Idiot

CSP stands for COMPUTER SAVY PERSON. 25 years ago the following happened:

BILL: I can't get my computer to work.
CSP: Just push this button you idiot.
BILL: Thanks! That works!

15 years ago the following happened:

BILL: My awk program did not compile and in trying to find the error I found an example from the awk manual which did not compile.
CSP: Just use gawk instead of awk you idiot.
BILL: Thanks! That works! I don't think its idiotic to not know to use gawk.

5 years ago the following happened often:

BILL: My FILL-IN-SOFTWARE is not working, whats the problem?
CSP: We can find a work-around, but, by Rice's theorem, we can't find out what the problem really is.
BILL: Thanks!

Recently the following happened.

BILL: When I play a song on You-Tube I'm not getting sound.
CSP: That will take a few hours to fix. We need to INSERT TECHNO BABBLE.

When they were done sound worked, but many other things did not. And there were some things which I would call odd except that computers doing odd things is not odd. I fired up FIREFOX and a short time later OPEN OFFICE opened mysterious. There was a debate on this.

CSP1: I think FIREFOX is somehow linked to OPEN OFFICE.
CSP2: I think some weird combination of keys caused it.
BILL: Did I do something idiotic like accidentally click on some icon (this turned out to not be the case).

In the good old days computers were simpler. The staff would tell me I was an idiot and fix the problem! The staff now is 10 times better then they were then, 100 times more polite, but computers have gotten VDW(4,2) more complicated.

I miss being an idiot.

Meta Comment on FOCS/STOC comments

The comments on both Vijay's guest post and Lance's post brought out many comments about FOCS/STOC. People seem to have strong feelings and stronger opinions. Here is a list of questions this discussion has raised.

1. Is the community really driven by these conferences? An Underlying assumption of these discussions has been that someone judges us based on the number of STOC/FOCSs we have. Who is this mysterious someone? Is it our departments? Our Colleges? Ourselves? Granting agencies?
2. Is it bad that we are so judged?? PRO: Its good to have a central place where you know the good papers are. CON: The rest of the items on this list are about what problems there are in judging quality CON: Some of these papers are never put into proper journal form. CAVEAT: Is the Journal-Refereeing system all that good to decry that it is lacking here?
3. Other fields do not have high-prestige conferences- why do we and is it a good thing?. Our field moves fast so we want to get results out fast. It is not clear that FOCS/STOC really do this. Using the web and/or Blogs can get the word out. Important new results in theory get around without benefit of conferences. For results just below that threshold its harder to say.
4. Are the papers mostly good?
5. Is their a Name-School-bias? Is their a Name-person-bias? Some have suggested anonymous submissions to cure this problem.
6. Is their an area-bias? There are several questions here: (1) is the list-of-topics on the conference annoucement leaving off important parts of theory? (2) is the committee even obeying the list as is? (3) have some areas just stopped submitting?
7. Is their a Hot-area-bias?
8. Is their a mafia that controls which topics gets in?
9. Is their a bias towards people who can sell themselves better? To people that can write well?
10. Is their a bias towards making progress on old problems rather than starting work on new problems?
11. Is their a bias towards novel or hard techniques?
12. Is it just Random? Aside from the clearly good and clearly bad papers, is it random? Is even determining clearly good and clearly bad also random? One suggestion is to make it pseudo-random by using the NW-type generators. This solves the problem in that since it really is random it is less prestigous and most of the problems on this list go away. Would also save time and effort since you would not need a program committee.
13. Are there many very good papers that do not get in? It has been suggested that we go to double sessions so that more get in. If the quality of papers has been going up over time this might make sense and would not dilute quality.
14. Is 10 pages too short for submissions? This was part of Vijay's Video Suggestion. Are figures and diagrams counted for those 10 pages? If they are they shouldn't be.
15. Are many submissions written at the last minute and hence badly written?
16. Are many submissions written by the authors taking whatever they have by the deadline and shoving it into a paper?
17. Since the conference is about all of theory, can any committee do a good job?Vijay was partially addressing this problem by trying to find a way to make their job easier.
18. Do other conferences have these problems? That is, the more specialized conferences- do they have similar problems? Why or why not?
19. Do you actually get that much out of the talks? If not then it is still valuable to to go for the people you meet in the hallways?
20. For all the items above, even if true, are they bad? Some have suggested that bias towards big-names is okay.

