President Higdon\u27s 2007 Commencement Address

President Higdon advises the 2007 graduates: Use your words well. Think about how your behaviors, your actions and your words can affect others. Live by the Honor Code. And if you find yourself faltering, or in a difficult situation, reflect back on what the Honor Code has meant to you, what this community has meant to you. And draw strength from that. The only other bit of advice I will give you is one you have heard me mention often. And that is, stay connected to this College. You are our newest class of alumni. And that means this College is yours. Forever. Continue to be a part of this community

Nonuniform Reductions and NP-Completeness

Nonuniformity is a central concept in computational complexity with powerful connections to circuit complexity and randomness. Nonuniform reductions have been used to study the isomorphism conjecture for NP and completeness for larger complexity classes. We study the power of nonuniform reductions for NP0completeness, obtaining both separations and upper bounds for nonuniform completeness vs uniform complessness in NP. Under various hypotheses, we obtain the following separations: 1. There is a set complete for NP under nonuniform many-one reductions, but not under uniform many-one reductions. This is true even with a single bit of nonuniform advice. 2. There is a set complete for NP under nonuniform many-one reductions with polynomial-size advice, but not under uniform Turing reductions. That is, polynomial nonuniformity is stronger than a polynomial number of queries. 3. For any fixed polynomial p(n), there is a set complete for NP under uniform 2-truth-table reductions, but not under nonuniform many-one reductions that use p(n) advice. That is, giving a uniform reduction a second query makes it more powerful than a nonuniform reduction with fixed polynomial advice. 4. There is a set complete for NP under nonuniform many-one reductions with polynomial ad- vice, but not under nonuniform many-one reductions with logarithmic advice. This hierarchy theorem also holds for other reducibilities, such as truth-table and Turing. We also consider uniform upper bounds on nonuniform completeness. Hirahara (2015) showed that unconditionally every set that is complete for NP under nonuniform truth-table reductions that use logarithmic advice is also uniformly Turing-complete. We show that under a derandomization hypothesis, the same statement for truth-table reductions and truth-table completeness also holds

Review of John Shank\u27s Interactive Open Educational Resources

The use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education is becoming more widespread as college educators explore ways to increase college access and affordability. John Shank’s book Interactive Open Educational Resources: A Guide to Finding, Choosing, and Using What\u27s Out There to Transform College Teaching is one of the better nuts and bolts guides available to those in higher education interested in exploring the use of OER in their courses and programs. This review analyzes Shank’s book and finds that although the guide provides useful advice for collecting, curating, and adopting OER, the book falls a bit short on its promise to transform college teaching

The American Bar and the Supreme Court Proposal

The issue regarded most seriously was, of course, the proposed increase of the Supreme Court, and, a bit more incidentally, the changes of the lower Federal Courts. Against such an increase the American Bar Association was emphatic. Thirteen out of every fifteen members said no such result can be permitted. This issue is the only one which gets much attention from the public. However serious the other considerations may be, the lay citizens of the United States can think only of the necessity of protection to their Supreme Court. Our influence in this situation must of necessity be great. Whatever the people may think of us, ordinarily, as a class, one can hardly doubt but that in this crisis they wish our advice and help. They must have it and have it abundantly

Opening Remarks: An Overview of the Problem

It is a pleasure to be here this morning and to give you some opening comments about what is obviously a very important issue and one that I think does require the involvement of a multitude of different persons from public policy, public health, law and other fields. As I look at the Conference program, however, I feel a little bit uneasy with my assignment since those of us in Foundations are quintessential consultants; we are not really out on the front line doing anything, but are instead providing advice, assistance, counseling, and sometimes money, to those who are out there. That description of the role of a consultant reminds me of a story that really tells you what a consultant is

Opening Remarks: An Overview of the Problem

It is a pleasure to be here this morning and to give you some opening comments about what is obviously a very important issue and one that I think does require the involvement of a multitude of different persons from public policy, public health, law and other fields. As I look at the Conference program, however, I feel a little bit uneasy with my assignment since those of us in Foundations are quintessential consultants; we are not really out on the front line doing anything, but are instead providing advice, assistance, counseling, and sometimes money, to those who are out there. That description of the role of a consultant reminds me of a story that really tells you what a consultant is

Relaxed Models for Adversarial Streaming: The Advice Model and the Bounded Interruptions Model

Streaming algorithms are typically analyzed in the oblivious setting, where we assume that the input stream is fixed in advance. Recently, there is a growing interest in designing adversarially robust streaming algorithms that must maintain utility even when the input stream is chosen adaptively and adversarially as the execution progresses. While several fascinating results are known for the adversarial setting, in general, it comes at a very high cost in terms of the required space. Motivated by this, in this work we set out to explore intermediate models that allow us to interpolate between the oblivious and the adversarial models. Specifically, we put forward the following two models: (1) *The advice model*, in which the streaming algorithm may occasionally ask for one bit of advice. (2) *The bounded interruptions model*, in which we assume that the adversary is only partially adaptive. We present both positive and negative results for each of these two models. In particular, we present generic reductions from each of these models to the oblivious model. This allows us to design robust algorithms with significantly improved space complexity compared to what is known in the plain adversarial model

From the Sidelines: A Deconstructionist View of Circular 230

Over the past several months, the new written tax advice rules in Circular 230 have engendered a great deal of debate. On one side, tax practitioners have repeatedly voiced their frustration in interpreting the new rules along with their fears that the rules may have a far-reaching and radical impact on everyday tax practice. On the other side, the government has attempted to soothe practitioners’ fears while at the same time insisting upon a generally broad interpretation of the new rules. In this short essay, I provide an outsider’s perspective of this debate over the meaning of the new written tax advice rules. Viewing the action from the sidelines, I maintain that, in this debate, we are actually watching deconstruction in action. After providing a bit of background on the deconstructionist concept of the liberation of the text from the author, I assert that we are witnessing the free play of the text of Circular 230 following its liberation from its government authors. While I explain that this is quite a normal and natural process, I do express my sympathy for those who must live with the uncertainties inherent in the free play of a text that governs one’s own conduct