CS 225: Pseudorandomness
Spring 2015 Tentative Schedule

All of the readings are from the text Pseudorandomness.
 

Date

Title

Reading/Reference

Jan 27

No class - Winter Storm Juno

 

Jan 29

Introduction (Course overview)

Ch. 1

The Power of Randomness

Ch. 2

Feb 3

Randomized Algorithms and Complexity Classes

Sec. 2.1-2.3.1

 

Problem Set 1 (due 2/13)

 

Feb 5

Sampling and Approximation Problems ,
Random Walks and S-T Connectivity

Sec. 2.3.2-2.4

Basic Derandomization Techniques

Ch. 3

Feb 10

No class - Winter Storm Marcus

 

Feb 12

Enumeration, Nonuniformity, Nondeterminism

Sec. 3.1-3.3

 

Problem Set 2 (due 2/27)

 

Feb 17

Conditional Expectations, Pairwise Independence

Sec. 3.4-3.5

Expander Graphs

Ch. 4

Feb 19

Measures of Expansion, Existence

Sec. 4.1

MON Feb 23

Add/Drop Date

 

Feb 24

Random Walks on Expanders, Algebraic Constructions

Sec. 4.2-4.3.1

Feb 26

Explicit Constructions, USTCONN in L

Sec. 4.3.2-4.4

 

Problem Set 3 (due 3/13)

 

List-Decodable Codes

Ch. 5

Mar 3

Definition & Existence

Sec. 5.0-5.1.2

Mar 5

Explicit Codes, List Decoding Reed-Solomon and Parvaresh-Vardy Codes

Sec. 5.1.3-5.2.3

Mar 10

Folded Reed-Solomon Codes, List Decoding View of Samplers & Extractors

Sec. 5.2.4-5.3

Mar 12

Expanders from Parvaresh-Vardy Codes

Sec. 5.4

 

Problem Set 4 (due 4/3)

 



Mar 17 & 19

No Class (Spring Break)


Randomness Extractors

Ch. 6

Mar 24

Definition & Existence

Sec. 6.1

Mar 26

Connections to Other Pseudorandom Objects, Block Sources

Sec. 6.2-6.3.2

Mar 31

Condensers, Constructing Extractors

Sec. 6.3.3-6.5

Pseudorandom Generators

Ch. 7

Apr 2

Motivation & Definition, Cryptographic PRGs

Sec. 7.1-7.2

 

Problem Set 5 (due 4/17)

 

Apr 7

Spillover on defs of PRGs, Cryptographic PRGs, PRFs

 

Apr 9

Hybrid Arguments, Average-Case Hardness

Sec. 7.3-7.4.1

Apr 14

The Nisan-Wigderson Generator

Sec. 7.4.2-7.4.3

Apr 16

Worst-case/Average-case Connections & Locally Decodable Codes

Sec. 7.5

 

Problem Set 6 (due 5/1)

 

Apr 21

Local List Decoding & PRGs from Worst-Case Hardness

Sec. 7.6

Conclusions and Beyond

 

Apr 23

Connections to other Pseudorandom Objects

Sec. 7.7

Apr 28

The Unified Theory of Pseudorandomness

Sec 8.1

Apr 30

Survey of other Topics in Pseudorandomness

Sec. 8.2

 

Take-home Final (due 5/13)

 

May 5
(10-12)

Pseudorandomness for Space-Bounded Computation

Saks survey, Sec. 4.3