<p>Scott Aaronson's newspiece: <a href="http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/phcollapse.pdf">Polynomial
hierarchy collapses: thousands feared tractable</a></p>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T15:35:12.610Z
Hilarious.  I had not seen that before.
Derrick Stolee
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-12-01T19:47:48.300Z
A related tragic (or funny?) headline: [THE SKY IS FALLING (The Strong Exponential Hierarchy Collapses)](http://hdl.handle.net/1813/6617), a technical report by L. Hemachandra. The following footnote is attached to the title: "Chicken Little thought that the sky was falling. It was not."
Alessandro Cosentino
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T03:07:49.363Z
2010-11-18T03:07:49.363Z
Joshua Grochow
<p>Kyle Burke and David Charlton. <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080211140314/http://cs-people.bu.edu/charlton/probpt.pdf">Lower bounds for probably-istic polynomial time.</a>  Boston University, 2005.  (Thanks to @arnab and the Web Archive for the link.)</p>

<p>I'm pretty sure this was an April Fool's paper, but either way it is <em>absolutely</em> hilarious.
The abstract:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>We fill a gap in existing complexity theory by introducing the class of probablyistic
  polynomial time computations, that is, computations that, you know, probably
  terminate in polynomial time, as far as we know. We apply this class to show that
  algorithms for NP-complete problems probably don't run in polynomial time.</p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-10-09T18:10:08.640Z
David wrote this as a hilarious response to a comment I made in grad school.  I don't remember my exact comment, but the paper is hilarious! :-D  I can't take any actual credit for the hilarity.
Kyle
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T16:40:10.110Z
Got it!  I can't find it linked from any existing webpage, but you can retrieve it here: http://web.archive.org/web/20080211140314/http://cs-people.bu.edu/charlton/probpt.pdf
arnab
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-19T01:33:31.007Z
I was in a class with David Charlton in 2002 when he was an undergraduate so I am pretty sure that must be 2005 not 1995 ;-)
Mugizi Rwebangira
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T03:08:35.867Z
2010-11-19T14:36:07.957Z
2010-11-19T14:36:07.957Z
Joshua Grochow
<p>Andrew W. Appel's "<a href="http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/papers/science.pdf">Is POPL Mathematics or Science?</a>"</p>

<p>This paper studies varies CS conferences and tries to classify them as theoretical or applied based on whether authors order their names in alphabetical order (theoretical) or by  contribution (applied).</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-07-12T22:45:37.337Z
I would love to see this continued to the present day
Thomas Ahle
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T11:44:15.303Z
I love the ending "The goal of the research presented in this report was to provide some laughs at POPL ’92; I am happy to say that in this respect the research was entirely successful."
Dave Clarke
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T06:46:23.770Z
2010-11-18T06:46:23.770Z
Robin Kothari
<p>The paper by Yonatan Bilu, Dana Porrat and Yoav Yaffe "<a href="http://barkai-serv.weizmann.ac.il/Yonatan/papers/orgy.ps">On The Number of Condoms at a Cheap Safe-Sex Orgy</a>". This paper was not published, so it doesn't correspond to one of the requirements (to be published work). But I think it can be included here as an exception.</p>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T11:56:45.720Z
I think this might be related: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GloveProblem.html
RJK
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T16:36:09.600Z
@Oleksander: The "published" requirement was not meant to be strict, but meant to separate things like articles and books from, say, cartoon strips (otherwise this thread would be filled with xkcd references.)
Joshua Grochow
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-08-17T20:36:07.593Z
In a similar vein: _Threesomes, Degenerates and Love Triangles_ by Grønlund and Pettie. It is really a serious paper in fine-grained complexity, and the joke in the title is forced.
kinokijuf
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T11:13:04.743Z
2010-11-18T11:13:04.743Z
Oleksandr Bondarenko
<p>In fact there is a whole journal that is intended to be funny. The <a href="http://www.anagram.com/jcrap/">journal of craptology</a>. The topics are usually related to cryptography. There are also some sessions videos (!)</p>

<p>One example is the Volume 4 paper of <a href="http://www.anagram.com/jcrap/Volume_4/Woofbark.pdf">Cryptography in a Hitchhiker's Universe</a> (section 5) is :</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Coming Attractions </p>
  
  <p>If you have enjoyed
  our feature presentation, you’ll be
  pleased to hear about upcoming
  attractions by the same author: </p>
  
  <p>– The
  cryptanalysis of Human Interactive
  Protocol Systems. A controversial
  cryptanalysis of the paper of Shakira
  [4] which proves that HIPS do, in
  fact, lie. </p>
  
  <p>– Anti-zero-knowledge. A
  protocol system which reveals
  everything that a prover knows except that which the verifier wants to
  hear. Ad-hoc anti-zero-knowledge
  protocols have been developed by most
  customer helpline services. </p>
  
  <p>– Quantum
  key distribution based on social
  phenomena. This paper demonstrates how
  to distribute keys using quantum
  techniques but without using quantum
  objects. Instead of using quantum
  objects, the protocol instead uses the
  uncertainty that any man has about whether
  his first evening out with a woman counts as a date or not to transmit the keys.</p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T11:55:33.023Z
2010-11-18T12:14:13.467Z
2010-11-18T12:14:13.467Z
Mohammad Alaggan
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Mathematics">Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science</a>, by Ronald Graham, Donald Knuth, and Oren Patashnik.</p>

