Essays and Opinions by Oded Goldreich

last updated: June 2009

Essays

The following essays (listed in chronological order) can be obtained in PostScript:

Critique of some trends in the TCS community, 1991.
Theory of Computation: A Scientific Perspective, 2001 (with A. Wigderson).
On our duties as scientists, March 2004.
How to write a paper, March 2004.
(This is an augmented version of the essay How NOT to write a paper, written in 1991, revised in 1996.)
On Teaching the Basics of Complexity Theory, February 2005.
Contemplations on testing graph properties, July 2005.
Another motivation for reducing the randomness complexity of algorithms, Nov. 2006.
On Post-Modern Cryptography, Nov. 2006.
Demystifying the Master Thesis and Research in General: The Story of Some Master Theses, Jan.2007.

Short statements of opinions

On TCS Conferences [fragments], 1997.
On the role of program committees, 1999.
On graduate studies, 2001.
Comments on the nature of TCS research, 2002.
On awards (theory and practice), 2002 and 2004.
On the role of journals, 2003.
On Quantum Computing, 2004.
Some suggestions to program committees, 2004.
On "rejection", 2006.
On the term "provable security", 2006.
On Conceptual Contributions in Theory, joint statement by ten TCS-ists, March 2008.
On the evaluation of scientific work, 2008.
What's currently wrong with STOC/FOCS, 2009.
Where to submit (i.e., to which conference and/or journal), 2009.

Etc. (miscellaneous opinions)

my choices

My impression is that FOCS and STOC do not function any more as forums devoted to the presentation and exchange of ideas (but rather function as "weight-lifting competitions"). A variety of personal webpages, in which researchers present their own choices of (relatively) recent works may be able to partially compensate for this loss. My own contribution to this project appears HERE (starting 2009).

Politics and Academia (esp., in Israel in the 21st century)

The administration of higher-education is part of public politics, but is also part of academic life. Therefore it is debateable whether the standard objections to posting political views on a website maintained by one's host institute should apply here. Anyhow, here are some views regarding the administration of higher-education in Israel in the 21st century.

Back to Oded Goldreich's homepage or to General list of Oded Goldreich's papers