BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:researchseminars.org CALSCALE:GREGORIAN X-WR-CALNAME:researchseminars.org BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Professor Avi Wigderson (IAS\, USA) DTSTART:20230623T120000Z DTEND:20230623T133000Z DTSTAMP:20260423T005810Z UID:ITB-MDLS/11 DESCRIPTION:Title: Randomness\nby Professor Avi Wigderson (IAS\, USA) as part of ITB Ma thematics Distinguished Lecture Series\n\n\nAbstract\nIs the universe inhe rently deterministic or probabilistic? Perhaps more importantly - can we t ell 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! \n\nWhich of these applications survive if the unive rse had no randomness in it at all? Which of them survive if only poor-qua lity randomness is available\, e.g. that arises from "unpredictable" pheno mena like the weather or the stock market? \n\nA computational theory of r andomness\, developed in the past three decades\, reveals (perhaps counter -intuitively) that very little is lost in such deterministic or weakly ran dom worlds. In the talk I'll explain the main ideas and results of this th eory. \n\nNo special background will be assumed.\n LOCATION:https://researchseminars.org/talk/ITB-MDLS/11/ END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR