Video: And this year’s Turing Award goes to…
We explain why Avi Wigderson got this year’s Turing award: We show how you can make any randomized algorithm deterministic.
Definitely one of the toughest subjects we’ve tackled at Polylog – and Polylog videos are pretty complex to begin with! It’s also the first time that we’ve done a video on a contemporary subject. The Turing Award was awarded almost exactly a month ago, and given how laborious these videos are to make, I’m amazed that we could get it out this fast!
We wanted to get the video out quickly while the award is still a recent(-ish) event – but in retrospect, I’m not sure this thinking made sense. Perhaps if we had a video out on the same day when the award was given, we could get some more views from people who heard the news and wanted to learn more. But as I just found out, anything more than three days doesn’t really matter:
Nevertheless, this sense of urgency made this the fastest Polylog video ever made, which is very refreshing after the Byzantine Generals dragged on for about half a year.
We’re still experimenting with including some shots of me during parts that are difficult to visualize or are more personal (“how I, personally, think of randomness…”) Creating animations is the most time-consuming part of making a Polylog video, so it’s a big time saver. On the other hand, the detailed animations are part of the channel’s appeal, so we still want to use those whenever possible.
