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Ketan Mulmuley

Ketan Mulmuley is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ketan Mulmuley rather than just read about it. In short: Ketan Mulmuley is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, and a sometime visiting professor at IIT Bombay. He specializes in theoretical computer science, especially computational complexity theory, and in recent years has been working on "geometric complexity theory", an approach to the P versus NP problem through the techniques of algebraic geometry, with Milind Sohoni of II…

Key takeaways

  • Ketan Mulmuley belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
  • Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
  • Connect Ketan Mulmuley to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
  • Reproduce the core statement of Ketan Mulmuley from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Ketan Mulmuley is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, and a sometime visiting professor at IIT Bombay. He specializes in theoretical computer science, especially computational complexity theory, and in recent years has been working on "geometric complexity theory", an approach to the P versus NP problem through the techniques of algebraic geometry, with Milind Sohoni of IIT Bombay. He is also known for his result with Umesh Vazirani and Vijay Vazirani that showed that "Matching is as easy as matrix inversion", in a paper that introduced the isolation lemma.

Education Mulmuley earned his Bachelors of Technology in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay and earned his PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985 under Dana Scott.

Honors, awards and positions Mulmuley's doctoral thesis Full Abstraction and Semantic Equivalence was awarded the 1986 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award. He was awarded a Miller fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley for 1985–1987, was a fellow at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in 1990, and was later awarded Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for the year 1999–2000. He currently holds a professorship at the University of Chicago, where he is a part of the Theory Group.

Books Jonah Blasiak; Ketan Mulmuley; Milind Sohoni (2015), Geometric Complexity Theory IV: Nonstandard Quantum Group for the Kronecker Problem, American Mathematical Society, ISBN 978-1-4704-2227-1 Ketan Mulmuley (1985), Full abstraction and semantic equivalence, MIT Press, ISBN 978-0-262-13227-5 Ketan Mulmuley (1994), Computational geometry: an introduction through randomized algorithms, Prentice-Hall, ISBN 978-0-13-336363-0

References

External links Faculty page Archived 2010-05-01 at the Wayback Machine List of recent publications Ketan Mulmuley at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ketan Mulmuley

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ketan Mulmuley claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ketan Mulmuley before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ketan Mulmuley ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ketan Mulmuley

In research
Ketan Mulmuley appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry
Engineering practice reuses Ketan Mulmuley in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom
Ketan Mulmuley is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Computer scientist stubs, Living people, Theoretical computer scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life
Look for Ketan Mulmuley outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.
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How to study Ketan Mulmuley in 20 minutes

  1. Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
  2. Close the page and write down what Ketan Mulmuley means in your own words.
  3. Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
  4. Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
  5. Explain Ketan Mulmuley out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ketan Mulmuley in simple terms?

Ketan Mulmuley is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, and a sometime visiting professor at IIT Bombay. He specializes in theoretical computer science, especially computational complexity theory, and in recent years has been working on "geometric complexit…

Why does Ketan Mulmuley matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ketan Mulmuley?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ketan Mulmuley.

Tags

  • Computer scientist stubs
  • Living people
  • Theoretical computer scientists

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