Good news, everyone! WOLA, the Workshop on Local Algorithms, is coming back this year, with WOLA 2022 taking place in person* in Warsaw on June 25–27. Exciting speakers, events and outings are being planned!

Keep track of updates by visiting the website, and register at https://ideas-ncbr.pl/en/wola/registration/ (even if you intend to attend remotely).

* Virtual participation is also possible.

Ainesh Bakshi, Rajesh Jayaram, and Samson Zhou are organizing a 3-day Workshop on Algorithms for Large Data (nicely abbreviated as WALD(O), the O standing for Online), featuring many talks which should be of interest to the readers of this blog, as well as an open problems and a poster sessions, and a junior/senior lunch. As the organizers describe it:

This workshop aims to foster collaborations between researchers across multiple disciplines through a set of central questions and techniques for algorithm design for large data. We will focus on topics such as sublinear algorithms, randomized numerical linear algebra, streaming and sketching, and learning and testing.

The workshop will take place on August 23 — August 25 (ET). Attendance is free, but registration is required by August 20th. More details at https://waldo2021.github.io/

The fifth WOLA (Workshop on Local Algorithms) will be virtual, and take place June 14-15. Registration is free, but required: please fill this form by June 10th to attend.

Local algorithms — that is, algorithms that compute and make decisions on parts of the output considering only a portion of the input — have been studied in a number of areas in theoretical computer science and mathematics. Some of the related areas include sublinear-time algorithms, distributed algorithms, streaming algorithms, (massively) parallel algorithms, inference in large networks, and graphical models. These communities have similar goals but a variety of approaches, techniques, and methods. This workshop is aimed at fostering dialogue and cross-pollination of ideas between the various communities.

This year, the workshop will include:

• A poster session: Please submit your poster proposal (title and abstract) at by May 26th. Everyone is invited to contribute. This session will take place on gather.town.
• Invited long talks: the tentative schedule is available, and features talks by James Aspnes, Jelani Nelson, Elaine Shi, Christian Sohler, Uri Stemmer, and Mary Wootters.
• Junior-Senior social meetings
• An AMA (Ask Me Anything) session, moderated by Merav Parter
• A Slack channel
• An Open Problems session

The Program Committee of WOLA 2021 is comprised of:

• Venkatesan Guruswami (CMU)
• Elchanan Mossel (MIT)
• Merav Parter (Weizmann Institute of Science)
• Sofya Raskhodnikova (chair) (Boston University)
• Gregory Valiant (Stanford)

and the organizing committee:

• Sebastian Brandt (ETH)
• Yannic Maus (Technion)
• Slobodan Mitrović (MIT)

For more detail, see the website; to stay up to date with the latest announcements concerning WOLA, join our mailing list!

While we at PTReview always look through the posted papers, we do not check for correctness. We make a serious attempt to make sure the paper is reasonable. In a few instances, we have decided not to post a (topically relevant) paper, because it looks absolutely wrong. Our position is: the benefit of doubt goes to the author, and a borderline paper should be posted. We are only curating relevant tech reports, not passing judgment on results.

In some borderline cases, readers familiar with the subject complained to us that the paper should be not be considered a scientific contribution (because of, say, unspecified algorithms, blatantly incorrect or unverifiable central claims). These are cases where we were also unsure of the paper. We have usually removed/not posted such papers.

If the paper author(s) feels that his/her paper should nonetheless be posted, then they should email us at little.oh.of.n@gmail.com. As long as the paper is not complete nonsense and appears to cite relevant history, we will defer to the authors’ wishes.

As it may have transpired by now, FOCS 2017 (a.k.a. the 58^th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science) is around the corner.

I am not going to go into the details of the talks on or related to property testing at the conference itself,\({}^{(\ast)}\) but instead focus on (one of) the workshops.

This FOCS will include 3 workshops,\({}^{(\dagger)}\) on Saturday 14^th (gird your loins — they last the full day!):

• Linear Sketching as a Tool for Everything
• Frontiers in Distribution Testing
• Hardness Escalation in Communication Complexity and Query Complexity

The second,  Frontiers in Distribution Testing, is specifically about recent advances, new questions, and novel directions in property testing of distributions. Co-organized by Gautam Kamath and me, its official objective is to “catch the community up in recent developments, and highlight some of the most interesting frontiers in distribution testing.”

It’ll feature a stellar lineup of speakers\({}^{(\ddagger)}\) (namely, Ilias Diakonikolas, Jiantao Jiao, Alon Orlitsky, Constantinos Daskalakis, Ryan O’Donnell, Ronitt Rubinfeld, and Tom Gur), as well as an open problem session — and, very possibly, pictures of eggs. The program is available, with all relevant details, on the workshop webpage.

If you are around next Saturday, consider attending — and submit your favorite open problems!

\({}^{(\ast)}\) Hint: look at Sessions 7A and 10B.
\({}^{(\dagger)}\) Thanks to the FOCS workshop chairs James Lee and Aleksander Mądry.
\({}^{(\ddagger)}\) A lineup of stellar speakers.

(Posting an announcement for a workshop on sublinear algorithms.)

We are organizing a Sublinear Algorithms workshop that will take place at Johns Hopkins University, January 7-9, 2016. The workshop will bring together researchers interested in sublinear algorithms, including sublinear-time algorithms (e.g., property testing and distribution testing), sublinear-space algorithms (e.g., sketching and streaming) and sublinear measurements (e.g., sparse recovery and compressive sensing).

The workshop will be held right before SODA’16, which starts on January 10 in Arlington, VA (about 50 miles from JHU).

Participation in this workshop is open to all, with free registration. In addition to 20+ excellent invited talks, the program will include short contributed talks by graduating students and postdocs, as well as a poster session. To participate in the contributed talk session and/or the poster session, apply by December 1.

For further details and registration, please visit

 http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~vova/sublinear2016/main.html .

Best,

Vladimir Braverman, Johns Hopkins University
Piotr Indyk, MIT
Robert Krauthgamer, Weizmann Institute of Science
Sofya Raskhodnikova, Pennsylvania State University

An announcement from Gautam that will be of interest to readers who will be in (or are looking for a good reason to go to!) New England next month:

On Friday, April 10th, MIT will be hosting the second Sublinear Algorithms Day. This event will bring together researchers in the northeast for a day of interaction and discussion.

Sublinear Day will feature talks by five experts in the areas of sublinear and streaming algorithms: Costis Daskalakis, Robert Krauthgamer, Jelani Nelson, Shubhangi Saraf, and Paul Valiant — each giving a 45-minute presentation on the hot and latest developments in their fields.

Additionally, for the first time this year, we will have a poster session! We strongly encourage young researchers (particularly students and postdocs) to present work related to sublinear algorithms. Abstract submission details are available here.

So what are you waiting for? Registration is available here, and we hope to see you at the event!

Website: http://tinyurl.com/sublinearday2
Poster: http://tinyurl.com/sublinearday2poster
Contact g@csail.mit.edu with any questions.

Gautam Kamath