Michael Dinitz
@mdinitz.bsky.social
Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University.
https://www.cs.jhu.edu/~mdinitz/
https://www.cs.jhu.edu/~mdinitz/
Reposted by Michael Dinitz
this is a pretty accurate summary of my research area
October 28, 2025 at 2:38 PM
this is a pretty accurate summary of my research area
For any of my @princeton.edu friends and followers: there's a new policy out that seems like it would hurt the eating clubs, including my beloved Quad. Please consider registering your opposition! www.dontharvardourprinceton.com
Don't Harvard Our Princeton | Save Eating Clubs and Co-ops
A campaign opposing Princeton's new dining policy that could damage Princeton forever.
www.dontharvardourprinceton.com
October 25, 2025 at 10:51 AM
For any of my @princeton.edu friends and followers: there's a new policy out that seems like it would hurt the eating clubs, including my beloved Quad. Please consider registering your opposition! www.dontharvardourprinceton.com
Reposted by Michael Dinitz
And if you're faculty: I beg you, for the sake of everyone else in the world, strongly consider creating your own public webpages for your course instead of having everything locked up in Canvas.
October 9, 2025 at 12:04 AM
And if you're faculty: I beg you, for the sake of everyone else in the world, strongly consider creating your own public webpages for your course instead of having everything locked up in Canvas.
First day of class for the semester. Told my 2.5-year-old that "Daddy is going to be a teacher today, just like your teachers!". Response: "Daddy you're so silly". Apparently I lack the gravitas of a daycare teacher.
August 26, 2025 at 3:17 PM
First day of class for the semester. Told my 2.5-year-old that "Daddy is going to be a teacher today, just like your teachers!". Response: "Daddy you're so silly". Apparently I lack the gravitas of a daycare teacher.
Incredibly well deserved!!
Huge congratulations to Tracy Kimbrel, who received the 2025 ACM SIGACT Service Award 🏆 for his time, dedication, and advocacy as Program Director for the Algorithmic Foundations (AF) program at the NSF!
sigact.org/prizes/servi... #TCSSky
sigact.org/prizes/servi... #TCSSky
2025 ACM-SIGACT Distinguished Service Award
sigact.org
May 31, 2025 at 8:53 AM
Incredibly well deserved!!
Reposted by Michael Dinitz
Synthetic Data is all the rage in LLM training, but why does it work? In arxiv.org/abs/2502.08924 we show how to analyze this question through the lens of boosting. Unlike boosting, however, our assumptions on the data and the learning method are inverted.
Escaping Collapse: The Strength of Weak Data for Large Language Model Training
Synthetically-generated data plays an increasingly larger role in training large language models. However, while synthetic data has been found to be useful, studies have also shown that without proper...
arxiv.org
February 14, 2025 at 1:48 PM
Synthetic Data is all the rage in LLM training, but why does it work? In arxiv.org/abs/2502.08924 we show how to analyze this question through the lens of boosting. Unlike boosting, however, our assumptions on the data and the learning method are inverted.
Reposted by Michael Dinitz
A proof is a logical argument written to convince a skeptical audience. A corollary is that the best way to read a proof is to roleplay as a skeptical audience.
February 6, 2025 at 2:33 PM
A proof is a logical argument written to convince a skeptical audience. A corollary is that the best way to read a proof is to roleplay as a skeptical audience.
Reposted by Michael Dinitz
Interviewer: can you explain this gap in your resume?
Networking researcher: UDP
Networking researcher: UDP
Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume?
Epidemic modeller: Stochastic fade out.
Epidemic modeller: Stochastic fade out.
Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume?
Statistician: L1 regularisation
Statistician: L1 regularisation
December 20, 2024 at 11:07 PM
Interviewer: can you explain this gap in your resume?
Networking researcher: UDP
Networking researcher: UDP
Just saw a new result on the arxiv: polylog approximation for directed steiner tree! arxiv.org/abs/2412.10744 . Amazing breakthrough in a fundamental approximation algorithms problem. Congrats Bundit!
Breaking the Barrier: A Polynomial-Time Polylogarithmic Approximation for Directed Steiner Tree
The Directed Steiner Tree (DST) problem is defined on a directed graph $G=(V,E)$, where we are given a designated root vertex $r$ and a set of $k$ terminals $K \subseteq V \setminus {r}$. The goal is ...
arxiv.org
December 17, 2024 at 2:59 PM
Just saw a new result on the arxiv: polylog approximation for directed steiner tree! arxiv.org/abs/2412.10744 . Amazing breakthrough in a fundamental approximation algorithms problem. Congrats Bundit!
Reposted by Michael Dinitz
A statistic I've seen repeated in the discussion of health insurance is that UHC used an "AI with a 90% error rate" to deny claims. Recently I saw it repeated twice here: dailynous.com/2024/12/15/c... in which a moral philosopher struggles to figure out if murdering health insurance CEOs is moral.
Complications: The Ethics of the Killing of a Health Insurance CEO (guest post) - Daily Nous
The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson earlier this month has ignited moral debate around the world. Many have condemned the killing as they would any other murder. Others, though, have th...
dailynous.com
December 15, 2024 at 10:10 PM
A statistic I've seen repeated in the discussion of health insurance is that UHC used an "AI with a 90% error rate" to deny claims. Recently I saw it repeated twice here: dailynous.com/2024/12/15/c... in which a moral philosopher struggles to figure out if murdering health insurance CEOs is moral.
Reposted by Michael Dinitz
Prompt: Draw a picture of an American family at Thanksgiving dinner.
December 3, 2024 at 2:16 AM
Prompt: Draw a picture of an American family at Thanksgiving dinner.
Just had a new paper hit the arxiv (will appear at NeurIPS '24), joint with Sungjin Im, Thomas Lavastida, Ben Moseley, Aidin Niaparast, and @vsergei.bsky.social: arxiv.org/abs/2411.16030 . I think it's super cool, so a quick thread!
Binary Search with Distributional Predictions
Algorithms with (machine-learned) predictions is a powerful framework for combining traditional worst-case algorithms with modern machine learning. However, the vast majority of work in this space ass...
arxiv.org
November 26, 2024 at 8:21 PM
Just had a new paper hit the arxiv (will appear at NeurIPS '24), joint with Sungjin Im, Thomas Lavastida, Ben Moseley, Aidin Niaparast, and @vsergei.bsky.social: arxiv.org/abs/2411.16030 . I think it's super cool, so a quick thread!
Reposted by Michael Dinitz
The Washington Post reports that Michael Anton and Sebastian Gorka had a falling out over who should receive credit for writing Trump's speeches. This is incorrect. In this thread, I will tell you the real reason why Anton dislikes Gorka. 🧵
November 24, 2024 at 1:47 AM
The Washington Post reports that Michael Anton and Sebastian Gorka had a falling out over who should receive credit for writing Trump's speeches. This is incorrect. In this thread, I will tell you the real reason why Anton dislikes Gorka. 🧵
Almost got through a semester with no academic integrity violations 😢
November 20, 2024 at 2:48 PM
Almost got through a semester with no academic integrity violations 😢