<p>An amazing book with lots of funny side notes. :) (See also <a href="http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/">DEK</a>'s <a href="http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/gkp.html">GKP</a> page.)</p>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-19T08:10:08.613Z
The side notes are indeed funny, but the book is "just enjoyable" -- granted, not everyone can write an enjoyable book ;-) Anyway, I don't know whether it qualifies as a funny work, but you get my vote because I like the book so much.
Anthony Labarre
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-26T17:07:20.923Z
This is my favorite book. I am amazed more authors haven't followed their format.
Chad Brewbaker
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T06:00:33.727Z
2010-11-18T06:06:06.830Z
2010-11-18T06:06:06.830Z
Kaveh
<p>Don Knuth's <a href="http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1811129.1811130">A
terminological proposal</a>. SIGACT News, 6(1), 1974.  <a
href="http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2010/11/by-any-other-name-would-be-just-as-hard.html">Mentioned</a> on The Complexity Blog. This is apparently where we got the terms "NP-complete" and "NP-hard."</p>

<p>One of my favorite's from this piece is Albert Meyer's suggestion that what we now call NP-hard problems be called Hard-as-Satisfiability, or hard-as-S for short.</p>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T17:31:50.873Z
2010-11-18T17:31:50.873Z
Joshua Grochow
<p>Several of <a href="http://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Jean-Yves Girard</a>'s papers. </p>

<p>His <a href="http://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/linear.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Linear Logic</a> paper has the following footnote by the editor of Theoretical Computer Science journal:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Because of its length and novelty this paper has not been subjected to the normal process of refereeing. The editor is prepared to share with the author any criticism that eventually will be expressed concerning this work.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Another one is <a href="http://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/0.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Locus Solum, From the rules of logic to the logic of rules</a>. The 192 page paper has an appendix which is almost 100 pages long named "<strong>A pure waste of paper</strong>", the funniest appendix I have ever seen.</p>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T11:23:46.837Z
The fantastically odd thing is that "A pure waste of paper" is really very good. You can't naively trust anything he writes in it, but nevertheless there's a serious point about logic hidden within almost every joke/insult/aside.
Neel Krishnaswami
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-03-02T14:18:19.213Z
French speaking readers may enjoy his paper on [mustard clocks](http://iml.univ-mrs.fr/~girard/moutarde.pdf)
gallais
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-10-25T09:59:05.713Z
Unfortunately the third link is broken
Max
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-01-07T22:05:33.367Z
@gallais: Actually, the original version of the "Mustard watches" paper is in english and can be found [here](http://iml.univ-mrs.fr/~girard/mustard/article.html).
Damiano Mazza
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-02-09T18:16:56.117Z
This is the "fix" for the link in the main answer: http://iml.univ-mrs.fr/~girard/0.pdf
apnorton
CC BY-SA 3.0
2010-11-18T06:16:42.003Z
2018-03-26T10:00:04.527Z
2018-03-26T10:00:04.527Z
Kaveh
<ul>
<li><a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358027.358042">The Complexity of Songs</a> by Don Knuth</li>
<li><a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=993138">On Superpolynomial Subexponential Functions</a> by Alan T. Sherman (not "Man T. Sherman" as the ACM Digital Library suggests).</li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T18:42:29.113Z
Could you split this into two answers?
ShreevatsaR
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-27T05:37:35.600Z
Do you mean “superpolylogarithmic”?
Geoffrey Irving
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T05:37:59.793Z
2010-11-18T05:37:59.793Z
Jeffε
<p>Check out the figure that accompanies Adam Kalai's 1 page SODA paper, "Generating Random Factored Numbers, Easily": <a href="http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~kalai/papers/old_papers/factorsoda.pdf">link</a></p>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T16:43:29.950Z
2010-11-18T16:43:29.950Z
Aaron Roth
<p>Mihai Patrascu and Liam Roditty's paper on "<a href="http://people.csail.mit.edu/mip/papers/balls/paper.pdf">Distance Oracles Beyond the Thorup–Zwick Bound</a>" was initially titled "<a href="http://people.csail.mit.edu/mip/papers/balls/talk.pdf">How to grow your balls</a>" on Mihai's homepage :-)</p>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-22T19:34:14.610Z
He also changed the presentation name during the FOCS 2010 talk... that was funny
chazisop
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T06:02:37.413Z
2010-11-18T06:02:37.413Z
Ramprasad
<p>A. Broder, J. Stolfi "<a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.116.9158">Pessimal algorithms and simplexity analysis</a>", ACM SIGACT News 16(3), Fall 1984. </p>

<p>The paper introduces "an entirely new branch of Computer Science, the design and analysis of reluctant algorithms. Intuitively, a reluctant algorithm for a problem P is one which wastes time in a way that is suﬃciently contrived to fool a naive observer."</p>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-30T22:31:14.240Z
2010-11-30T22:31:14.240Z
Hermann Gruber
<p>Lamport's <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/lamport-paxos.pdf"><strong>Part Time Parliament</strong></a> made a breakthrough in distributed computing, but the paper was so (purposely!) obfuscated that people couldn't understand it -- as far as I know, it took him around 10 years to get it published (past editors) in its obfuscated form.  Eventually Lamport followed up with <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/paxos-simple.pdf">Paxos Made Simple</a>, which had the following abstract: "<em>The Paxos algorithm, when presented in plain English, is very simple</em>."</p>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T14:19:00.677Z
2010-11-18T14:57:11.093Z
2010-11-18T14:57:11.093Z
Lev Reyzin
<p>In the same spirit as Murilo da Silva's post, I cannot resist posting this excerpt from Goupil and Schaefer's <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/eujc.1998.0215">"Factoring N-Cycles and Counting Maps of Given Genus"</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>After this proof, we kindly encourage the reader to pause and enjoy a lighter activity such
  as bird watching or gardening before pursuing the reading.</p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-19T08:21:25.157Z
2010-11-19T08:21:25.157Z
Anthony Labarre
<p><a href="http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/SRC-TN-1996-001.pdf">"Refinement in State-Based Formalism"</a> by Lamport.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>A friend of ours, who was a brilliant mathematician, has been hospitalized because of long-term abuse of hallucinogenic drugs. We decide to give him a digital clock for his room. However, his doctor suggests that the hour and minute displays together might be too confusing. So, we put tape over the minute display, turning our gift into a digital hour clock.</p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-21T01:10:42.250Z
2010-11-21T01:10:42.250Z
Marcus Ritt
<p>I just discovered <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0164-1212%2800%2900020-0">"A letter from the frustrated author of a journal paper"</a>. Nice read ;-)</p>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2011-01-31T15:18:48.910Z
I have heard too much about these processes to reject the letter immediately as satire. I wonder if it is, though. Otherwise, I'm scared.
Raphael
CC BY-SA 2.5
2011-01-31T14:26:16.930Z
2011-01-31T14:26:16.930Z
Anthony Labarre
<p>I came across the <a href="http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=571629&amp;CFID=87351920&amp;CFTOKEN=55770769">"Complexity Theory Newsflash"</a> at some point, and thought it was pretty funny.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-02-29T14:56:16.937Z
Nice!  Working through these also serves as a nice refresher in some of the classic complexity results.
András Salamon
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-02-29T02:10:21.923Z
2012-02-29T02:10:21.923Z
Ryan Williams
<p>On another topic (<a href="https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/q/1893/873">How do I referee a paper?</a>), I found the following paper:</p>

