About Dixon's Book Club What We're Reading Now Who Is Dixon? Dixon's Books

Dixon's Book Club is devoted to reading up on topics in the theory of computation. Dixon's Book Club, however, is not really a book club as we don't really read books. Instead, we usually read articles. We're a largely anarchic organization, but we do have a few guidelines: Unlike seminars, we aim to understand the guts of the proofs in the articles we read. Understanding the results presented in the articles is the primary goal, but we aim to become familiar with the proof techniques as well. It'd be nice if you read the articles before the meeting. Stupid questions are encouraged. If we know the answer, it makes us feel smart. Otherwise, we feel less stupid for not knowing the answer either. Dixon's Book Club is primarily composed of graduate students in computer science at Columbia, but professors, undergrads, and students from other schools and departments are more than welcome. Just be prepared to ask stupid questions. We will aggressively drink tea. We will consider all topics of a theoretical nature, but the papers should be accessible to students with standard backgrounds in math, algorithms, and complexity. We are slowly phasing in discussion leaders. We will limit discussion leaders to volunteers, and we hope that this will not unduly influence our commitment to the abolition of the nation-state. We advocate the use of pencils. We often find the need to erase the traces of embarrassing thoughts. To join our mailing list, send an e-mail to: dixonsbookclub-request {at} lists {dot} cs {dot} columbia {dot} edu with "subscribe" as the subject.