An $(n,k)$-bit-fixing source is a distribution $X$ over $\B^n$ such that
there is a subset of $k$ variables in $X_1,\ldots,X_n$ which are uniformly
distributed and independent of each other, and the remaining $n-k$ variables
are fixed. A deterministic bit-fixing source extractor is a function $E:\B^n
\ar \B^m$ which on ... more >>>

An $(n,k)$-affine source over a finite field $F$ is a random
variable $X=(X_1,...,X_n) \in F^n$, which is uniformly
distributed over an (unknown) $k$-dimensional affine subspace of $
F^n$. We show how to (deterministically) extract practically all
the randomness from affine sources, for any field of size larger
than $n^c$ (where ... more >>>

In this paper we give a randomness-efficient sampler for matrix-valued functions. Specifically, we show that a random walk on an expander approximates the recent Chernoff-like bound for matrix-valued functions of Ahlswede and Winter, in a manner which depends optimally on the spectral gap. The proof uses perturbation theory, and is ... more >>>