<p>Graham Cormode. 2009. How NOT to review a paper: the tools and techniques of the adversarial reviewer. <em>SIGMOD Rec</em>. 37, 4 (March 2009), 100-104. DOI=10.1145/1519103.1519122 <a href="http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1519103.1519122" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1519103.1519122</a></p>

<p>I had a lot of fun reading this paper ;)</p>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T13:03:06.623Z
2010-11-18T13:03:06.623Z
2017-04-13T12:32:28.167Z
Sadeq Dousti
<p>Recent funny titles:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>A. Kehagias, P. Pralat, 
<em>Some remarks on cops and drunk robbers</em>, 
Theoretical Computer Science 463 (2012) 133-147, 
<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030439751200789X" rel="nofollow">DOI</a></p></li>
<li><p>A. Kehagias, D. Mitsche, P. Pralatb, 
<em>Cops and invisible Robbers: The cost of drunkenness</em>, 
Theoretical Computer Science (2013), 
<a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304397513001096" rel="nofollow">in Press</a>  </p></li>
<li><p>Natasha Komarov, Peter Winkle, 
<em>Capturing the Drunk Robber on a Graph</em>, May 2013, <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.4559" rel="nofollow">arXiv:1305.4559</a></p></li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-03-07T22:02:06.677Z
2013-05-24T13:57:06.380Z
2013-05-24T13:57:06.380Z
user13136
<p><a href="http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/SFCS.1992.267789" rel="nofollow">Mick gets some (the odds are on his side)</a> by <strike>Reed</strike> Chvatal and <strike>Chvatal</strike> Reed (FOCS 1992), on satisfaction (aka satisfiability).</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-06-06T10:54:19.913Z
Your author ordering here is wrong! Btw, more on [author ordering](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/17908/author-ordering-in-tcs-papers).
vb le
CC BY-SA 3.0
2010-11-18T11:50:09.987Z
2013-09-08T22:34:15.290Z
2013-09-08T22:34:15.290Z
RJK
<p><a href="https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/misc/reject.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">How much damage could be caused by a peer reviewer having a bad day?</a>
Hilarious fictional reviews of famous old CS papers.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-26T12:30:55.267Z
The link is dead and I couldn't find the paper using a quick google search. Could you maybe reupload it somewhere?
tranisstor
CC BY-SA 4.0
2012-03-01T07:16:47.543Z
2020-05-25T09:34:40.927Z
2020-05-25T09:34:40.927Z
didest
<p><a href="http://downlode.org/Etext/alicebob.html">The Alice and Bob After Dinner Speech</a> by John Gordon.</p>

<p>Nice light-hearted talk on coding theory.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-10-19T12:43:45.680Z
It's entertaining how much of what he claims his pocket calculator could do is actually now possible on a modern smartphone. No 3D holographic displays yet, and you might be hard-pressed to find a compiler from ADA to Android, but apart from that...
AlexC
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T05:17:24.373Z
2010-11-18T05:17:24.373Z
Jagadish
<p>Bruce Reed, <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004930050056">Mangoes and Blueberries</a>, Combinatorica 19 (1999) 267-296 .</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-05-04T10:57:59.490Z
2013-05-04T10:57:59.490Z
user13667
<p>As far as a funny title: "How to play a coloring game against a color-blind adversary"</p>

<p><a href="http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1137865" rel="nofollow">http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1137865</a></p>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T21:06:15.063Z
2010-11-18T21:06:15.063Z
Sariel Har-Peled
<p>How about <a href="http://www.springerlink.com/content/9256577622j64575/" rel="nofollow">Scott is not always sober</a>?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-02-29T00:45:52.233Z
2012-02-29T00:45:52.233Z
Evan Cordell
<p>"Busy beavers gone wild" by Grégory Lafitte, EPTCS 1, 2009, pp. 123-129
<a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.3257v1" rel="nofollow">arXiv:0906.3257v1</a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-03-01T11:16:02.830Z
2012-03-01T11:16:02.830Z
Niall Murphy
<p>I cannot think now of a funny paper, but I do remember of a "normal" paper that had a funny line in it. It was in fact the very first sentence in Section 1. The authors began the paper with:</p>

<p><em><strong>"Contrary to our usual practice, we feel obliged to begin this paper with
a few definitions". So let G..."</em></strong></p>

