DIMACS Research & Education Institute
Followup Session II
March 7, 1998

ABTRACT
"Negative Probability"
Don Beaver, IBM/Transarc

One of the best aspects of science is the ability to discover new things by mixing and matching old ideas that seem, on their surface, to be completely incompatible. When abstract ideas from one domain are applied to concrete processes in another, bizarre but also useful results can be obtained. By playing this game with probabilities, we will take a look at a world that violates the rules of traditional mathematics and everyday physics, and produces computers of phenomenal speed -- but still, a world which is more real than one might imagine.