Noam Nisan has a new blog on algorithmic game theory. This is great stuff. I must add that I'm finding Dick Lipton's blog fascinating reading, not only for the heavy research content, but the great historical perspective he brings to a number of well known problems.
p.s (snark alert) It does seem unfortunate that computational geometry blogs (and data structures) don't appear to be recognized as part of the theoretical computer science blogosphere, but in a world where SODA is viewed as a conference not worth attending, I guess this is small potatoes. (end snark alert)
p.p.s From an organizational perspective, it doesn't matter terribly whether geometry papers get published exclusively in SoCG/SODA, appear in STOC/FOCS, etc. Similarly, although Luca is concerned about crypto forking off from STOC/FOCS, I don't think there's a real problem with people naturally aggregating around a common topic area in their own conference. I'm also not too caught up with "name wars" despite my snark above.
The problem is really along other dimensions: the tenure process (what is your field and who evaluates you/writes letters), and even more crucially, the funding process. For many years, geometry was funded from a separate sub program of CCF than the rest of theoryCS (at least theoryA). This was a good thing (more money) and a bad thing (CG was clubbed in with solid modelling, graphics, and symbolic methods).
Now of course geometry has been folded back into the larger Algorithmic Foundations umbrella, and here's where perceptions start to matter. If AF gets defined (de facto) as STOC/FOCS stuff, geometry proposals are going to get short shrift (also because they tend to have more application-oriented material as well). This would be true for any other area that has forked off into its own community.
I didn't submit to the theory program last December, and I don't know how panel deliberations are going, but I'm curious as to whether there's been any noticeable change ?
It does seem unfortunate that computational geometry blogs (and data structures) don't appear to be recognized as part of the theoretical computer science blogosphere
ReplyDelete<snark> Well, you know, it might help if more than one of those blogs actually posted something once in a while. </snark>
It does seem unfortunate that computational geometry blogs (and data structures) don't appear to be recognized as part of the theoretical computer science blogosphere
ReplyDeletePoint taken, although wouldn't you say that comp-geo is a pretty well-defined community -- sort of like the algorithmic-game-theory one?
indeed it is, and so is AGT. I view them as subcommunities of a larger TCS community, in the rough sense that the algebraists and topologists are all still mathematicians.
ReplyDeleteAh, here's the rub: I wouldn't want to see AGT as purely a sub-community of TCS, but rather as straddling a few other communities as well (AI, GT, networks, economics).
ReplyDeleteSure. and in a sense CG has that as well, with its overlap with graphics, topology, sensor networks, origami, etc.
ReplyDeleteCommunities *should* grow in such a manner, organically and driven by internal interest and external applications. As I said, my main concern is funding, since from that perspective, things are more hierarchical. One answer of course is to target more interdisciplinary areas.