Theory of Computing
-------------------
Title     : Special Issue on Analysis of Boolean Functions: Guest Editors' Foreword
Authors   : Elchanan Mossel and Ryan O'Donnell
Volume    : 9
Number    : 16
Pages     : 579-585
URL       : https://theoryofcomputing.org/articles/v009a016

Abstract
--------

Special Issue: APPROX-RANDOM 2012

Guest Editors' Foreword

This collection comprises the fully refereed and expanded versions
of selected papers presented at the 15th International Workshop on
Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems
(APPROX 2012) and the 16th International Workshop on Randomization
and Computation (RANDOM 2012) held in Boston, Massachusetts, August
15 -- August 17, 2012.  The selection was made by the program
committees of the respective meetings (listed below).  Preliminary
versions of the papers were presented at the workshops and the
extended abstracts appeared in the proceedings of the meetings
published by Springer.

70 extended abstracts were submitted to APPROX 2012; of these, 28
were accepted, and 5 invited to this Special Issue.  67 extended
abstracts were submitted to RANDOM 2012; of these, 28 were
accepted, and 4 invited to this Special Issue.   The authors
of 8 out of the 9 selected papers accepted the invitation.

The papers selected from APPROX 2012 cover topics of approximation
algorithms and hardness of approximation, while the papers selected
from RANDOM 2012 cover topics in pseudorandomness and property testing.
All papers were refereed in accordance with the usual rigorous
standards of _Theory of Computing_.

We would like to thank the authors for their contributions and the
anonymous referees for their hard work that helped improve the
quality of this issue.  We would also like to specially thank ToC
editor Oded Regev for guiding us through the editorial process.  It
was a pleasure to edit this special issue for Theory of Computing.

      March 30, 2013

      Alexandr Andoni 
      Guest Editor 
      for APPROX 2012 

      Atri Rudra 
      Guest Editor
      for RANDOM 2012 


APPROX 2012 Program Committee

Alexandr Andoni (Microsoft Research SVC) 
Yossi Azar (Tel-Aviv University) 
Shuchi Chawla (University of Wisconsin - Madison) 
Anupam Gupta (Carnegie Mellon University) (chair) 
Sariel Har-Peled (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) 
Jochen Koenemann (University of Waterloo) 
Amit Kumar (Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi) 
Lap Chi Lau (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) 
Konstantin Makarychev (IBM Watson) 
Monaldo Mastrolilli (IDSIA) 
Dana Moshkovitz (MIT) 
Rene Sitters (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) 
David Steurer (Microsoft Research and Cornell) 
Kunal Talwar (Microsoft Research SVC) 
Jan Vondrak (IBM Almaden) 
Lisa Zhang (Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs) 


RANDOM 2012 Program Committee

Eli Ben-Sasson (Technion) 
Andrej Bogdanov (Chinese University of Hong Kong) 
Mark Braverman (Princeton) 
Colin Cooper (King's College, London) 
Tobias Friedrich (Saarland University / Max-Planck-Institut) 
Tali Kaufman (Bar-Ilan University) 
Raghu Meka (IAS) 
Jelani Nelson (Harvard) 
Ilan Newman (Haifa) 
Ryan O'Donnell (CMU) 
Konstantinos Panagiotou (Max-Planck-Institut) 
Prasad Raghavendra (Georgia Tech) 
Atri Rudra (SUNY Buffalo) 
Rocco Servedio (Columbia) (chair) 
Alistair Sinclair (UC Berkeley) 
Emanuele Viola (Northeastern)