<p>The title of the paper is "<code>$beta$</code>-perfect graphs", by Markossian, Gasparian and
Reed in 1996. It called my attention because it is in fact a key paper 
on perfect graph theory, where it is defined the class of beta-perfect graphs, a class 
that is in a way analogous to the perfect graphs (beta-perfect graphs being
a subclass of EVEN-hole-free graphs, whereas perfect graphs are a subclass of
ODD-hole-free graphs.  </p>

CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T21:03:41.430Z
Also known as "Since this is a theory talk, I would start by defining the problem I am talking about..."
Sariel Har-Peled
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T05:19:41.780Z
2010-11-18T05:26:38.250Z
2010-11-18T05:26:38.250Z
Murilo da Silva
<p>Without doubt, the most humorous mathematical writing award should go to Zeilberger. Considering that he writes about areas close to TCS and his views of TCS are very favorable makes his writings even more fun to read.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-03-10T16:06:02.167Z
agreed! great sense of humor, sometimes poking fun even at TCS community itself & its conventions, eg crediting imaginary pseudonymous coauthor "Shalosh B. Ekhad". see eg his [P=NP crank paper april fool spoof/hoax](http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/9952/doron-zeilbergers-p-np-computer-proof)
vzn
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-03-10T02:54:11.693Z
2013-03-10T02:54:11.693Z
user14122
<p>The <a href="http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=398" rel="nofollow">winner</a> of the 2007 Aaronson/Gasarch Complexity Theme Song Contest is amazing!
Download the <a href="http://www.scottaaronson.com/jdtheory.mp3" rel="nofollow">mp3</a> and its <a href="http://www.scottaaronson.com/jdtheory.pdf" rel="nofollow">lyrics</a>.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-03-01T02:38:45.173Z
2012-03-01T02:38:45.173Z
didest
<p><a href="http://www.cs.bme.hu/~dmarx/papers/krokhin-marx-losing-weight-talg.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">On the hardness of losing weight</a> by Dániel Marx and Andrei Krokhin. 
ACM Transactions on Algorithms, 8(2):19, 2012. Despite the funny title, the paper is serious. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-05-21T19:59:09.230Z
2017-05-21T19:59:09.230Z
daniello
<p><a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.1720" rel="nofollow">Jaywalking your Dog - Computing the Fréchet Distance with Shortcuts</a> by Anne Driemel and Sariel Har-Peled at SODA 2012.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-09-27T05:10:18.883Z
2012-09-27T05:10:18.883Z
Huck Bennett
<p>Found this on László Babai's homepage:</p>

<p>"Enjoy a fun paper from 1990 that is only partly technical and tells a fable about Merlin, Arthur, competition, and the ethics of mathematical communication: 
<a href="http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~laci/papers/email90.pdf" rel="nofollow">E-mail and the Unexpected Power of Interaction</a>"</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-12-12T07:53:30.923Z
2012-12-12T07:53:30.923Z
Jagadish
<p>When I read this question, I immediately expected to see a mention of Connor McBride's <a href="https://personal.cis.strath.ac.uk/conor.mcbride/Kleisli.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">"Kleisli Arrows of Outrageous Fortune"</a>.  It begins with the greatest series of puns I've seen in any CS paper.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-26T16:49:00.777Z
2018-03-26T16:49:00.777Z
John Lasseter
<p>"Why ordinals are good for you" by I. Lepper and G. Moser. The paper itself is not intended to be humorous but it contains some funny quotes. I would be curious to see a similar introductory paper to the surreal numbers, a superclass of the ordinals introduced by J.H. Conway.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-01T23:19:24.533Z
2014-03-01T23:19:24.533Z
Super8
<p>This paper is not a humorous theory paper, but it is a really humorous paper by a theoretician, about dangers of being sloppy about punctuation.</p>

<p>For example, in bibliography, he spelled his own name as:</p>

<p>J. Dullman</p>

<p>(As most reader know, Ullman's middle initial is D.)</p>

<p>I can't recall the full details (issue, year #, page), but it appeared in SIGACT newsletter in late 80's.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-05-05T04:08:38.393Z
2013-05-05T04:08:38.393Z
user14004
<p>Have you considered to use mixed integer linear programming to assist you playing Pokemon Go?</p>

<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2017.08.012" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Gotta (efficiently) catch them all: Pokémon GO meets Orienteering Problems</a></p>

<blockquote>
  <p>In this paper, a new routing problem, referred to as the Generalized Clustered Orienteering Problem (GCOP), is studied. The problem is motivated by the mobile phone game Pokémon GO, an augmented reality game for mobile devices (...)</p>
</blockquote>

<hr>

<blockquote>
  <p>The computational performance of the proposed approaches is assessed in an extensive computational study, using real-world instances that combine crowd-sourced data associated with the Pokémon GO game with street maps of three European cities (...)</p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-05-07T01:43:09.483Z
2019-05-07T01:43:09.483Z
Iago Carvalho
<p>blog posts ok? its "published" in a sense &amp; blogs are increasingly mainstream and many now written by senior/elite researchers. just recently ran across this old, imaginative entry from last April 1 from the Algorithmic Game Theory Blog, with clever resemblance to real events. see comments for colorful feedback. eg MacArthur fellow Terence Tao comments</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>A fantastic achievement! Now that Reimann’s hypothesis is settled, one can hope that the closely related Riemann’s hypothesis will fall next…</p>
</blockquote>

<p><a href="http://agtb.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/automatic-proof-for-reimanns-hypothesis/" rel="nofollow">Automatic proof for Reimanns hypothesis</a></p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-03-10T16:20:10.113Z
2013-03-10T16:20:10.113Z
vzn
<p>Not exactly a paper, but I think in the spirit of your question you'll appreciate <a href="http://www.universalrejection.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">JofUR</a>: Journal of Universal Rejection. </p>

