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Chess, Backgammon, and the Algorithmic Lens

An interesting interview with Christos Papadimitriou (recent winner of the Katayanagi Prize for Research Excellence) on Dr. Dobb’s Journal. On chess and backgammon:

In chess, when you play like an idiot, you always lose, so you learn. In backgammon, you can play 10 games, not play well, and win. So you think you are great but you have made a great number of mistakes. Tragically, life is closer to backgammon, because you can play a perfect game and lose!

Which made me wonder which game is the closest game to “real life?” (Okay I’ll dispense with the obvious answer which is the board game “Life.” Bzzt! Disqualified for using little pegs that are always getting lost for people. I mean those damn blue and pink pegs get in more car accidents in a typical game of “Life” than most people get into in their real life.)
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Devilish Dice Games

A new entry in the best title ever competition appeared last week on the arXiv:

arXiv:0806.4874
Why devil plays dice?
Authors: Andrzej Dragan
Abstract: Principle of Relativity involving all, not only subluminal, inertial frames
leads to the disturbance of causal laws in a way known from the fundamental
postulates of Quantum Theory. We show how quantum indeterminacy based on
complex probability amplitudes with superposition principle emerges from
Special Relativity.

I bet the devil would play a mean game of liar’s dice.

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Against the Stereotype

After reading the comments on my post Leaving Academia: Cry or Celebrate?, I started thinking about the successful scientists I know, and it occurred to me that the following conjecture is at least anecdotally true:

Scientists who have passionate outside interests are more successful in science than those who do not.

Okay, hows that for a broad against the grain statement which might stimulate comments on this blog? Anyone?

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Away From the Red Eyes of the Crowd

Red Eye:

  • A drink made from beer and tomato juice, drunk by Canadians
  • A kind of cicada.
  • Tomato ketchup. Or is it catsup?
  • A European fish, the rudd, Leuciscus erythrophthalmus. I was once a rudd, of a different kind.
  • What Dave will be doing tonight to get to the East coast. BINGO! From the OED:

    White House Diary 31 Mar. (1970) 642 Lynda was coming in on ‘the red-eye special’ from California, about 7 A.M., having kissed Chuck good-by at Camp Pendleton last night as he departed for Vietnam

    Bonus points if you can guess who Lynda is. Double bonus if you can explain where the title of this post comes from.

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QIP 2009 in Santa Fe, New Mexico

I can taste the green chilies and after conference ski trip already:

QIP 2009 — 12th WORKSHOP ON QUANTUM INFORMATION PROCESSING
Santa Fe, New Mexico USA. January 12-16, 2009.
http://qipworkshop.org
……………………………………………………….
First call for papers
……………………………………………………….
IMPORTANT DATES:
Submission deadline for talks: October 20, 2008, 23:59 GMT.
Acceptance notification for talks: November 20, 2008.
Submission deadline for posters: December 1, 2008.
Acceptance notification for posters: December 8, 2008.
QIP 2009 workshop: January 12-16, 2009.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS:
Quantum Information processing is the recasting of computer
science in a quantum mechanical framework. QIP 2009 is the twelfth
workshop on theoretical aspects of quantum computing, quantum
cryptography and quantum information theory in a series which
started in Aarhus in 1998. QIP 2009, like its previous editions,
will feature invited talks, contributed talks and a poster session.
Submissions of abstracts for contributed talks are sought in
research areas related to quantum information science and quantum
information processing. All submissions will be judged primarily
on their first two pages. Therefore these two pages should clearly
describe the ideas, results and techniques, and make a comparison
with previous related work, as appropriate. Beyond the first two
pages, more details can be provided; however any material beyond
the first two pages may be ignored at the discretion of the
Program Committee. Submissions that deviate from this format risk
rejection without consideration of their merits.
Submissions should be made through the conference website
http://qipworkshop.org (linked to an electronic
submission server). The deadline for contributed talk submissions
is 23:59 GMT, October 20, 2008.
STEERING COMMITTEE:
Dorit Aharonov (Hebrew University)
Cris Moore (UNM/SFI) (Chair)
John Preskill (Caltech)
Jaikumar Radhakrishnan (TIFR, Mumbai)
Renato Renner (ETH Zurich)
Peter Shor (MIT)
John Watrous (Waterloo)
Andreas Winter (Bristol)
Ronald de Wolf (CWI, Amsterdam).
PROGRAM COMMITTEE:
Hans Briegel (University of Innsbruck)
Harry Buhrman (CWI, Amsterdam)
Wim van Dam (UCSB)
Daniel Gottesman (Perimeter Institute)
Aram Harrow (Bristol)
Patrick Hayden (McGill)
Richard Jozsa (Bristol) (Chair)
Julia Kempe (Tel Aviv)
Manny Knill (NIST)
Andrew Landahl (University of New Mexico)
Debbie Leung (IQC Waterloo)
Keiji Matsumoto (NII Tokyo)
Ben Reichardt (Caltech)
Alex Russell (University of Connecticut)
Barbara Terhal (IBM)
Frank Verstraete (University of Vienna)
LOCAL ORGANIZERS:
Howard Barnum (LANL)
Jim Harrington (LANL)
Andrew Landahl (University of New Mexico) (Chair)
Cris Moore (University of New Mexico / Santa Fe Institute)
Jon Yard (LANL)