Any proposed change in STOC/FOCS (or other conferences) should have the following:

1. State clearly what problem you are trying to solve. If it is a new problem there may be a bias against it.
2. Prove that it really is a problem. The proof has to use novel or difficult techniques.
3. State clearly what your solution is and proof that it works. The proof can be a sketch; however, if you are a big-name or from a big-name-school then people will pay more attention.
4. Comments to your suggestion must stay on topic. A referees report would never say: `The author showed that 3-colorability can be approximated well; however, the really important problem in this field is set cover, which can be shown to not be approximated by the following.'' But a comment on a blog often says things like: ``Vijay is addressing one problem with STOC/FOCS, but the real problem is ...''

Radical change to Conferences by Vijay Vazirani

(Guest Post by Vijay Vazirani!)

The processes of submitting FOCS/STOC abstracts and conducting PC meetings have undergone numerous changes since the good old days when you received your acceptance letter by US Mail and a couple of weeks later you received a huge rolled-up bunch of poster-sized papers on which you were supposed to glue your paper and mail back. There is little doubt that these changes have improved efficiency and fairness a great deal.

I would like to propose another, somewhat more radical, change that is now technologically feasible -- allowing people to submit, together with their 10 page abstract, a 10 (or 20?) minute video describing their result. The video will be optional, at least in the beginning.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words -- if so, a 10 minute video is worth millions! Imagine, as a PC member, how much easier it will be to read an abstract after you see a short video explaining the problem, the approach, and the main new ideas, and how much more "correct" your evaluation of the paper would be! In my opinion, this will greatly improve quality of the paper acceptance process. Many people complain that the latter is currently broken -- a large fraction of the decisions are nothing more than the flip of a coin or are left to such chance events as who reviews the paper or the constitution of the PC.

Many objections can be raised to this idea. Let me anticipate a couple and try to counter them. First, this change is feasible today -- if you need proof, just take a look at YouTube! Another objection is that this may give an advantage to some members of TCS community -- those who can give better talks. But then, they are precisely the people who are also better at writing clearly and already had a huge advantage. In fact, in my opinion, relatively speaking, the enhanced process will be a great equalizer -- giving a chance to people who don't have good writing skills to still be able to sell their wares.

Needless to say, this is a major change and it deserves an extensive discussion before it is implemented. I hope this blog will provide that opportunity.

Getting an 8-year old interested in math:Do's and Don'ts

I recently visited my nephew and his five kids and tried to get my 8-year-old great nephew Justin interested in some math. I told him that I am thinking of a number between 1 and 100, and he should ask YES/NO questions until he guessed it. Try to ask as few questions as possible. His first three questions were as follows.

• Is it bigger than 20? (YES)
• Is it even? (YES)
• Does it have a 7 in it? (NO)
• Is it 80? (NO)

It took him 20 more questions to get it. I bet him a quarter I could get his number with 10 questions. I succeeded and he had to beg his dad for a quarter. I've been told he has learned not to gamble with Uncle Bill. His father told me that the concept of `try to make every question cut the number of possibilities in half' was over his head since he has not learned fractions yet.

I then tried NIM-games. There are toothpicks on the table and you can remove 1 or 2. The players alternate. The player who removes the last toothpick WINS. He played his sister Jordan (who is nine) with different numbers of toothpicks on the table. They DID catch on that if the number of toothpicks is 3,6,9,12, ... like that, then Player II wins, otherwise Player I wins. They then did NIM with removing 1 or 2 or 3 and also 1 or 2 or 3 or 4, They learned the trick and the pattern. They liked it and learned some math.

I do not know if this is indicative, but it may well be that if a kid has not learned fractions yet, binary search may be over his head, while NIM games is fine and fun.

Warning: I once tried to teach my 6-year old nephew Michael that, when doing multiplication, the order does not matter.

BILL: Say you had two pans of brownies. One is 3 by 5 and the other is 5 by 3. Then---

MICHAEL: Do you! I love brownies!

We didn't get much math done ...

