computer science

Nimrod Megiddo

Nimrod Megiddo 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 Nimrod Megiddo rather than just read about it. In short: Nimrod Megiddo (Hebrew: נמרוד מגידו) is a mathematician and computer scientist. He is a research scientist at the IBM Almaden Research Center and Stanford University.

Key takeaways

Nimrod Megiddo 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 Nimrod Megiddo to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Nimrod Megiddo from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Nimrod Megiddo (Hebrew: נמרוד מגידו) is a mathematician and computer scientist. He is a research scientist at the IBM Almaden Research Center and Stanford University. His interests include combinatorial optimization, algorithm design and analysis, game theory, and machine learning. He was one of the first people to propose a solution to the bounding sphere and smallest-circle problem.

Education Megiddo received his PhD in mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for research supervised by Michael Maschler.

Career and research In computational geometry, Megiddo is known for his prune and search and parametric search techniques both suggested in 1983 and used for various computational geometric optimization problems, in particular to solve the smallest-circle problem in linear time. His former doctoral students include Edith Cohen.

Awards and honours Megiddo received the 1992 INFORMS Computing Society Prize, and was part of a group of researchers receiving the 1992 Frederick W. Lanchester Prize for their research on the linear complementarity problem, also including Masakazu Kojima, Shinji Mizuno, Toshihito Noma, and Akiko Yoshise. In 2009 he received the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Fellows award for contributions to the theory and application of mathematical programming, including parametric searches, interior point methods, low dimension Linear Programming, probabilistic analysis of the simplex method and computational game theory. He was the 2014 recipient of the John von Neumann Theory Prize.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Nimrod Megiddo

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Nimrod Megiddo 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 Nimrod Megiddo 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 Nimrod Megiddo 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 Nimrod Megiddo

In research: Nimrod Megiddo 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 Nimrod Megiddo 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: Nimrod Megiddo is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American computer scientists, American operations researchers, Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Nimrod Megiddo 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 Nimrod Megiddo in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Nimrod Megiddo in simple terms?

Nimrod Megiddo (Hebrew: נמרוד מגידו) is a mathematician and computer scientist. He is a research scientist at the IBM Almaden Research Center and Stanford University.

Why does Nimrod Megiddo 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 Nimrod Megiddo?

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 Nimrod Megiddo.