the eve of World War II. He heard about Mr. Lewis, who was bored “to tears” in the civil service’s death benefits section.
Colonel Friedman hired him as a civilian employee, and Mr. Lewis went on to help break the code used to coordinate Japanese ships. He became addicted to British puzzles while posted in England at the Bletchley Park decryption station at the end of the war. He then followed Colonel Friedman to the National Security Agency, where he won plaudits for his service, started the N.S.A. Glee Club and created English-style puzzles for an N.S.A. magazine.
Mr. Lewis’s 2,962 puzzles for The Nation were proofread by his wife of 74 years, the former Sylvia Shosteck….
One cannot make up, no matter how creative you are, the real life founder of the N.S.A Glee Club. In a similar vein, Sri Daya Mata, Guiding Light for U.S. Hindus, Dies at 96
:
Her death was confirmed by Lauren Landress, a spokeswoman for the group, the Self-Realization Fellowship/Yogoda Satsanga Society of India, which is based in what once was an elegant hotel on Mount Washington in Los Angeles.
….
Besides its headquarters, the society owns a 10-acre sanctuary in the Pacific Palisades, near Malibu, Calif., where a temple crowned by a golden lotus was built in 1966 under Sri Daya Mata’s guidance. Followers come from around the country to meditate.
Previous days obits included Samuel T. Cohen, Neutron Bomb Inventor, Dies at 89:
In contrast to strategic warheads, which can kill millions and level cities, and smaller short-range tactical nuclear arms designed to wipe out battlefield forces, the neutron bomb minimized blast and heat. Instead, it maximized a barrage of infinitesimal neutrons that could zip through tanks, buildings and other structures and kill people, usually by destroying the central nervous system, and all other life forms.
While doubters questioned the usefulness, logic and ethics of killing people and sparing property, Mr. Cohen called his bomb a “sane” and “moral” weapon that could limit death, destruction and radioactive contamination, killing combatants while leaving civilians and towns unscathed. He insisted that many critics misunderstood or purposely misrepresented his ideas for political, economic or mercenary reasons.
A specialist in the radiological effects of nuclear weapons, he relentlessly promoted the neutron bomb for much of his life, writing books and articles, conferring with presidents and cabinet officials, taking his case to Congressional committees, scientific bodies and international forums. He won many converts, but ultimately failed to persuade the United States to integrate the device into its tactical nuclear arsenal.
….
“It’s the most sane and moral weapon ever devised,” he said in September in a telephone interview for this obituary. “It’s the only nuclear weapon in history that makes sense in waging war. When the war is over, the world is still intact.”
In case you missed it, you just read an obit which included an interview of the deceased for the obit. Oh and then there is the moral question of killing people but sparing property.