Algorithmics, Social choice, Market Design, and Other Topics

A recent article  titled "Great Scientist ≠ Good at Math" by Harvard Biologist E. O. Wilson has caught a lot of attention. The article is based on a recently published book . A central message of the article is roughly that mathematical grounding is not important for scientists. The same points have also been made in a recent talk by Wilson (especially from 5.35 onwards): Although Wilson makes some valid points in the article as well as in the video, he appears to be overly dismissive about the role of mathematics in formalizing ideas and building models. What also struck me was the subtitle of the article: "E.O. Wilson shares a secret: Discoveries emerge from ideas, not number-crunching".  The subtitle seems to equate mathematics to number-crunching which I found to frankly be ignorant of the fact that mathematicians highly value elegant ideas and beautiful arguments. It was pleasing to see that a psychology professor and computer science pro...

The accepted paper list is now public: Designing for Diversity in Matching,  Scott D Kominers and Tayfun Sonmez Implementing the "Wisdom of the Crowd",  Ilan Kremer, Yishay Mansour and Motty Perry Strategyproof facility location and the least squares objective,  Yoav Wilf and Michal Feldman The Menu-Size Complexity of Auctions,  Sergiu Hart and Noam Nisan Differential Pricing with inequity aversion in social networks,  Noga Alon, Yishay Mansour and Moshe Tennenholtz Social Learning and Aggregate Network Uncertainty,  Ilan Lobel and Evan Sadler Optimal Auctions via the Multiplicative Weight Method,  Anand Bhalgat, Sreenivas Gollapudi and Kamesh Munagala Truthfulness and Stochastic Dominance with Monetary Transfers,  Martin Hoefer, Thomas Kesselheim and Berthold Voecking Truthful Mechanisms for Agents that Value Privacy,  Yiling Chen, Stephen Chong, Ian Kash, Tal Moran and Salil Vadhan Complex Contagion and The Weakness of Long T...