Lesson plan

Mark Jerrum

Mark Richard Jerrum (born 1955) is a British computer scientist and computational theorist. Jerrum received his Ph.D. in computer science 'On the complexity of evaluating multivariate polynomials' in 1981 from University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Leslie Valiant. He is professor of pure mathematics at Queen Mary, University of London. With his student Alistair Sinclair, Jerrum investigated the mixing behaviour of Markov chains to construct approximation algorithms for counting problems such as the computing the permanent, with applications in diverse fields such as matching algorithms, geometric algorithms, mathematical programming, statistics, physics-inspired applications, and dynamical systems. This work has been highly influential in theoretical computer science and was recognised with the Gödel Prize in 1996. A refinement of these methods led to a fully polynomial-time randomised approximation algorithm for computing the permanent, for which Jerrum and his co-authors received the Fulkerson Prize in 2006.

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Article summary

Mark Richard Jerrum (born 1955) is a British computer scientist and computational theorist. Jerrum received his Ph.D. in computer science 'On the complexity of evaluating multivariate polynomials' in 1981 from University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Leslie Valiant. He is professor of pure mathematics at Queen Mary, University of London. With his student Alistair Sinclair, Jerrum investigated the mixing behaviour of Markov chains to construct approximation algorithms for counting problems such as the computing the permanent, with applications in diverse fields such as matching algorithms, geometric algorithms, mathematical programming, statistics, physics-inspired applications, and dynamical systems. This work has been highly influential in theoretical computer science and was recognised with the Gödel Prize in 1996. A refinement of these methods led to a fully polynomial-time randomised approximation algorithm for computing the permanent, for which Jerrum and his co-authors received the Fulkerson Prize in 2006.

Key claims

  1. date of birth: 1955 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. The record states that the date of birth is "1955". What evidence would count against this claim?
  3. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  4. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

  1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1372408467

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.