Algorithmics, Social choice, Market Design, and Other Topics

Donald Saari reviews a new book on mathematics of voting .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/15/AR2010071506274.html

  In the 2010 Nancy L. Schwartz Memorial Lecture, Harvard Professor Alvin Roth explains how market design can help save lives: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/news/video/opencontent/2010/Schwartz_Lecture.htm

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/0809/opinions-harvard-alvin-roth-freakonomics-ideas-opinions.html

The Scientific American discusses the issues of manipulation in online recommendation systems .

Noga Alon gave a plenary lecture at the recently concluded EURO 2010 conference . He presented six results in social choice theory, which included classic theorems and also some new work by Alon and his coauthors. The results are stated in an informal manner and therefore should be taken with a grain of salt: Majority can be irrational (Condorcet's Paradox)   Majority can be chaotic (McGarvey's Theorem) Only reasonable voting scheme is a dictatorship (Arrow's impossibility theorem) Any reasonable leader election scheme can be manipulated (Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem) Bigger committees require bigger budgets. Cheating is inherent in 'reality show survivor games' .

FC College, Lahore is organizing a 10-day Summer Workshop in Theoretical Computer Science from 2-13 August 2010. there will lectures on the following theoretical computer science topics: Logic and Proofs  Combinatorics Algorithms Graph theory Discrete probability Computability theory  Complexity theory  Problems in graph theory If you are nearby, do attend.