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Leslie Valiant Wins 'Nobel Prize' of Computing
autospa writes "ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery today named Leslie G. Valiant of Harvard University the winner of the 2010 ACM A.M. Turing Award for his fundamental contributions to the development of computational learning theory and to the broader theory of computer science. Valiant brought together machine learning and computational complexity, leading to advances in artificial intelligence as well as computing practices such as natural language processing, handwriting recognition, and computer vision. He also launched several subfields of theoretical computer science, and developed models for parallel computing. The Turing Award, widely considered the 'Nobel Prize in Computing,' is named for the British mathematician Alan M. Turing. The award carries a $250,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation and Google Inc."
The Turing Award, widely considered the 'Nobel Prize in Computing,' is named for the British mathematician Alan M. Turing.
Turing, you say? Hmm, can't say I ever heard of anyone by that name. Was he famous or something?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I think this is one of the best article summaries I've read on SlashDot in a while. It's actually informative, doesn't assume too much, and is not a complete troll. There is also a complete lack of advertising.
Bah! That field is a complete waste of time.
Artificial Intelligence will never be a match for Genuine Stupidity.
Unless you want to suggest the Turing Award is as biased and corrupt as the Nobel Prize awards, you shouldn't conflate the two.
..Obama wins the 'Turing Award' of Peace.
It's such a shame there's not a "-1 What the FUCK was all that?" moderation.
Why didn't I come up with this?
I could have been somebody.
actually some solid concepts here.
There is nothing having to do with the Nobel Prize whatsoever. The little quotes don't make it forgivable.
This is purely a trick to get more eyes on the story, and is quite despicable.
Turing had the award named after him for his achievements and success. In that respect, calling it a 'Nobel Prize' of computing is rather insulting. Anyone who would normally be interested by this award knows who Turing is, and probably (rightfully so) has more respect for that award than the Nobel Prize.
It should say that the Nobel Prize is an award like the Turing award, in non-computational areas of science.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
This article was actually written by a machine powered by Valiant's ideas, thus making it simultaneously a turing test troll and an advertisement.
Leslie Valiant Wins 'Nobel Prize' of Computing ...
"ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery today named Leslie G. Valiant of Harvard University the winner of the 2010 ACM A.M. Turing Award...
Yes, Virginia, in the mainstream press we may have to explain to ordinary people that the Turing award is the computer science equivalent of a Nobel prize, the same way that we have to explain that the Fields Medal is the analogue for the field of mathematics. But this is Slashdot, and I expect my nerds and my geeks to Know This Stuff.
(and before you youngsters complain that you're young and still learning, pipe down. You all know how to look it up on Wikipedia in about 5 seconds)
Heck, they might as well change the tag line of the website to "Slashdot: News for Technically-adept persons. Articles of interest to their quaint population."
coding is life
I'm up for the next Turing award for recognizing 5mm and micro are mutually redundant.
The Turing Prize should have gone to Watson, as it (he?) passed the Turing test, or at least won Jeopardy.
Here's the link to the citation describing Les Valiant's work: http://www.acm.org/news/featured/turing-award-2010
If they would only give the award once to someone who just documented how programs work. They should have an award for that.
Yeah, who needs that boring theory crap anyway? (sarcasm)
Didn't slashdot used to be for tech folks or am I confusing it with some other site?
actually some solid concepts here.
You're not supposed to reply to your own posts.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I can name several econ nobel laureates who, in my not overly well-informed opinion, have made a genuine net positive contribution to the world.
Every heard of game theory and Nash equilibria? That'd be John Forbes Nash. How about Vickrey auctions---they might add a little more honesty to the world, and help people allocate goods more efficiently. How about Kenneth Arrow, proving that social decision making processing will always have flaws (so we can stop looking for the perfect ones and start discussing trade-offs)? Or how about Daniel Kahnemann, for reminding economists the danger of their foolish assumptions about human rationality? ;-)
But of course, I'm eager to learn so if econ is corrupt please enlighten me as to how.
Almost all comments here on /. are about nobel prices or about the summary but not about Valians research in CS. What gives?! On the other hand, this is /. after all, silly me ...
To contribute something to the topic: So he invented PAC learning, I took a Machine Learning course a while back, we studied this concept in Tom Mitchell's "Machine Learning" book, but quite honestly, I cannot remember this that well.
Does anybody know some good online resources (class slides etc.) about PAC learning? I mean there are plenty of examples for this online, but if somebody also took a ML course or knows some course slides that are of great quality (or can write some lines with explanations), I would really appreciate this.