Knuth Prize goes to Nancy Lynch

The Knuth Prize for 2007 was announced: Nancy Lynch. The formal announcement is here. The Knuth Prize is awarded for a lifetime of work in the foundations of computer science. This is in contrast to awards that are for one work (e.g., best paper at STOC). A best paper award can look silly 10 years later; however, a lifetime-of-work award has much less chance of that. The Knuth Prize is $5000 plus $1000 travel expenses to go pick it up. Do they make you fill out forms and give them your receipts? This is a small amount of money as prize money goes. The Knuth Prize is given out every 1.5 years, so saying that Nancy Lynch is the `2007 winner' isn't quite right. Donald Knuth has never won the Knuth Prize, though he certainly should. Is he eligible? Previous winners are below. Impressive bunch!

1. 1996: Andrew Yao
2. 1997: Leslie Valiant
3. 1999: Laszlo Lovasz
4. 2000: Jeffrey Ullman
5. 2002: Christos Papadimitriou
6. 2003: Miklos Ajtai
7. 2005: Mihalis Yannakakis

Complexity 2007- BE THERE!

The website for Complexity 2007 is up now (its been up for while) CCC08. In 2007 it is part of FCRC, a set of conference including STOC. Should you go? YES if you can. Should you also go to STOC or part of STOC. YES if you can. Advice:

1. Register and book hotel early and try to stay in the conference hotel.
2. Air travel: There used to be some rules-of-thumb like `fly over a weekend for a better price' or `book early or `book late' or `fly airline XXX' or ... None of these seem to be consistent anymore. One rule-of0thumb- if you see a good price grab it since it may go away.
3. DO NOT CHECK BAGGAGE. Saves time on both ends and saves the time and hassle when they lose it.
4. Look at the program ahead of time and download and read some of the papers ahead of time. This way you can follow those talks pretty well. (Papers likely on authors websites or EEEC but not necc.)
5. Bring a notebook and a clipboard OR a labtop so that you can take notes on talks and things you hear in the hallways.
6. Its a cliche to say `you learn more from talking to people in the halls then at the talks' While you certainly learn alot this way, the talks are also valuable. Not so much because you will learn the latest results and their proofs, but so that you'll know whats out there.
7. How many talks to go to? Going to all of them is tiring and leaves less hall-time. Pick talks that you already have some very basic knowledge of OR want to get into. IF you are looking for things to work on, go to more talks. If your plate is already full, go to less talks.
8. The following is typical and should not be underated: You only understand the first 3 minutes of a talk BUT you get awareness of a new area and some references to look at.
9. When you get home follow up on the topics that peaked your interest.

What to make of the Ind of CH ?

Dave Barrington suggested I blog about Paul Cohen since he just died. Scotts Blog already reported on Paul Cohen's death, and there were many comments on C^* algebras and PAC learning (none of which Paul Cohen worked on). Paul Cohen's most important result was that CH is independent of ZFC. What does this mean and what do we make of it? CH is the statement there is no cardinality strictly between N and R ZFC is Zermelo-Frankl Set Theory (with the Axiom of Choice). Virtually all of Math can be derived from these axioms. (There are quibbles about this which might be a latter blog.) Kurt Godel showed that there is a model of ZFC where CH is TRUE. Paul Cohen showed that there is a model of ZFC where CH is FALSE. Together we have that CH is INDEPENDENT OF ZFC. What to make of this? Here are opinions I have heard over the years:

1. (Mathematical Realism or Platonist) There IS a model of the reals that is the RIGHT one.In that model CH is either true of false. ZFC just isn't up to the task of figuring it out.Paul Cohen thought that there were an INFINITE number of cardinalities between N and R.I've heard rumors that Kurt Godel thought there was exactly ONE cardinality between N and R.Hugh Woodin has some mathematical reasons to think there is exactly ONE:CHone CHtwo. Many people prefer the simplicity of having NONE---the infinity after N is R. Some people think that we need to add new axioms to ZFC such as Large Cardinals or the Axiom of Determinacy to settle the question. Are these really candidates for axioms?That may be a later post.
2. (Not sure what these people are called.) Since ZFC settles virtually everything else in mathbut not this question, CH has no answer. There is No `correct' copy of the reals.The weakness in this response may be the virtually. Are there questions in math that need it? Are there such questions outside of Set Theory? That may be a later post.

What do you think? ~

The Complexity Blog Lives!

Various people have urged Lance to keep the Blog going, perhaps under new management. Some have suggested Bill Gasarch (me) . Some have suggested anyone except Bill Gasarch. Lance flipped a coin and it came up with anyone but bill gasarch . However, not one to leave things to random chance, Lance offered me to take it over, and I accepted.

