News Overview

We are delighted to announce that Prof. Avi Wigderson (IAS, Princeton, Abel prize winner 2021) will give a talk with the title Randomness - the Utility of Unpredictability on Monday, Sep 19, 3 pm at INF 230 (Großer Hörssal). The talk is aimed to a general audience, in particular to staff and students in physics, computer science and mathematics. After the talk, there is some time for questions to and chatting with the speaker.

Title: Randomness - the Utility of Unpredictability
Abstract: Is the universe inherently deterministic or probabilistic? Perhaps more importantly - can we tell the difference between the two? Humanity has pondered the meaning and utility of randomness for millennia. There is a remarkable variety of ways in which we utilize perfect coin tosses to our advantage: in statistics, cryptography, game theory, algorithms, gambling... Indeed, randomness seems indispensable!
Which of these applications survive if the universe had no randomness in it at all? Which of them survive if only poor-quality randomness is available, e.g. that arises from "unpredictable" phenomena like the weather or the stock market? A computational theory of (pseudo)randomness, developed in the past decades, reveals (perhaps counter-intuitively) that very little is lost in such deterministic or weakly random worlds. In the talk I'll explain the main ideas and results of this theory.
No special background will be assumed.
Host: Felix Joos

Avi Wigderson is a widely recognized authority in the diverse and evolving field of theo­re­ti­cal computer science. His main re­search area is computational complexity theory. Together with László Lovász, Avi Wigderson was awarded the prize 2021 for their striking contributions to Theo­re­ti­cal Computer Science and Discrete Mathematics. The Abel prize is together with the fields medal arguably the most prestigious award in mathematics.