UAI 2011 has ended, and it went really well. I was happy with my talk and surprised at how many people at UAI were interested in quantum stuff!

There were many interesting presentations but I want to mention one in particular because it’s on my mind and it has a nice connection to my talk.

My talk was about detecting the existence of hidden variables. This is only possible if the effect of the hidden variable is constrained. One route, which I took, is to say that the hidden variable may be arbitrarily complex but it doesn’t change in time, nor do actors’ dependence on it change in time. But there was an interesting paper which took a different route:

“Detecting low-complexity unobserved causes” by Dominik Janzing, Eleni Sgouritsa, Oliver Stegle, Jonas Peters, Bernhard Schölkopf

In this case, the effect of the hidden variable is constrained by assuming a low complexity hidden variable. This constrains the possible effects on observed variables and therefore gives you a signature to deduce their existence. I will be reading this paper closely!