Drumss Site

The Chicago Tribune today had a few articles on Second Life, a growing virtual world that even has its own economic markets with its own currency exchangable with US dollars. As the article says, Harvard Law School taught a class in Second Life and I have heard of many other universities in the process of establishing Second Life courses as part of their on-line degrees. Taken to an extreme, why do we need hundreds of graduate complexity courses taught world-wide every year when everyone can sit in on one of a handful of the best lecturers giving the class? Indeed we now have the technology to have virtual seminars or even entire conferences on-line complete with `quot;coffee breaks`quot;, business meetings and dance parties. Why not even hold an established conference, like STOC or SODA in a virtual world? The total cost would be much less than traveling to a real-world meeting and nearly every aspect of the conference experience could be simulated. One advantage of a real-world conference is not so much what one can do but what a real-world conference prevents you from doing. While away at STOC you can`t teach your course, attend committee meetings, hold office hours, meet with students, etc. You are forced by circumstance to reschedule these activities and open up your calendar to see talks and meet with your colleagues. But at a virtual meeting, can you tell your chair you have to miss your class and the faculty meeting while you sit at your computer, your body in your office but your mind in a different place?

Dartmouth Professor Peter Winkler visited our department yesterday and today, the first stop of a two-week five-university tour. Winkler gives great seminar talks and is easy to talk to about hard combinatorial problems. Unfortunately whenever I see him he also brings very tantalizing puzzles that you have to work hard at not thinking about, lest they consume you. For example Love in Kleptopia Jan and Maria have fallen in love (via the internet) and Jan wishes to mail her a ring. Unfortunately, they live in the country of Kleptopia where anything sent through the mail will be stolen unless it is enclosed in a padlocked box. Jan and Maria each have plenty of padlocks, but none to which the other has a key. How can Jan get the ring safely into Maria`s hands? From Seven Puzzles You Think You Must Not Have Heard Correctly (with solutions). For the more mathematically minded here is the Infinite Hats Problem that he told me earlier this year. A countable number of people each have either a white hat or black hat on their heads. Each person can see everyone`s hats except their own. Each person simultaneously announces a guess for the color of their hat. Is there a strategy for the people so that no matter what the arrangement of hats, only a finite number will incorrectly guess their hat color? For more check out his book Mathematical Puzzles: A Connoisseur`s Collection.

Carlos Castillo asks for comments on his Key References Proposal. The key references section of a paper points to the most similar previous articles on the same topic that were extended, improved, challenged, or built upon by the paper. Key references allow the author of a research article to highlight the most closely related previous work in the specific topic of the paper. Key references are the natural complement of keywords. An interesting idea. If it is used (and taken seriously) by many authors it might help automated search systems identify important papers in the field. On the other hand many journals require keywords and AMS classifications although I have rarely seen this information put to good use. For humans a well-written `quot;Previous Work`quot; section will have much greater value than just a list of references. Key References won`t become popular unless a major publisher requires them in their journal or conference articles. Would Key References play a useful role or just become one more thing authors have to do to get their papers published?