SimonsTV

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Monday, June 17 – Friday, June 21, 2024
Playlist: 24 videos
Playlist: 20 videos
May. 2022
Santosh Vempala (Georgia Tech)
Simons Institute 10th Anniversary Symposium
May. 2020
The Women of Theory of Computer Science rock to our version of I Will Survive!
WIT: https://womenintheory.wordpress.com/


I Will Survive
Lyrics: Avi Wigderson (IAS)

At first I was afraid, I was petrified
I worried I could never fit this proof on just one slide
But then I spent so many nights thinking why it is so long
And I grew strong
And learned exactly what went wrong

A problem wor-thy, of attack
Just proves its worth by vigorously fighting back
I should have used error correction, should have sampled yet again
I should have stayed the course and found there is so much that I can gain

So do come back, problems galore
I am much more ready to attack you than I was before
I’ll fight you guiltless when at work, forget you guiltless when at home
And if you’re fun then in the pastures of the TCS we’ll roam

So I’ll survive, and I will thrive,
By Nash’s equilibrium, there must be balance to my life
I’ve got all my life to live,
And I’ve got all my Math to give
So I’ll survive,
and I will thrive, hey, hey

It took all the strength I had, I was nearly spent,
Trying hard to mend, the errors, in my argument
I put each pigeon in its hole, consulted every oracle
My upper bound
Turned up below my lower bound

Then I came up, with something new
I thought outside the blackbox, found what others never knew
That polynomials with a small degree have small number of roots
That few cryptogra-phic assumptions no one’s likely to dispute

So do come back, problems galore
I am much more ready to attack you than I was before
As I have wit and I have WIT and having both is pretty neat
Indeed a convex combination that is very hard to beat

So I’ll survive, and I will thrive,
Because (in theory, at least) this is a perfect life
You pick the problems that you love
To fit your brain just like a glove
So I’ll survive,
and I will thrive, hey, hey

Singers:
Dahlia Malkhi (Calibra, Facebook)
Elette Boyle (IDC, Israel)
Irit Dveer Dinur (Weizmann Institute, Israel)
Julia Chuzhoy (Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, USA)
Katrina Ligett (Hebrew University, Israel)
Keren Censor-Hillel (Technion, Israel)
Lisa Zhang (Bell-Labs, USA)
Mary Wooters (Stanford University, USA)
Michal Feldman (Tel-Aviv University, Israel)
Nicole Immorlica (Microsoft Research, New England, USA)
Orna Kupferman (Hebrew University, Israel)
Rebecca Wright (Barnard College, USA)
Ronitt Rubinfeld (MIT, USA)
Shafi Goldwasser (Simons Institute at UC Berkeley, USA)
Shubhangi Saraf (Rutgers University, USA)
Shuchi Chawla (University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA)
Sofya Raskhodnikova (Boston University, USA)
Tal Malkin (Columbia University, USA)
Tal Rabin (Algorand Foundation, USA)
Yael Tauman Kalai (Microsoft Research, New England, USA)
May. 2019
Urmila Mahadev, UC Berkeley
Fifth Annual Industry Day
Playlist: 20 videos
Apr. 2018
Naftali Tishby (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Simons Institute Open Lecture Series, Spring 2018
https://simons.berkeley.edu/events/openlectures2018-spring-3
Mar. 2018
Munther Dahleh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
https://simons.berkeley.edu/talks/munther-dahleh-3-28-18
Societal Networks
An important development in the area of convex relaxations has been the introduction of systematic ways of strengthening them by lift-and-project techniques. This leads to several hierarchies of LP/SDP relaxations: Lovasz-Schrijver, Sherali-Adams and Sum of Squares (also known as the Lasserre hierarchy). The benefits and limitations of these hierarchies have been studied extensively over the last decade. Recently, strong negative results have been obtained, not only for specific hierarchies but even for the more general notion of extended formulations. In this workshop we investigate the power and limitations of LP/SDP hierarchies as well as general extended formulations, and their ties to convex algebraic geometry. We also explore tools and concepts from matrix analysis with strong connections to SDP formulations: matrix concentration, matrix multiplicative weight updates, and various notions of matrix rank. Finally, the workshop will cover related areas where these kinds of techniques are employed: sparsification, discrepancy and hyperbolic/real stable polynomials.
Playlist: 24 videos
Iterative methods have been greatly influential in continuous optimization. In fact, almost all algorithms in that field are iterative in nature. Recently, a confluence of ideas from optimization and theoretical computer science has led to breakthroughs in terms of new understanding and running time bound improvements for some of the classic iterative continuous optimization primitives. In this workshop we explore these advances as well as new directions that they have opened up. Some of the specific topics that this workshop plans to cover are: advanced first-order methods (non-smooth optimization, regularization and preconditioning), structured optimization, fast LP/SDP solvers, advances in interior point methods and fast streaming/sketching techniques. One of the key themes that will be highlighted is how combining the continuous and discrete points of view can often allow one to achieve near-optimal running time bounds.
Playlist: 23 videos
Sep. 2016
Don Berry, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
https://simons.berkeley.edu/talks/don-berry-09-19-2016
Optimization and Decision-Making Under Uncertainty
Apr. 11 – Apr. 15, 2016
Playlist: 28 videos
Dec. 2015
Richard Karp sat down with Tim Roughgarden to discuss the Fall 2015 program on Economics and Computation.

https://simons.berkeley.edu/programs/economics2015
Nov. 16 – Nov. 20, 2015
Playlist: 23 videos
Jun. 8 – Jun. 12, 2015
Playlist: 32 videos