PROS: The blog will live!
CONS: It will have far more capital letters.
CONS: Fewer postings, probably twice a week. But that how Lance started.

I am honored to carry on the tradition, and will have my first real post next week. bill gasarch

The End

After 4 1/2 years and 958 posts I have decided to retire from blogging. No weblog can go on forever and I would rather end on my own terms than let the blog peter out.

Thanks for reading.

Turtles

Today a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie opens. The turtles were quite popular back in the late 80's and early 90's, somehow making appearance in more than a couple STOC and FOCS talks. Seemed the rule to avoid popular culture in talks doesn't apply to children's shows.

Then the turtles started winning NSF Math Postdocs: Michelangelo (Grigni), Raphael (Ostrovsky) and Leonardo (Schulman). Poor Donatello never did get his postdoc.

Laws, Taxes and Computer Science

So if I get a number of P=NP and P≠NP "proofs" what do the law professors get? A long email argument that most income tax is illegal. I'll spare you the full email (but if you are really curious here is the website).

How do I know about the email to our law faculty? Because the message was cc'd to the CS faculty because of the following line:

I know that some people aren't comfortable using a computer. If you need help with a computer to search the tax code (US Code, and Code of Federal Regulations), perhaps one of the computer science faculty can assist you.

I don't hold much credence in his legal arguments but I know for sure he has no clue about computer science.

FCRC: Registration, Visas and Hockey

The Federated Computing Research Conference (FCRC) has opened registration and housing. FCRC, held June 8-16 in San Diego, is a mega-conference including STOC, Complexity, COLT, Electronic Commerce (EC), SPAA, and a few non-theory conferences as well.

Early registration deadline for the conference is May 11 and the hotel rooms are being held until May 9. It's recommended to make the hotel reservations as early as possible.

For registration, you pay a single fixed FCRC Fee and then a separate registration for every conference you attend. You are allowed to attend talks in any conference held during the same day you are registered for some conference. Tutorials and workshops are closed, though we are trying to open up the EC workshops.

If you need a visa, read this and apply now. The US visa process can take months.

Catherine McGeoch, the self-proclaimed ToC Hockey Commissioner, tells us the theory community has been challenged.

The computer architecture community (which attends ISCA) has challenged the theoretical computer science community to a "friendly inter-league" hockey game, to take place during FCRC. They will make local arrangements — we just have to get up a team.

If you are attending FCRC, and can pass as a theoretician (and/or as a hockey player), you are hereby invited to sign up for the now-forming ToC Hockey team. Tell all your friends to sign up, too.

I remember long ago in graduate school playing (badly) for the MIT theory group's intramural team, Execution Time. Now I can't even keep up with my eight-year old daughter.

Theory Program Director

The NSF has posted a search for a new theory program director to take over after Bill Steiger's term expires this summer. The program director plays a critical role for our community, running the panels for theoretical computer science grants and administering those grants, working with other program directors and the CISE leadership in establishing the funding directions of current and new programs and generally acting as an advocate within NSF for theoretical computer science. Most universities are very willing to give a leave for these positions and the NSF will typically cover your current salary.

Bob Sloan, program director in 2001-2002, wrote The Joys of Being an NSF Program Director for the latest SIGACT News.

If you have an interest not only in what we do, but also in the process and policy issues of what we do, then you too might really enjoy spending a couple of years being a program director. At many universities, definitely including mine, the whole funding process is a major component—perhaps the single most important component—in determining who will get tenure, promotions, etc. As somebody interested in process and policy, I really enjoyed getting to see how this system works from the inside.

Not only is NSF an interesting place, it is a highly purpose driven place. As faculty, we are called on to do many, many different tasks, some of which seem to have a clear goal, and some of which, well, leave one scratching one's head. One wonders, depending on where one is and who is the Dean/Provost/etc. any given year: Is the goal really to educate the masters students, or rather to keep them happy enough that we keep making money from them? NSF has one of the clearest goals possible: find the absolute best research to fund. (There can be huge disagreement about what is the best research, of course, but there really is not any disagreement about the underlying goal.)