<p>Their website include numerous reasons why you should submit there, detailed instructions for authors, and interesting proceedings.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-07-04T11:22:22.333Z
2017-07-04T13:11:19.887Z
2017-07-04T13:11:19.887Z
Denis
<p>What is the funniest TCS-related published work you know?</p>

<p>Please include only those that are intended to be funny.  Works which are explicitly crafted to be intelligently humorous (rather than, say, a published collection of short jokes regarding complexity theory) are preferred.  Works with humorous (actually humorous, not just cute) titles are also accepted.</p>

<p>Please only one work per answer so the "best" ones can bubble to the top.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-09-27T18:41:02.890Z
like the general idea but imho if papers merely with humorous or cute titles are included, which are numerous, this question is too broad.
vzn
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T03:46:10.483Z
what about papers with funny titles ? or should that be a different question ?
Suresh Venkat
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T03:51:59.683Z
I think funny titles are fine :).
Joshua Grochow
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T04:15:42.530Z
Why just complexity (and not other TCS topics)? What about books? (I would like to post Concrete Mathematics :) )
Kaveh
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T04:23:43.217Z
@Kaveh: I didn't mean to be so specific, and have broadened the question accordingly.  By all means, post away!
Joshua Grochow
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T04:41:42.173Z
there was a paper that investigated the alphabetical ordering of authors in theory conferences: I wish I remember what it was
Suresh Venkat
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T11:51:22.950Z
for some reason, http://mathoverflow.net/questions/44326/most-memorable-titles is a closely-related thread.
RJK
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T19:13:29.577Z
I saw a few in the FUN proceedings, e.g. http://fun2010.dia.unisa.it/accepted.html
Radu GRIGore
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T19:30:01.573Z
@Suresh: I believe you mean http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1003.6064v1
Radu GRIGore
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-18T22:59:38.500Z
@Radu no not that one. THis was written by TCS folk, with an explicit plea to Avi Wigderson to join on and contribute a W :)
Suresh Venkat
CC BY-SA 2.5
2010-11-19T10:11:56.247Z
@Suresh: on a related note: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=562 :-)
Anthony Labarre
<reference-request><soft-question><big-list>
Funny TCS-related papers etc?
Joshua Grochow
# Funny TCS-related papers etc?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2010-11-18)

What is the funniest TCS-related published work you know?

Please include only those that are intended to be funny. Works which are explicitly crafted to be intelligently humorous (rather than, say, a published collection of short jokes regarding complexity theory) are preferred. Works with humorous (actually humorous, not just cute) titles are also accepted.

Please only one work per answer so the "best" ones can bubble to the top.

**Tags:** reference-request, soft-question, big-list

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: what about papers with funny titles ? or should that be a different question ?  
> **username_0**: I think funny titles are fine :).  
> **username_3**: Why just complexity (and not other TCS topics)? What about books? (I would like to post Concrete Mathematics :) )  
> **username_0**: @username_3: I didn't mean to be so specific, and have broadened the question accordingly.  By all means, post away!  
> **username_2**: there was a paper that investigated the alphabetical ordering of authors in theory conferences: I wish I remember what it was  
> **username_4**: for some reason, http://mathoverflow.net/questions/44326/most-memorable-titles is a closely-related thread.  
> **username_5**: I saw a few in the FUN proceedings, e.g. http://fun2010.dia.unisa.it/accepted.html  
> **username_5**: @Suresh: I believe you mean http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1003.6064v1  
> **username_2**: @Radu no not that one. THis was written by TCS folk, with an explicit plea to Avi Wigderson to join on and contribute a W :)  
> **username_6**: @Suresh: on a related note: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=562 :-)  
> **username_1**: like the general idea but imho if papers merely with humorous or cute titles are included, which are numerous, this question is too broad.  

---

## 38 answers

### Answer by username_0 on 2010-11-18. Score: 77

Scott Aaronson's newspiece: [Polynomial
hierarchy collapses: thousands feared tractable](http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/phcollapse.pdf)

> **Comments:**
> **username_7**: Hilarious.  I had not seen that before.  
> **username_8**: A related tragic (or funny?) headline: [THE SKY IS FALLING (The Strong Exponential Hierarchy Collapses)](http://hdl.handle.net/1813/6617), a technical report by L. Hemachandra. The following footnote is attached to the title: "Chicken Little thought that the sky was falling. It was not."  

---

### Answer by username_0 on 2010-11-18. Score: 40

username_9 Burke and David Charlton. [Lower bounds for probably-istic polynomial time.](http://web.archive.org/web/20080211140314/http://cs-people.bu.edu/charlton/probpt.pdf) Boston University, 2005. (Thanks to @username_10 and the Web Archive for the link.)

I'm pretty sure this was an April Fool's paper, but either way it is *absolutely* hilarious.
The abstract:

> We fill a gap in existing complexity theory by introducing the class of probablyistic
> polynomial time computations, that is, computations that, you know, probably
> terminate in polynomial time, as far as we know. We apply this class to show that
> algorithms for NP-complete problems probably don't run in polynomial time.

> **Comments:**
> **username_10**: Got it!  I can't find it linked from any existing webpage, but you can retrieve it here: http://web.archive.org/web/20080211140314/http://cs-people.bu.edu/charlton/probpt.pdf  
> **username_11**: I was in a class with David Charlton in 2002 when he was an undergraduate so I am pretty sure that must be 2005 not 1995 ;-)  
> **username_9**: David wrote this as a hilarious response to a comment I made in grad school.  I don't remember my exact comment, but the paper is hilarious! :-D  I can't take any actual credit for the hilarity.  

