Please note the later start time! We will open doors at 7pm and begin at 7:30pm
We are excited to host Elijah Ben Izzy speaking on Divide and Conquer Algorithms for Closest Point problems in Multidimensional Space (http://www.cs.unc.edu/techreports/76-103.pdf)
Talk:
Given n points in k dimensional space, how can you efficiently find the pair that is closest together? It turns out that there’s an elegant, divide-and-conquer approach that utilizes a nifty trick. Jon Luis Bentley, a pioneer in the space of geometric algorithms, proposes this solution (and answers many more problems) in his original PhD thesis, written in 1976. The talk will focus in on his solution to the closest-pair problem, then discuss some general approaches to algorithm construction that he outlined when defending his thesis... all written with a type-writer.
Elijah is a quantitative software engineer at Two Sigma. Ever since he started studying CS in college, he’s loved taking deep dives into complex, elegant algorithms and building out systems to support them. He came across Jon Luis Bentley’s PhD thesis when researching for an algorithms class, and found it to be a piece of archaeological computer science gold.
