Algorithmics, Social choice, Market Design, and Other Topics

The discover magazine has come out with a list of 20 best brains under 40. Among them, there is Terence Tao , Jon Kleinberg and CMU prof Lous von Ahn . Tao has been described in the following way: Tao, now 33, is one of the most prolific and esteemed mathematicians in the nation. In 1999 he became UCLA’s youngest professor at age 24 and later won the 2006 Fields Medal, considered the Nobel Prize of math. In a discipline where one can spend a lifetime working on a single problem, Tao has made major contributions in a number of categories ranging from nonlinear equations to number theory—which explains why colleagues continually seek his guidance. Kleinberg's citation includes the following: Kleinberg continues to combine computer science, data analysis, and sociological research to help create better tools that link social networking sites. He envisions an increase in how we can see information move through space over time, in what he calls geographic hot spots on the Web, based ...

Brian Hayes discusses the algorithmic challenge of tracking who's hot and who's not on the internet. The article also has useful references.

Aaron Roth has an insightful entry on incentive compatibility, truthfulness and computation. He concludes: It seems that there is a rich theory of incentive compatible computation waiting to be discovered, and that algorithmic game theory will prove to fit in nicely with the rest of theoretical computer science as a discipline that studies the fundamental abilities and limits of computation.