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Science 19 September 2003:
Vol. 301. no. 5640, pp. 1685 - 1686
DOI: 10.1126/science.1086309
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Perspectives

PHYSICS/COMPUTER SCIENCE:
Passing Messages Between Disciplines

Marc Mézard

Problems in computer science, such as error correction in information transfer and "satisfiability" in optimization, show phase transitions familiar from solid-state physics. In his Perspective, Mézard explains how recent advances in these three fields originate in similar "message passing" procedures. The exchange of elaborate messages between different variables and constraints, used in the study of phase transitions in physical systems, helps to make error correction and satisfiability codes more efficient.

The author is in the Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques, CNRS, and Université de Paris Sud, 91405 Orsay, France. E-mail: mezard{at}lptms.u-psud.fr

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Clustering by Passing Messages Between Data Points.
B. J. Frey and D. Dueck (2007)
Science 315, 972-976
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