DIMACS Workshop on Codes and Trees: Algorithmic and Information Theoretic Approaches

October 5 - 7, 1998
DIMACS Center, CoRE Building (Room 431), Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ

Organizers:
Mordecai Golin, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Computer Science Department golin@cs.ust.hk
Julia Abrahams, Rutgers University, DIMACS abrahams@dimacs.rutgers.edu
Presented under the auspices of the DIMACS Special Year on Massive Data Sets.

Co-sponsored by DIMACS and the IEEE Information Theory Society.


We see considerable overlap in research interests between information theory and algorithm design in the area of coding problems for data compression, with particular focus on lossless tree structured codes such as Huffmann codes and its variants. Unfortunately, there is not as much overlap in our perspectives. Information theorists are more concerned with entropy-based performance bounds and tradeoffs with respect to additional criteria of interest in the context of data compression systems, e.g. synchronization or buffer management. Computer scientists are more concerned with questions of efficiency and algorithm design. These very different perspectives on similar problems has led to a lack of communication, occasionally resulting in situations in which problems considered difficult by one community are actually solvable using tools well developed and understood by the other.

We thus think a small workshop on codes and trees discussing both the algorthmic and information theoretic approaches would be useful in promoting the exchange of ideas between the two communities. We are planning a small 3 day workshop, October 5 - 7, 1998 at the DIMACS Center, with support from DIMACS (including limited financial support for participants). We plan to publish an edited version of the workshop proceedings in the DIMACS-AMS book series. Possible topics covered at the workshop could include but are not limited to:

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Document last modified on August 13, 1998.