not pictured: adversarially robust streaming via differential privacy. Now that I can correctly conjure up the right name each time, I hope that work can progress smoothly
Four papers, titled: - A Framework for Adversarial Streaming Via Differential Privacy and Difference Estimators - A Framework for Adversarially Robust Streaming Algorithms - Adversarially Robust Streaming via Dense--Sparse Trade-offs - Adversarially Robust Dense-Sparse Tradeoffs via Heavy-Hitters
Step one in understanding adversarially robust streaming: being able to remember which one of these papers is which.
Amazing! Yesterday I would have said that computing any graph statistics with node-level LDP would be practically impossible
The current state of professional translation is that you get sent a badly machine translated piece of technical writing, your agency says "you just have to proof this, so we won't pay full translation rates" and then you have to translate the whole thing again anyway
Super cool expository paper on block designs and local differential privacy, showing a similar result to mine from last year but for a broader class of protocols ("pure" LDP functions and (r,ฮป)-designs)
arxiv.org/abs/2602.02744
Gradient optimization methods: the benefits of instability โ Peter Bartlett, UC Berkeley
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEgT...
#MathSky #SMRISeminar
taking some artistic liberty in not using a log plot here
I really need to switch to a newer Obsidian Zotero connector, but I've got such heavy scripting debt in this ancient abandonware plugin that I cant fathom how long it'll take me to port everything over
Accepted at #ITCS2026: congratulations to Abigail and Vikrant!
itcs-conf.org @abigailgentle.com
Just caught myself writing D(P\|Q) on paper
genuinely great learning-by-teaching opportunity
I'm running a mock-conference for students using OpenReview, and have developed an appreciation for how nuanced that software is. But also an appreciation for conference chairs because of how much of a headache that software is
My petition to the ๐ฆ๐บ Australian government: make part-time PhD students' stipends tax exempt!
๐ Read and sign here: www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/...
โฐ Deadline: October 1
I am a little sad they didn't attach their groundbreaking new information theory work for me to read
with great power (arXiv endorsement ability) comes great responsibility (quack emails)
New (solo) #privacy paper by @abigailgentle.com, PhD student at
@sydneycompsci.bsky.social: "Necessity of Block Designs for Optimal Locally Private Distribution Estimation," to be presented at the Information Theory Workshop (ITW'25)!
arxiv.org/abs/2508.05110
Thank you differential privacy bot :)
These objects have been used for private learning (and statistics in general) both implicitly and explicitly for some time. But this resolved my personal curiosity as to whether other optimal constructions could exist.
Workshop paper up on arXiv!
Bringing together a collection of necessary conditions on optimal LDP frequency estimation algorithms, and showing they restrict us to a specific class of combinatorial objects.
arxiv.org/abs/2508.05110
submitted a paper to arXiv, which has already passed peer review, but I'm still staring at a wall wondering if there's anything obviously dumb I've missed
or at least makes me want to study derandomized polynomial testing
P=BPP is so interesting a problem it almost makes me want to study complexity theory
Photograph of an Australian magpie perched on an outdoor lunch table
lunch with a colleague
word: painful
LaTeX: irritating
markdown: impossible
Greatest unsolved problem of our time: creating nice tables in a document
Does anyone know of a good collaborative pdf mark-up website or program? Kami works ok, but is a bit broken, regularly asks for permissions, and needs aggressive access to either Google drive or OneDrive
God bless the LLMs: "I added a new macro for X late in writing, please identify where I've used X and replace it with the macro" is saving my life regularly (I plan my writing poorly)
Annoyed that vscode has turned out to be the best LaTeX editor I've used so far. I'm sure nvim is competitive, but I haven't used it since undergrad
Quite unbelievable density of cool talks going on, even while its past midnight in the US where most of these researchers are based
current level of usage is purely for fun, just seeing how well they do on tasks I've already completed myself