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Occupational Arrows of Time

One of the subjects of great debate in physics goes under the moniker of “the arrow of time.” The basic debate here is (very) roughly to try to understand why time goes it’s merry way seemingly in one direction, especially given that the many of the laws of physics appear to behave the same going backwards as forwards in time. But aren’t we forgetting our most basic science when we debate at great philosophical lengths about the arrow of time? Aren’t we forgetting about…experiment? Here, for your pleasure, then, are some of my personal observations about the direction of time which I’ve observed over my short life. Real observation about the direction of time should lead us to the real direction of time, no?
(With apologies to Alan Lightman)
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Must Avoid Bill Gates Logging Off Metaphor

This spring/summer has been particularly cloudy in the northwest. But today it is sunny and looks to get to the pleasant high 70s. This, obviously, is due entirely to the fact that Bill Gates controls the weather and today is his last day at Microsoft. Seattle is of course, introspective on the man who certainly changed the region dramatically. Here are some of the more entertaining Gates articles.
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Pseudo Open Notebook Science?

A topic of much discussion I see in the Science 2.0 world (it’s like the Renaissance, but with more Javascript!) is the idea of Open Notebook Science. In one version of Open Notebook Science, one simply opens up ones research notebook (or other equivalent) to outside access. For an example see Garrett Lisi’s research wiki. This is, of course, the grand ideal of science at its best: the question for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me Darwin. But of course, this idea has it’s problems. Most notably, of course, there is the political aspect: what is keep someone from stealing your absolutely ground-breaking, world-changing, breakfast-making ideas?
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TiddlyWiki for Technical Talks?

One of the most interesting talks that many of us in the quantum computing world have seen is the talk by Manny Knill on fault-tolerant quantum computing. Above and beyond the interesting content, what was cool about this talk was that, as far as I could tell Knill used a linked PDF for the talk. That way if he needed to delve into deeper details on a particular subject, he could. While for some talks, like colloquiums, I don’t see the need for this, for technical talks before a more informal audience, this, I think is a great tool. Now, having discovered TiddlyWiki, I wonder if it isn’t time for me to try to perform a similar feat but using TiddlyWiki? Hmm, I have very tempted.

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Leaving Academia: Cry or Celebrate?

No, no, I’m not leaving academia (yet 🙂 Pfffffft! That’s the sound of me thumbing my nose at the world.) But recently I was thinking about about people who get a Ph.D. in, say, physics, or are a new postdoc, and then are faced with what to do next. As Peter Rhode, writes in a post today (or whatever day it is in the upside down part of the world) entitled “Farewell physics”:

The academic system has some serious problems. Most notably in my opinion, there is very limited scope for promotion. For every permanent position there are countless postdocs competing for that position. It simply isn’t possible for all of us post-docs to progress right up through the ladder. Many of us will be stuck as postdocs for the indefinite future. Realistically, I could expect to spend the next 5 or even 10 years as a post-doc before a permanent position would come along, and even then I would have very little control over where I would end up. I’ve seen many outstanding colleagues in exactly this position….
There is a huge salary discrepancy between academia and the private sector. With the same qualifications one can earn twice as much in the private sector than as a post-doc.

Peter, like others before him, has decided that the academic rat race is not the path he wants to take, and is therefore heading out for greener pastures. Of course my first reaction, I’ll admit, is one of sadness: I’ve read some papers by Dr. (err DJ) Rhode, and enjoyed them. By contributing to quantum information science, he’s become part of a community I consider myself a (annoying, loud, insert random invective here) member of. But, in thinking about this, I realized, that I’ve got it all wrong.
Continue reading “Leaving Academia: Cry or Celebrate?”