---

### Answer by username_12 on 2010-11-18. Score: 32

Andrew W. Appel's "[Is POPL Mathematics or Science?](http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/papers/science.pdf)"

This paper studies varies CS conferences and tries to classify them as theoretical or applied based on whether authors order their names in alphabetical order (theoretical) or by contribution (applied).

> **Comments:**
> **username_14**: I love the ending "The goal of the research presented in this report was to provide some laughs at POPL ’92; I am happy to say that in this respect the research was entirely successful."  
> **username_13**: I would love to see this continued to the present day  

---

### Answer by username_3 on 2010-11-18. Score: 26

Several of [Jean-Yves Girard](http://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/)'s papers.

His [Linear Logic](http://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/linear.pdf) paper has the following footnote by the editor of Theoretical Computer Science journal:

> Because of its length and novelty this paper has not been subjected to the normal process of refereeing. The editor is prepared to share with the author any criticism that eventually will be expressed concerning this work.

Another one is [Locus Solum, From the rules of logic to the logic of rules](http://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/0.pdf). The 192 page paper has an appendix which is almost 100 pages long named "**A pure waste of paper**", the funniest appendix I have ever seen.

> **Comments:**
> **username_19**: The fantastically odd thing is that "A pure waste of paper" is really very good. You can't naively trust anything he writes in it, but nevertheless there's a serious point about logic hidden within almost every joke/insult/aside.  
> **username_20**: French speaking readers may enjoy his paper on [mustard clocks](http://iml.univ-mrs.fr/~girard/moutarde.pdf)  
> **username_21**: Unfortunately the third link is broken  
> **username_22**: @username_20: Actually, the original version of the "Mustard watches" paper is in english and can be found [here](http://iml.univ-mrs.fr/~girard/mustard/article.html).  
> **username_23**: This is the "fix" for the link in the main answer: http://iml.univ-mrs.fr/~girard/0.pdf  

---

### Answer by username_24 on 2010-11-18. Score: 24

* [The Complexity of Songs](http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358027.358042) by Don Knuth
* [On Superpolynomial Subexponential Functions](http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=993138) by Alan T. Sherman (not "Man T. Sherman" as the ACM Digital Library suggests).

> **Comments:**
> **username_25**: Could you split this into two answers?  
> **username_26**: Do you mean “superpolylogarithmic”?  

---

### Answer by username_15 on 2010-11-18. Score: 22

The paper by Yonatan Bilu, Dana Porrat and Yoav Yaffe "[On The Number of Condoms at a Cheap Safe-Sex Orgy](http://barkai-serv.weizmann.ac.il/Yonatan/papers/orgy.ps)". This paper was not published, so it doesn't correspond to one of the requirements (to be published work). But I think it can be included here as an exception.

> **Comments:**
> **username_4**: I think this might be related: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GloveProblem.html  
> **username_0**: @Oleksander: The "published" requirement was not meant to be strict, but meant to separate things like articles and books from, say, cartoon strips (otherwise this thread would be filled with xkcd references.)  
> **username_16**: In a similar vein: _Threesomes, Degenerates and Love Triangles_ by Grønlund and Pettie. It is really a serious paper in fine-grained complexity, and the joke in the title is forced.  

---

### Answer by username_17 on 2010-11-18. Score: 20

In fact there is a whole journal that is intended to be funny. The [journal of craptology](http://www.anagram.com/jcrap/). The topics are usually related to cryptography. There are also some sessions videos (!)

One example is the Volume 4 paper of [Cryptography in a Hitchhiker's Universe](http://www.anagram.com/jcrap/Volume_4/Woofbark.pdf) (section 5) is :

> Coming Attractions
>
> If you have enjoyed
> our feature presentation, you’ll be
> pleased to hear about upcoming
> attractions by the same author:
>
> – The
> cryptanalysis of Human Interactive
> Protocol Systems. A controversial
> cryptanalysis of the paper of Shakira
> [4] which proves that HIPS do, in
> fact, lie.
>
> – Anti-zero-knowledge. A
> protocol system which reveals
> everything that a prover knows except that which the verifier wants to
> hear. Ad-hoc anti-zero-knowledge
> protocols have been developed by most
> customer helpline services.
>
> – Quantum
> key distribution based on social
> phenomena. This paper demonstrates how
> to distribute keys using quantum
> techniques but without using quantum
> objects. Instead of using quantum
> objects, the protocol instead uses the
> uncertainty that any man has about whether
> his first evening out with a woman counts as a date or not to transmit the keys.


---

### Answer by username_3 on 2010-11-18. Score: 18

[Concrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_Mathematics), by Ronald Graham, Donald Knuth, and Oren Patashnik.

An amazing book with lots of funny side notes. :) (See also [DEK](http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/)'s [GKP](http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/gkp.html) page.)

> **Comments:**
> **username_6**: The side notes are indeed funny, but the book is "just enjoyable" -- granted, not everyone can write an enjoyable book ;-) Anyway, I don't know whether it qualifies as a funny work, but you get my vote because I like the book so much.  
> **username_18**: This is my favorite book. I am amazed more authors haven't followed their format.  

---

### Answer by username_0 on 2010-11-18. Score: 16

Don Knuth's [A
terminological proposal](http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1811129.1811130). SIGACT News, 6(1), 1974. [Mentioned](http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2010/11/by-any-other-name-would-be-just-as-hard.html) on The Complexity Blog. This is apparently where we got the terms "NP-complete" and "NP-hard."

One of my favorite's from this piece is Albert Meyer's suggestion that what we now call NP-hard problems be called Hard-as-Satisfiability, or hard-as-S for short.


