- The Guest Speakers look AWESOME!: Khot, Raz, Regev. Also Banquet speaker Hartmanis AWESOME!
- Based on titles alone (not so reliable) it looks like there are no quantum papers. Someone tell me- is that really true? Even if there are some, I am sure there are not many. Has the field run its course? Doubtful. In fact, it may be the other way around--- the field has grown and their are other places for that work to appear.
- ADVICE: Try to download some of the papers that (1) interest you AND (2) you have the prereq knowledge OR always wanted to get that knowledge. Either read them or use them to find refs to read.
- Is there a centralized place to download them? There should be!!!!!! Other conferences manage this (SODA for one).
- I will be at STOC and CCC. Hope to see you there!
Computational Complexity and other fun stuff in math and computer science from Lance Fortnow and Bill Gasarch
Monday, March 01, 2010
CCC 2010 papers posted (I know- Old News)
As Lance tweeted, the papers for CCC 2010 are posted
here.
How is the quality of CCC generally perceived? Obviously it is a step below STOC/FOCS. Is CCC roughly equivalent to SODA? Or is it less well regarded?
ReplyDeleteTypo in name of guest speakers : Its Khot and not Knot :)
ReplyDelete"No strong parallel repetition with entangled and non-signaling provers" by Julia Kempe and Oded Regev is a quantum paper. As with most quantum papers, it's on the arxiv.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 2, you seem to not know the blog writer. Typos are quite natural for this blog. If you read a post written by Bill which does not have a typo then it is worth pointing out :)
ReplyDeleteI have corrected the typo-it is knot spelled incorrectly now.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous #1: The focus of CCC is very different than SODA, but the two conferences are equally well regarded.
ReplyDeleteCCC is far smaller than SODA, mainly because the complexity community is so much smaller. But the quality of CCC is very high. I would say that SODA only compares with CCC in quality if you take the "top 30" papers from SODA (whatever those may be). I've seen papers rejected from CCC that got into SODA, and I doubt that it works the other way around when SODA accepts >130 and CCC accepts <35.
ReplyDeleteAlso, at CCC, the talks are generally a bit longer, everything is in one session, and over 3 days you can meet nearly everyone attending the conference. This makes the atmosphere entirely different from a conference like SODA.
I don't mean to bash SODA-- it's a nice conference too, in a different way-- but there's something special about small high-quality conferences in this age.
I've seen papers rejected from CCC that got into SODA,
ReplyDeleteFirst, I seriously doubt that, simply on the basis that topic overlap between SODA and CCC is nearly null. This is not far from claiming that you have seen papers rejected from Crypto that go into SoCG.
Second, even if it were true it says nothing. There are numerous examples of papers being rejected from SODA going into STOC, papers rejected from STOC going into FOCS and papers rejected from FOCS going into SODA, for the full circle. According to your logic this proves that SODA is way better than SODA since it accepts papers previously rejected by two conferences already shown to be (according to your logic) worse than SODA.
Third, I think any comparison between SODA and CCC is nearly pointless. Both conferences are the leading venue in their respective sub-fields. As such they are both high quality venues and mostly incomparable. You are arguing that CCC apples are better than SODA oranges.
A comparison between SODA and any smaller algorithms conference is much easier: papers are in the same area to begin with and the flow of rejected-to-accepted is by far mostly in one direction.
Lastly, already the comparison between STOC/FOCS and SODA is difficult since there are areas covered by STOC/FOCS which are not covered by SODA, and areas covered by SODA which, while technically within the scope of STOC/FOCS, in practice lie outside the interest of the regular attendees to those conferences.
"... in practice lie outside the interest of the regular attendees to those conferences."
ReplyDeleteyeah, most people who attend have papers, so this is a self-fulfilling prophesy ...
Also, STOC/FOCS are more favorable to complexity papers than to algorithms papers, so that tends to raise the quality of soda and lower that of ccc.
bien sur
ReplyDeleteWhy are some conference fees so high while others are fairly low? Why the large differences?
ReplyDeleteConsider the early/member fees of:
- CCC: 200€
- POPL: 400€
- SIGCHI: $760
- SIGCSE: $200
- SIGGRAPH: $850
- SODA: $115
Why do authors have to pay for the honor of providing the show and providing the material that will be printed. Actors would laugh. Writers would laugh. Why don't academics?
There were a reasonable number (5?) of complexity papers at the last SODA. Easy test: How do they compare to the CCC papers?
ReplyDeleteThere were a reasonable number (5?) of complexity papers at the last SODA.
ReplyDelete...and people were complaining about it.
Easy test: How do they compare to the CCC papers?
It's funny how you feel the need to put down SODA to make CCC look better. FOCS doesn't need to put down STOC to be considered a good conference.
Furthermore SODA has different parameters than CCC. A weak complexity oriented paper with a solid algorithm would rank much higher in SODA than a strong CC paper with no algorithmic content. This is not because SODA or CCC are better or worse than each other but because they are different conferences with different objectives.
but because they are different conferences with different objectives.
ReplyDeleteTo finish this, it is naive to think that simply being more demanding makes a conference better. To quote from MM's blog: "A conference that has a main purpose of judging people is ultimately empty".
Conferences have two main objectives: (i) bring the community together and (ii) select and disseminate good work.
Some conferences achieve this by being ultra-selective and attracting the community (e.g. SIGCOMM) others achieve this by having a slightly lower standard though still quite high (e.g. INFOCOMM, AAAI) and again attracting the community.
One could argue that STOC/FOCS today are neither here nor there. In the past they had a lower standard (same number of papers, much smaller community) and they used to attract the entire community. Now they have less participants than SODA in spite of covering, at least in principle, more areas. This means that while the quality of the papers in STOC/FOCS might well be higher than SODA, as conferences they might well be trailing it.