Using the recent exponential correlation bounds of Chattopadhyay, Hatami, Lee, Lovett, Tal and Viola between $\mathbb{F}_2$-polynomials and the XOR of majorities, we show that...

The STOC conference (and likely others) are requiring that a submission says how much AI was used. I can imagine the following options: 1) A...

We construct an oracle relative to which $\mathsf{BQP} \not\subseteq \mathsf{IP}$, resolving a long-standing open question in quantum complexity theory. Together with recent work due to Aaronson...

The 59th ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing takes place in Atlanta next June, part of the Federated Computing Research Conference . I...

The following conversation is fictional. --------------------------- ALICE: (Looking over a student's record.) Hmm, let's see. She wants to ...

ITMS 2026 Two years ago I attended the International Manufacturing Technology Show  in Chicago's McCormick Place and found a rather limited ...

Lax — an archive of formalized mathematical concepts and their proofs

On September 1, 2026: LANCE:  I'm surprised you haven't blogged about OpenAI solving 10 open math problems. BILL: If I post every time an op...

Read the declaration and add your name.

I was working on this week's post on Lean after reading Kevin Hartnett's book  The Proof in the Code: How a Truth Machine Is Transforming Ma...

Slide in Lev Reyzin 's JMM talk "Problems in AI and ML for Mathematicians" Reyzin is paraphrasing Telgarsky. Posted with permission. Last we...

We’re sharing an AI-generated solution to the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem, including a writeup and a formal proof in Lean.

Ben Brubaker has a new Quanta essay Does Computer Science Need Computers ?  Despite the title (and authors generally don't choose their titl...

BILL: Lance, I have a question and a meta question: a) List all the presidents and vice presidents who were colorblind. b) Do you know this ...

The theoretical side of the field doesn’t require computing machines. But many questions would never have been posed without them.

There's a scene in Apollo 13 where Jim Lovell, played by Tom Hanks, asks Houston control to check his calculations, which they do using a s...

RESI is a nonprofit research institute building the scientific foundations needed to make superintelligence safe by design.

In the past, new PhD students would ask how they could succeed when they had to compete with the likes of say, Richard Karp or Avi Wigderson...

Lance has posted about his, and around 160 others, being laid off from IIT  here .(IIT stands for Illinois Institute of Technology which is ...

Enjoying Idaho while ignoring Illinois Today is the first day of my life that I am unemployed. And not by choice. As I mentioned on LinkedIn...

(Some of this came from a Reddit post  I read, and some of  the comments on it.)  Here are theorems with names that I think are funny or unu...

Let's say there is a statement in math T that you wonder whether it's true or false.  You may even make a conjecture of which way it goes. D...

Kao, professor emeritus of computer science, passed away on May 11, 2026. He will be remembered for his contributions to the design, analysis, and implementation of algorithms and the development and broadening of computer science at Northwestern.

The IMU Abacus Medal is awarded for outstanding contributions in Mathematical Aspects of Information Sciences. The IMU Abacus Medal is awarded to a mathematician whose 40th birthday does not occur before January 1st of the year of the ICM at which the award is made.

Back in the 90s when I was a young professor at the University of Chicago, we would have a Complexity Class of the Week  where I would take ...

Nutan Limaye and Thore Husfeldt guest post on the new deterministic parallel algorithm for bipartite perfect matching by Abhranil Chatterje...