54th Midwest Theory Day

On saturday I want to the 54th Midwest Theory Day conference.

http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/jrogers/MTD/

Here were the key takaways for me:

1. Paul Rothemund's work on algorithmic self-assembly. I was told that if you want to learn more about this, then reading Paul's PHD thesis is the place to start.

2. Arthur - Merlin Protocol - an interactive proof system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MA_(complexity)

3. Integer programming, Linear programming, dynamic programming

4. sigma 2 machines

5. One method of problem solving that I noticed was that people at the conference would turn a problem they didn't know how to solve into a problem they did know how to solve. The would show that the open problem was just like another problen we already knew about.