---

### Answer by username_27 on 2010-11-18. Score: 14

Check out the figure that accompanies Adam Kalai's 1 page SODA paper, "Generating Random Factored Numbers, Easily": [link](http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~kalai/papers/old_papers/factorsoda.pdf)


---

### Answer by username_28 on 2010-11-18. Score: 14

Mihai Patrascu and Liam Roditty's paper on "[Distance Oracles Beyond the Thorup–Zwick Bound](http://people.csail.mit.edu/mip/papers/balls/paper.pdf)" was initially titled "[How to grow your balls](http://people.csail.mit.edu/mip/papers/balls/talk.pdf)" on Mihai's homepage :-)

> **Comments:**
> **username_29**: He also changed the presentation name during the FOCS 2010 talk... that was funny  

---

### Answer by username_30 on 2010-11-30. Score: 12

A. Broder, J. Stolfi "[Pessimal algorithms and simplexity analysis](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.116.9158)", ACM SIGACT News 16(3), Fall 1984.

The paper introduces "an entirely new branch of Computer Science, the design and analysis of reluctant algorithms. Intuitively, a reluctant algorithm for a problem P is one which wastes time in a way that is suﬃciently contrived to fool a naive observer."


---

### Answer by username_31 on 2010-11-18. Score: 9

Lamport's [**Part Time Parliament**](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/lamport-paxos.pdf) made a breakthrough in distributed computing, but the paper was so (purposely!) obfuscated that people couldn't understand it -- as far as I know, it took him around 10 years to get it published (past editors) in its obfuscated form. Eventually Lamport followed up with [Paxos Made Simple](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/paxos-simple.pdf), which had the following abstract: "*The Paxos algorithm, when presented in plain English, is very simple*."


---

### Answer by username_6 on 2010-11-19. Score: 8

In the same spirit as username_47's post, I cannot resist posting this excerpt from Goupil and Schaefer's ["Factoring N-Cycles and Counting Maps of Given Genus"](http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/eujc.1998.0215):

> After this proof, we kindly encourage the reader to pause and enjoy a lighter activity such
> as bird watching or gardening before pursuing the reading.


---

### Answer by username_32 on 2010-11-21. Score: 7

["Refinement in State-Based Formalism"](http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/SRC-TN-1996-001.pdf) by Lamport.

> A friend of ours, who was a brilliant mathematician, has been hospitalized because of long-term abuse of hallucinogenic drugs. We decide to give him a digital clock for his room. However, his doctor suggests that the hour and minute displays together might be too confusing. So, we put tape over the minute display, turning our gift into a digital hour clock.


---

### Answer by username_6 on 2011-01-31. Score: 7

I just discovered ["A letter from the frustrated author of a journal paper"](http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0164-1212%2800%2900020-0). Nice read ;-)

> **Comments:**
> **username_33**: I have heard too much about these processes to reject the letter immediately as satire. I wonder if it is, though. Otherwise, I'm scared.  

---

### Answer by username_34 on 2012-02-29. Score: 6

I came across the ["Complexity Theory Newsflash"](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=571629&CFID=87351920&CFTOKEN=55770769) at some point, and thought it was pretty funny.

> **Comments:**
> **username_35**: Nice!  Working through these also serves as a nice refresher in some of the classic complexity results.  

---

### Answer by username_36 on 2010-11-18. Score: 6

On another topic ([How do I referee a paper?](https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/q/1893/873)), I found the following paper:

Graham Cormode. 2009. How NOT to review a paper: the tools and techniques of the adversarial reviewer. *SIGMOD Rec*. 37, 4 (March 2009), 100-104. DOI=10.1145/1519103.1519122 <http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1519103.1519122>

I had a lot of fun reading this paper ;)


---

### Answer by username_37 on 2013-03-07. Score: 6

Recent funny titles:

* A. Kehagias, P. Pralat,
  *Some remarks on cops and drunk robbers*,
  Theoretical Computer Science 463 (2012) 133-147,
  [DOI](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030439751200789X)
* A. Kehagias, D. Mitsche, P. Pralatb,
  *Cops and invisible Robbers: The cost of drunkenness*,
  Theoretical Computer Science (2013),
  [in Press](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304397513001096)
* Natasha Komarov, Peter Winkle,
  *Capturing the Drunk Robber on a Graph*, May 2013, [arXiv:1305.4559](http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.4559)


---

### Answer by username_4 on 2010-11-18. Score: 6

[Mick gets some (the odds are on his side)](http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/SFCS.1992.267789) by Reed Chvatal and Chvatal Reed (FOCS 1992), on satisfaction (aka satisfiability).

> **Comments:**
> **username_38**: Your author ordering here is wrong! Btw, more on [author ordering](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/17908/author-ordering-in-tcs-papers).  

---

### Answer by username_39 on 2012-03-01. Score: 6

[How much damage could be caused by a peer reviewer having a bad day?](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/misc/reject.pdf)
Hilarious fictional reviews of famous old CS papers.

> **Comments:**
> **username_40**: The link is dead and I couldn't find the paper using a quick google search. Could you maybe reupload it somewhere?  

---

### Answer by username_41 on 2010-11-18. Score: 5

[The Alice and Bob After Dinner Speech](http://downlode.org/Etext/alicebob.html) by John Gordon.

Nice light-hearted talk on coding theory.

> **Comments:**
> **username_42**: It's entertaining how much of what he claims his pocket calculator could do is actually now possible on a modern smartphone. No 3D holographic displays yet, and you might be hard-pressed to find a compiler from ADA to Android, but apart from that...  

---

### Answer by username_43 on 2013-05-04. Score: 5

Bruce Reed, [Mangoes and Blueberries](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004930050056), Combinatorica 19 (1999) 267-296 .


