Locally decodable codes (LDCs) are error correcting codes with the extra property that it is sufficient to read just a small number of positions of a possibly corrupted codeword in order to recover any one position of the input. To achieve this, it is necessary to use randomness in the ... more >>>

We develop a new local characterization of the zero-error information complexity function for two party communication problems, and use it to compute the exact internal and external information complexity of the 2-bit AND function: $IC(AND,0) = C_{\wedge}\approx 1.4923$ bits, and $IC^{ext}(AND,0) = \log_2 3 \approx 1.5839$ bits. This leads to ... more >>>

Around 2002, Leonid Gurvits gave a striking randomized algorithm to approximate the permanent of an n×n matrix A. The algorithm runs in O(n^2/?^2) time, and approximates Per(A) to within ±?||A||^n additive error. A major advantage of Gurvits's algorithm is that it works for arbitrary matrices, not just for nonnegative matrices. ... more >>>