Perhaps you're a computer scientist wondering how much the Axiom of Choice matters to the theorems you study and provehow much the Axiom of Choice matters to the theorems you study and prove. Perhaps you're a mathematician who needs a top expert to explain what "randomness" really means in computability and complexitya top expert to explain what "randomness" really means in computability and complexity. Perhaps you need a list of problems that can be used to show polynomial-time hardness results, to strengthen your toolkit of reductionsa list of problems that can be used to show polynomial-time hardness results, to strengthen your toolkit of reductions. Or perhaps you think a problem might be open -- but might just as easily be solved -- so you'd like to ask a group of professionals what they thinkyou'd like to ask a group of professionals what they think.
Perhaps you're a computer scientist wondering how much the Axiom of Choice matters to the theorems you study and prove. Perhaps you're a mathematician who needs a top expert to explain what "randomness" really means in computability and complexity. Perhaps you need a list of problems that can be used to show polynomial-time hardness results, to strengthen your toolkit of reductions. Or perhaps you think a problem might be open -- but might just as easily be solved -- so you'd like to ask a group of professionals what they think.
Perhaps you're a computer scientist wondering how much the Axiom of Choice matters to the theorems you study and prove. Perhaps you're a mathematician who needs a top expert to explain what "randomness" really means in computability and complexity. Perhaps you need a list of problems that can be used to show polynomial-time hardness results, to strengthen your toolkit of reductions. Or perhaps you think a problem might be open -- but might just as easily be solved -- so you'd like to ask a group of professionals what they think.
I really like both the rhythm and the examples of the first paragraph, but think it should be changed a little, I'm just not entirely sure how. I've tried to be as constructive as I can, given that I don't have a concrete idea on how to change it.
It currently (Rev 10) reads:
Perhaps you're a computer scientist wondering how much the Axiom of Choice matters to the theorems you study and prove. Perhaps you're a mathematician who needs a top expert to explain what "randomness" really means in computability and complexity. Perhaps you need a list of problems that can be used to show polynomial-time hardness results, to strengthen your toolkit of reductions. Or perhaps you think a problem might be open -- but might just as easily be solved -- so you'd like to ask a group of professionals what they think.
I have comments on each of the four examples in this opening paragraph:
(1) I'd guess that most computer scientists have not wondered how the Axiom of Choice matters to CS; most probably just think that it doesn't. The fact that we got a really interesting answer to the contrary is a success story for the site. One of the things I enjoy most about the site is that I have learned interesting answers to questions I never would have thought to ask, not because they are not in my area, but because I always assumed the answer was trivial or never had occasion to think about them.
(2) Are there any non-CS-mathematicians who read SIGACT News? (Indeed, even the OP for that question is chair of his CS department, in addition to a joint appointment in the Math Dept.) Laurent Beinvenu's answer to that question was great, but I think we need to rephrase how we're selling it in this opening paragraph. I'm not sure the following is a good way, but I'll just note that his answer is like a short tutorial/primer on ML-randomness (basically all it lacks is the most recent results), something which might appear in a publication like SIGACT News.
Note that the amount of effort to write such a thing for such a publication is much greater than on this site, and would take several months to go through the publication pipeline, if it happened at all. Here we got a direct line to the source, and we got just the part of the tutorial we wanted, right away.
(3) A list of problems that can be used to show polynomial-time hardness results seems like a great resource for graduate students and people entering that area of research fresh, but I imagine experts in that area are familiar enough with the literature to have produced much of the entire list on their own. I think it's important that the paragraph clearly recognizes the correct audience for such a question, as is already done in the first two examples.
Again, maybe (but I'm not sure) a good way to think about it is that such a list is like part of a short tutorial that might appear in a publication like SIGACT News, but with a much lower barrier to creation (but still high quality).
(4) The last example is great. It's universal: it applies to graduate students and experts, everyone has had an experience where they wished they could do exactly this. And on this site, you can. It's a great pre-punch-line for this paragraph (the punchline, of course, being "Visit tcs.se" on the next line).