Being a program director also gives you the ability to provide two good services to your research community. First, you have some ability to drive the direction of the research community. Second, you get to run the best, fairest competitions for funding possible. There is really quite a difference between the best panel run by somebody who knows the research area, knows who are likely to be good panelists, and is good at managing such things, and a panel run by an outsider who is a fair to middling manager of such things.

So if you would like to spend a year or two in DC and make a real impact for theoretical computer science, please consider applying.

A Computer Scientist in Jeopardy

The long-running Jeopardy television game show had a first on Friday, when all three players ended up tied for the first time.

The three contestants on the venerable game show all finished with $16,000 after each answering the final question correctly in the category, "Women of the 1930s," on Friday's show. They identified Bonnie Parker, of the famed Bonnie and Clyde crime duo, as a woman who, as a waitress, once served one of the men who shot her…The show contacted a mathematician who calculated the odds of such a three-way tie happening — one in 25 million.

In that final round contestants choose how much of their winnings to risk, so it is impossible to give a probability in such a setting. It's more an issue of simple game theory.

Before the Final Jeopardy round the totals were $13,400, $8000 and $8000. Both of the $8000 decided to risk all of their money so they wouldn't be overtaken by the other one.

The $13,400 belonged to Scott Weiss, a computer science professor at Mount St. Mary's University in Maryland. Since $13,400 is between 1.5 and 2 times $8000, the standard strategy is to bet enough so that if you win you have more than $16,000 and if you lose you have more than $8000, for example betting $3000. Had Scott done so, he would have taken home all his winnings and come back for the next show.

Instead Scott bet $2600, leading to the $16,000 tie. By doing this, Scott gets to take home all his winnings and comes back for the next show.

It takes a computer scientist to make the most conservative bet, knowing that the rules of the game give no particular advantage to winning over tying and leading to the first three-way tie ever.

A Place for Open Problems

A readers asks where he can put his open problem on the web. Back in the late 80's we had three Theorynet mailing lists. Theorynt-A announced major conferences, Theorynt-B announced local workshops and Theorynt-C had everything else including various questions people put out to the community. But now we have only one Theorynt only announcing conferences and the volume of a Theorynt-C type list today would overwhelm anyone trying to read it.

We need some Web 2.0 system. A blog or wiki to post the problems. A tagging method to mark the area and status. A voting system to rank the importance of the problem. A commenting system for discussion. A sophisticated RSS system for tracking. A visual appealing and simple interface. And most importantly someone willing to put it all together for no compensation beyond the thanks of the community.

From Toronto to Chicago to Basketball

I just returned from visiting the University of Toronto, my first visit to the campus in 18 years. I spent much of my time talking to the same people I did back then, Charlie Rackoff, Steve Cook and Faith Fich (now Faith Ellen). Also former NEC postdoc and current Toronto prof Avner Magen and my former student Rahul Santhanam visiting there for the spring.

The biggest news in Canada is happening in Chicago, the trial of Lord Conrad Black, but it barely makes the news here. Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune wrote today about the non-story. The big news in Chicago is a 73 degree day yesterday, Mayor Daley's wrangling to get the 2016 Olympics in Chicago and, of course, March Madness.

What speaks math more than the NCAA Men's Division I Collegiate Basketball tournament that gets underway tomorrow. First you have a beautiful binary tree published in all the US papers (and Canadian ones too) and filled out by millions in their office pools. Nothing like a single elimination contest to explain exponential growth, 64 teams need only 6 rounds to find a champion. Technically they have 65 teams now, and they needed an extra single-game round yesterday to get to the 64 remaining teams.

The tournament draws more betting, legal and illegal, than any other event (though the Super Bowl draws more for a single game). These bets lead to predictions. With sites like Tradesports you can get prices on securities that give you estimated probabilities. Not absolute probabilities but those who use the markets to fill out their office pools likely won't do too poorly, even with no understanding of college basketball.

When Technology Doesn't Change

My 6th grade daughter takes the ISATS (Illinois Standard Achievement Tests) this week, tests meant more to evaluate the school than the students. Despite the amazing changes in computer technology, she takes the exam the same way I did for the equivalent tests in the 70's, filling in ovals with a Number 2 pencil.

In my lifetime we've sent a man to the moon and music has moved from records to 8-tracks to cassettes to CDs to MP3 players. But what hasn't changed. The vast changes have been in computation and communication, but transportation remains mostly the same. Airplanes fly as fast now as they did in the 60's using the same basic jet engine technology. Most cars still run on the combustion engine and remain grounded. Elevators, escalators and sidewalks where people still walk. We really haven't changed how we get from point A to point B.

