David Liben-Nowell
I'm a professor in
the Department of
Computer Science at Carleton College.
In September 2022, I joined the Provost's Office at Carleton, for a few-year stint as an Associate Provost.
I particularly love teaching introductory and theoretical computer science courses, but I'm game for teaching a wide range of topics.
My research interests are focused on computational social
sciences, particularly the structure and evolution of social networks
and computational modeling of spoken-word recognition. I'm also
generally interested in the application of theoretical computer
science to problems in a variety of other areas, within and beyond
computer science; I've worked on problems in computational biology,
complexity of games, and peer-to-peer systems.
I also write (and, when they're not rejected, publish) and solve crossword puzzles, lose curling games, and believe strongly in the comedy rule of three.
Other interests, just because:
Adam Gopnik,
Churchill College,
coffeeshops,
Cornell,
Cornell hockey,
Cornell hockey,
cricket,
donuts,
Eddie From Ohio,
The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky,
Harry Chapin,
Kris Delmhorst,
the Magnetic Fields,
learning Yiddish,
making lists,
Quite Interesting,
punting
(see also
someone who's learned a few of my tricks),
Richard Russo,
road biking,
Says You!,
ultimate,
web pages that look like they were built in 1996.
A textbook: Connecting Discrete Mathematics and Computer Science
I've written a textbook for computer science students learning discrete math.
A revised edition was published in 2022. You can find an electronic pre-publication version of the text at the above link, freely available for personal use. I'd be delighted by comments, corrections, and suggestions.
Fall 2025 Teaching:
- History of Computing in England (off-campus studies program)
CS 301 History of Computing; CS 341 Cryptography; IDSC 141 Turing, Gender & Computing; HIST 145 World War II History.
- Previous offerings of the program ran in Summer 2019 and Summer 2022.
- The Fall 2025 program will run from September through November 2025.
- Interested in a future iteration? I'd love to chat!
Previous courses.
Research:
- Recent papers:
- Ben Aoki-Sherwood, Catherine Bregou, David Liben-Nowell, Kiran Tomlinson, Thomas Zeng. When the Universe is Too Big: Bounding Consideration Probabilities for Plackett–Luce Rankings.. AISTATS'25, May 2025.
- Anna N. Rafferty, David Liben-Nowell, David R. Musicant, Emy Farley, Allie Lyman, Ann May. Playing with Matches: Adopting Gale–Shapley for Managing Student Enrollments Beyond CS2. SIGCSE'24, March 2024.
- David Liben-Nowell, Anna N. Rafferty. Student Motivations and Goals for CS1: Themes and Variations. SIGCSE'22, March 2022.
- Complete list of publications by topic or by year.
Letters of Recommendation:
If you'd like me to write a letter of recommendation for you,
please read and follow these
instructions.
FAQ:
- Q: Hey you! What should I call you?
A: "David" will do quite nicely, thank you very much. "Dave"
is a perfectly fine name, but Dave ain't me. (Thanks to Charles
Leiserson for the FAQ idea.)
- Q: Hey you! I'd rather call you Professor/Doctor
Liben-Nowell. How is that pronounced?
A: It's pronounced many different ways, but the correct one
rhymes with "ribbon towel."
Contact information:
Department of Computer Science
Carleton College
One North College St.
Northfield, MN 55057
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Voice: +1 507 222 4679
Email: "dln" concatenated with "@carleton" and then ".edu".
(For personal email, please use "dlib" concatenated with "ennowell@" and then "gmail.com".)
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Last updated: 11 April 2026.