If you've seen the new HBO comedy Silicon Valley, you know that the centerpiece of the show is a sought-after algorithm created by the main character, a geeky programmer named Richard. The algorithm, though fictional, has a Stanford imprimatur. Producers invited electrical engineering professor and compression expert Tsachy Weissman, along with graduate student Vinith Misra, to consult on the believability of software that compresses digital files to half their size with no loss of integrity. Misra even developed a fake-real mathematical formula to serve as a "test" for the algorithm in the show. Although Silicon Valley is filmed partly on location in Palo Alto, so far neither Weissman nor Misra has made a cameo appearance. Maybe next year—the show was just renewed for a second season.
