The list of accepted papers for ITCS (Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science) is up.
Some thoughts:
1) I have expressed reservations in the past about ITCS, based on the idea that it was creating another conference similar to FOCS and STOC, where instead we should be "fixing" FOCS and STOC, for example by expanding it. I suppose my reservations this year are muted. While the titles don't suggest to me that ITCS is necessarily a home for more "innovative" papers than FOCS/STOC, there seems to be no inclination to expand these conferences, so why not have yet another conference where 40 very good papers can go? (Indeed, why not make it a bit larger? I'm not sure how many submissions there were; hopefully someone can confirm, but I'd guess the acceptance rate was roughly 20-25%?)
2) Another issue was ITCS was in China it's first two years, making it seem a bit "exclusive". (Not to Chinese researchers, of course; and not to authors, who were given funds for the trip. But it is a far distance to go for others.) This year, it will be at MIT, which hopefully will attract people from up and down the East Coast (weather permitting), and help it build up a longer term audience.
3) 5 out of the 40 papers have Quantum in the title. Should this be telling us something?
4) Talk I'm most looking forward to: Compressed Matrix Multiplication by Rasmus Pagh. (I've already read and enjoyed the paper.) But I'm also looking forward to seeing Algorithms on Evolving Graphs, if only based on the title.
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9 comments:
Quantum's hopping these days. Look to the future: 12.5% of all innovation in computer science is in quantum computing.
Drat! Why'd they change the name? Theoretical computer science, I mean.
Hm, I personally thought that more like 13.4% of all innovation in computer science is in quantum computing.
First, congrats to the accepted papers.
The first year this conference ran there was no way you could confuse the accepted papers with the normal STOC/FOCS papers (though some had probably been rejected from STOC/FOCS several times). I thought it was kinda nice to have a different kind of conference where I could understand most of the talks.
(Correct me if I am wrong) This year the list looks more similar to the STOC/FOCS variety--still with some big exceptions. While it would be nice to have a third STOC/FOCS option. It would be sad if the original flavor of this conference was lost to provide that.
You can tell from the titles that the papers are not innovative? Really? Reviewing is quite easy for you ... no wonder you are so many program committees!!!
Anon #4: Perhaps I'm on so many PCs because I know how to read carefully! What I actually said was:
"While the titles don't suggest to me that ITCS is necessarily a home for more "innovative" papers..."
Note the use of the word suggest! You could perhaps add it to your vocabulary!
If you'd like a clarification, I didn't see anything in the titles that mentally distinguished these papers to me from what I'd see in a FOCS/STOC program. On the other hand, HOTxxx (like HotNets) papers seem to be aiming for a bit of the wacky, off-the-normal-path research, and often a fraction of the titles reflect that.
Thanks for this post Mike. I had forgotten that ITCS was going to be nearby. Useful info!
Theory is some how a bit different from systems, no? Are HOTxxx type tiles really our role models?
Chandra,
Yes, theory is different. So should we model our "innovation workshop" meeting on HotXXX, or make it different somehow? I don't know!
But
1) Shouldn't we try to have a discussion on that? (Perhaps it would have been better if it was discussed more when ICS started, but it seems a conversation we could still have.)
2) Shouldn't we try to learn from what they've done to help figure out what would work best for us?
"Hm, I personally thought that more like 13.4% of all innovation in computer science is in quantum computing."
5/40 = 12.5%
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