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C00002 00002	chudno[s85,jmc]		Comments on Chudnovsky proposal
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chudno[s85,jmc]		Comments on Chudnovsky proposal

1. You can try it out on Kahn.  The report of your conversation with
him suggests that he is sympathetic to doing advanced mathematics.
However, he will face certain problems in getting a project approved.
I don't fully understand the situation in DARPA, but I think someone
will ask for the relevance to defense to be spelled out.

Kahn has to prepare a document called a "request for DARPA order"
which explains why DARPA should support the work.  General scientific
value has not been considered sufficient.

2. On the second page it says "10**50 terms in the expansion".  I
suppose that should be 10**5.  In general you should explain the
use of such large numbers of terms.

3. The first paragraph explains the creation of the laboratory.  In
general funding agencies are reluctant to support the creation and
maintenance of laboratories.  The prefer to support the work of
laboratories for whose creation they are not responible.  Therefore,
I think it might work better to describe the laboratory as existing
or to be established, but not suggest that its establishment depends
on them.

4. Kahn has told you how much money he contemplates giving you, and
you have indicated that you can do something useful with it.
From that point of view the proposal is much to grand.  It would be
better to take a small number of the topics you have mentioned,
make a more detailed proposal, and make a connection with defense
problems.

	I don't think it will do harm to send Kahn what you have as
a kind of overall grand plan, but at least the covering letter should
promise a more narrow proposal.

	Remember that Kahn has to make decisions about amounts of
money without to much agonizing.  Therefore, you should get someone
at Columbia who knows about such things to prepare a draft budget
for a few hundred thousand per year for a two or three year project.
It should include whatever fraction of your own salaries is wanted,
a Lisp machine plus some ordinary terminals, and the support of
two or three graduate students.  You may also want to include some
other Columbia person part time, and maybe a research associate
if there is enough money considering other sources of support.
Don't forget to include some travel.

	Remember that capital equipment and travel require their own
sections of the budget.  Money is transferable out of these sections
into personnel costs but not the other way.  At least this used to
be the rule.