We still read our books on paper and write with ballpoint pens. Locks are mostly split cylinders. They still haven't invented a good mouse trap or cured the common cold. And let's not forget the greatest device devised by man: Saran Wrap.

The Tenure Process

A reader asks how the tenure process works in US universities. I will describe a typical case but the system works differently depending on the particular school, department or candidate.

Junior faculty are hired as assistant professors for a four-year term. After which they are usually renewed for an additional three-year term. At the of that second term either they are promoted to associate professor with tenure or their contract is not renewed and they need to find another position.

An assistant professor is hired based on potential and promoted to tenure based on accomplishment.

It is rare to not renew a candidate after the first term, happening only if the department feels there is little chance that the faculty member will received tenure after second term.

Since tenure requires a long-term commitment from the university, the department, the dean and the university put considerable effort in vetting the case. The candidate first puts together a tenure packet, with CV, detailed research and teaching statements, a collection of publications and list of potential letter writers. The department sends the packets to senior people in the field both on and off the list given by the candidate. Ten or more review letters are not uncommon for a tenure case. The tenure case works its way through the system from the senior members of the department through the dean, provost and so on. Many universities have a tenure committee that reviews all cases for the provost or president.

The final decision is based on several parameters including the letters, publications, teaching, grants, service to the university and academic community and how well the faculty member fits in the department. The weights given to each item as well as how high the tenure bar is held differs greatly between universities. You can get a good feeling by how recent tenure cases went in the department.

Can one come up for early tenure? Can one get credit for years as a postdoc, research scientist or an assistant professor elsewhere? Or can one "stop the tenure clock" for illness, a new child or other leaves of absences? Can one be promoted to associate professor without immediate tenure if needed? Can one get an extra year to search for a new job if not promoted? Will the candidate have access to the review letters? If the answers to these or other questions concern you, best to bring them up before you accept the job.

Pure Evil

A conversation I had with a graduate student, maybe ten years ago.

Student: I hear Bill Gates wants "P ≠ NP" proven at Microsoft and is hiring smart mathematicians to do so.
Me: All the power to him.
Student: How can you say that? Isn't Bill Gates pure evil.

There is a tendency among many academics to think of the world in black and white and in particular consider some people or institutions truly evil. Elsevier, George Bush (and Republicans in general) and the RIAA only desire to destroy everything good about academic publishing, the US, and personal freedom respectively. Bill Gates certainly used to be in that category but has softened now that Microsoft has lost some dominance and hires many of our friends.

Scientist tend to believe the world works by simple rules and we reinforce these viewpoints by only hanging out with other scientists like ourselves. The Internet has only made things worse, as we tend to only read stuff written by people who already agree with us.

I certainly don't defend all the policies of Elsevier, George, and the recording industry, but they don't have agendas of evil and in fact often have the same long-term goals that many of us share. We don't always share the same strategies but it would be better to work with them then to shut them out entirely by having no faith that they can do any good.

Bit Pieces

The Electronic Commerce accepted papers have been posted. EC will be held as part of the FCRC in San Diego in June. EC has also announced workshops on Networked Systems/Incentive-Based Computing, Prediction Markets and Data Engineering Issues in E-Commerce and Services which you can still submit paper to.

Carnegie Mellon will host OurCS: Opportunities for Undergraduate Research In Computer Science,October 5-7 for undergraduate woman. In addition to providing the participants opportunities to network, to meet role models, to learn about graduate school and jobs in CS, the conference will be unique in that undergraduate student teams will be embarking on research projects led by researchers from industry and academia. There will also be opportunities for students to present their own work as well as team results.

DIMACS in New Jersey is now hosting the Homeland Security Center for Dynamic Data Analysis (DyDAn), which plans to develop techniques to analyze massive flows of data arriving continuously over time. DyDAn should give theoretical computer scientists and discrete mathematicians the opportunity to put much of their research into practice as well as develop new theoretical tools.

In more DIMACS news, Rebecca Wright will become the new Deputy Director of DIMACS with the eventual plan to succeed Fred Roberts as director. I'm sure Rebecca will do a great job but she has a tough act to follow.