---

### Answer by username_44 on 2010-11-18. Score: 4

As far as a funny title: "How to play a coloring game against a color-blind adversary"

<http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1137865>


---

### Answer by username_45 on 2012-02-29. Score: 4

How about [Scott is not always sober](http://www.springerlink.com/content/9256577622j64575/)?


---

### Answer by username_46 on 2012-03-01. Score: 4

"Busy beavers gone wild" by Grégory Lafitte, EPTCS 1, 2009, pp. 123-129
[arXiv:0906.3257v1](http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.3257v1)


---

### Answer by username_47 on 2010-11-18. Score: 4

I cannot think now of a funny paper, but I do remember of a "normal" paper that had a funny line in it. It was in fact the very first sentence in Section 1. The authors began the paper with:

***"Contrary to our usual practice, we feel obliged to begin this paper with
a few definitions". So let G..."***

The title of the paper is "`$beta$`-perfect graphs", by Markossian, Gasparian and
Reed in 1996. It called my attention because it is in fact a key paper
on perfect graph theory, where it is defined the class of beta-perfect graphs, a class
that is in a way analogous to the perfect graphs (beta-perfect graphs being
a subclass of EVEN-hole-free graphs, whereas perfect graphs are a subclass of
ODD-hole-free graphs.

> **Comments:**
> **username_44**: Also known as "Since this is a theory talk, I would start by defining the problem I am talking about..."  

---

### Answer by username_48 on 2013-03-10. Score: 3

Without doubt, the most humorous mathematical writing award should go to Zeilberger. Considering that he writes about areas close to TCS and his views of TCS are very favorable makes his writings even more fun to read.

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: agreed! great sense of humor, sometimes poking fun even at TCS community itself & its conventions, eg crediting imaginary pseudonymous coauthor "Shalosh B. Ekhad". see eg his [P=NP crank paper april fool spoof/hoax](http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/9952/doron-zeilbergers-p-np-computer-proof)  

---

### Answer by username_39 on 2012-03-01. Score: 3

The [winner](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=398) of the 2007 Aaronson/Gasarch Complexity Theme Song Contest is amazing!
Download the [mp3](http://www.scottaaronson.com/jdtheory.mp3) and its [lyrics](http://www.scottaaronson.com/jdtheory.pdf).


---

### Answer by username_49 on 2017-05-21. Score: 2

[On the hardness of losing weight](http://www.cs.bme.hu/~dmarx/papers/krokhin-marx-losing-weight-talg.pdf) by Dániel Marx and Andrei Krokhin.
ACM Transactions on Algorithms, 8(2):19, 2012. Despite the funny title, the paper is serious.


---

### Answer by username_50 on 2012-09-27. Score: 2

[Jaywalking your Dog - Computing the Fréchet Distance with Shortcuts](http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.1720) by Anne Driemel and username_44 at SODA 2012.


---

### Answer by username_41 on 2012-12-12. Score: 2

Found this on László Babai's homepage:

"Enjoy a fun paper from 1990 that is only partly technical and tells a fable about Merlin, Arthur, competition, and the ethics of mathematical communication:
[E-mail and the Unexpected Power of Interaction](http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~laci/papers/email90.pdf)"


---

### Answer by username_51 on 2018-03-26. Score: 1

When I read this question, I immediately expected to see a mention of Connor McBride's ["Kleisli Arrows of Outrageous Fortune"](https://personal.cis.strath.ac.uk/conor.mcbride/Kleisli.pdf). It begins with the greatest series of puns I've seen in any CS paper.


---

### Answer by username_52 on 2014-03-01. Score: 1

"Why ordinals are good for you" by I. Lepper and G. Moser. The paper itself is not intended to be humorous but it contains some funny quotes. I would be curious to see a similar introductory paper to the surreal numbers, a superclass of the ordinals introduced by J.H. Conway.


---

### Answer by username_53 on 2013-05-05. Score: 1

This paper is not a humorous theory paper, but it is a really humorous paper by a theoretician, about dangers of being sloppy about punctuation.

For example, in bibliography, he spelled his own name as:

J. Dullman

(As most reader know, Ullman's middle initial is D.)

I can't recall the full details (issue, year #, page), but it appeared in SIGACT newsletter in late 80's.


---

### Answer by username_54 on 2019-05-07. Score: 1

Have you considered to use mixed integer linear programming to assist you playing Pokemon Go?

[Gotta (efficiently) catch them all: Pokémon GO meets Orienteering Problems](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2017.08.012)

> In this paper, a new routing problem, referred to as the Generalized Clustered Orienteering Problem (GCOP), is studied. The problem is motivated by the mobile phone game Pokémon GO, an augmented reality game for mobile devices (...)

---

> The computational performance of the proposed approaches is assessed in an extensive computational study, using real-world instances that combine crowd-sourced data associated with the Pokémon GO game with street maps of three European cities (...)


---

### Answer by username_1 on 2013-03-10. Score: 0

blog posts ok? its "published" in a sense & blogs are increasingly mainstream and many now written by senior/elite researchers. just recently ran across this old, imaginative entry from last April 1 from the Algorithmic Game Theory Blog, with clever resemblance to real events. see comments for colorful feedback. eg MacArthur fellow Terence Tao comments

> A fantastic achievement! Now that Reimann’s hypothesis is settled, one can hope that the closely related Riemann’s hypothesis will fall next…

[Automatic proof for Reimanns hypothesis](http://agtb.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/automatic-proof-for-reimanns-hypothesis/)


---

### Answer by username_55 on 2017-07-04. Score: 0

Not exactly a paper, but I think in the spirit of your question you'll appreciate [JofUR](http://www.universalrejection.org/): Journal of Universal Rejection.

Their website include numerous reasons why you should submit there, detailed instructions for authors, and interesting proceedings.


---

