The Trevisan Award and the Decimal Digits of Powers of 2

WHOA … I’ve won the inaugural Luca Trevisan Award for Expository Work in Theoretical Computer Science! This has a particular meaning for me as someone who knew Luca Trevisan as well as I did for 25 years — who had him as a professor and thesis committee member, whose blog bounced off his blog, who benefitted tremendously from his expository work in TCS — before Luca tragically succumbed to cancer two years ago. As I told the committee, receiving this award makes me want to use my blog for more actual CS theory exposition, and less venting, in order to retrospectively become worthier of such an honor. I’m ridiculously grateful to the entire TCS community — my people, my homies — for tolerating me to do what I do. If you’re curious, here’s the official citation: The inaugural Luca Trevisan Award for Expository Work in Theoretical Computer Science is awarded to Scott Aaronson for his sustained and high-impact inspirational efforts to explain and promote our field to broad audiences. His…