Know Your Discipline: Teaching the Philosophy of Computer Science
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You and Your Research & the Elements of Style
You and Your Research & The Elements of Style Philip Wadler University of Edinburgh Logic Mentoring Workshop Saarbrucken,¨ Monday 6 July 2020 Part I You and Your Research Richard W. Hamming, 1915–1998 • Los Alamos, 1945. • Bell Labs, 1946–1976. • Naval Postgraduate School, 1976–1998. • Turing Award, 1968. (Third time given.) • IEEE Hamming Medal, 1987. It’s not luck, it’s not brains, it’s courage Say to yourself, ‘Yes, I would like to do first-class work.’ Our society frowns on people who set out to do really good work. You’re not supposed to; luck is supposed to descend on you and you do great things by chance. Well, that’s a kind of dumb thing to say. ··· How about having lots of ‘brains?’ It sounds good. Most of you in this room probably have more than enough brains to do first-class work. But great work is something else than mere brains. ··· One of the characteristics of successful scientists is having courage. Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. If you think you can’t, almost surely you are not going to. — Richard Hamming, You and Your Research Develop reusable solutions How do I obey Newton’s rule? He said, ‘If I have seen further than others, it is because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants.’ These days we stand on each other’s feet! Now if you are much of a mathematician you know that the effort to gen- eralize often means that the solution is simple. -
History of Modern Applied Mathematics in Mathematics Education
HISTORY OF MODERN APPLIED MATHEMATICS IN MATHEMATICS EDUCATION UFFE THOMAS JANKVISI [I] When conversations turn to using history of mathematics in in-issues, of mathematics. When using history as a tool to classrooms, the rnferent is typically the old, often antique, improve leaining or instruction, we may distinguish at least history of the discipline (e g, Calinger, 1996; Fauvel & van two different uses: history as a motivational or affective Maanen, 2000; Jahnke et al, 1996; Katz, 2000) [2] This tool, and histmy as a cognitive tool Together with history tendency might be expected, given that old mathematics is as a goal these two uses of histoty as a tool are used to struc often more closely related to school mathematics However, ture discussion of the educational benefits of choosing a there seem to be some clear advantages of including histo history of modern applied mathematics ries of more modern applied mathematics 01 histories of History as a goal 'in itself' does not refor to teaching his modem applications of mathematics [3] tory of mathematics per se, but using histo1y to surface One (justified) objection to integrating elements of the meta-aspects of the discipline Of course, in specific teach history of modetn applied mathematics is that it is often com ing situations, using histmy as a goal may have the positive plex and difficult While this may be so in most instances, it side effect of offering students insight into mathematical is worthwhile to search for cases where it isn't so I consider in-issues of a specific history But the impo1tant detail is three here. -
Computing As Engineering
Journal of Universal Computer Science, vol. 15, no. 8 (2009), 1642-1658 submitted: 14/3/09, accepted: 27/4/09, appeared: 28/4/09 © J.UCS Computing as Engineering Matti Tedre (Tumaini University, Iringa, Tanzania fi[email protected]) Abstract: Computing as a discipline is often characterized as a combination of three major traditions: theoretical, scientific, and engineering tradition. Although the three traditions are all considered equally necessary for modern computing, the engineering tradition is often considered to be useful but to lack intellectual depth. This article discusses the basic intellectual background of the engineering tradition of computing. The article depicts the engineering aims manifest in the academic field of computing, compares the engineering tradition with the other traditions of computing as a disci- pline, and presents some epistemological, ontological, and methodological views con- cerning the engineering tradition of computing. The article aims at giving the reader an overview of the engineering tradition in computing and of some open questions about the intellectual foundations and contributions of the engineering tradition in computing. Key Words: information technology, philosophy of computer science, philosophy of technology, computing, engineering Category: K.7, K.7.1, K.7.m 1 Introduction The juxtaposing of science and technology is perhaps nowhere else as marked as in the computing disciplines. The division of computing into its mathemat- ical/theoretical, scientific/empirical, and design/engineering traditions ([Weg- ner, 1976], [Denning et al., 1989]) has spurred fiery debates about the merits and shortcomings of each tradition. In those debates, the theoretical tradition leans on the recognition of mathematics and logic as the theoretical cornerstones of computing, the scientific tradition draws support from arguments from the philosophy of science, but the design/engineering tradition is usually only rec- ognized for its utility and not for its intellectual foundations. -
OF the AMERICAN MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY 157 Notices February 2019 of the American Mathematical Society
ISSN 0002-9920 (print) ISSN 1088-9477 (online) Notices ofof the American MathematicalMathematical Society February 2019 Volume 66, Number 2 THE NEXT INTRODUCING GENERATION FUND Photo by Steve Schneider/JMM Steve Photo by The Next Generation Fund is a new endowment at the AMS that exclusively supports programs for doctoral and postdoctoral scholars. It will assist rising mathematicians each year at modest but impactful levels, with funding for travel grants, collaboration support, mentoring, and more. Want to learn more? Visit www.ams.org/nextgen THANK YOU AMS Development Offi ce 401.455.4111 [email protected] A WORD FROM... Robin Wilson, Notices Associate Editor In this issue of the Notices, we reflect on the sacrifices and accomplishments made by generations of African Americans to the mathematical sciences. This year marks the 100th birthday of David Blackwell, who was born in Illinois in 1919 and went on to become the first Black professor at the University of California at Berkeley and one of America’s greatest statisticians. Six years after Blackwell was born, in 1925, Frank Elbert Cox was to become the first Black mathematician when he earned his PhD from Cornell University, and eighteen years later, in 1943, Euphemia Lofton Haynes would become the first Black woman to earn a mathematics PhD. By the late 1960s, there were close to 70 Black men and women with PhDs in mathematics. However, this first generation of Black mathematicians was forced to overcome many obstacles. As a Black researcher in America, segregation in the South and de facto segregation elsewhere provided little access to research universities and made it difficult to even participate in professional societies. -
GEORGE ELMER FORSYTHE January 8, 1917—April 9, 1972
MATHEMATICS OF COMPUTATION, VOLUME 26, NUMBER 120, OCTOBER 1972 GEORGE ELMER FORSYTHE January 8, 1917—April9, 1972 With the sudden death of George Forsythe, modern numerical analysis has lost one of its earliest pioneers, an influential leader who helped bring numerical analysis and computer science to their present positions. We in computing have been fortunate to have benefited from George's abilities, and we all feel a deep sense of personal and professional loss. Although George's interest in calculation can be traced back at least to his seventh grade attempt to see how the digits repeated in the decimal expansion of 10000/7699, his early research was actually in summability theory, leading to his Ph.D. in 1941 under J. D. Tamarkin at Brown University. A brief period at Stanford thereafter was interrupted by his Air Force service, during which he became interested in meteor- ology, co-authoring an influential book in that field. George then spent a year at Boeing, where his interest in scientific computing was reawakened, and in 1948 he began his fruitful association with the Institute for Numerical Analysis of the National Bureau of Standards on the UCLA campus, remaining at UCLA for three years after leaving the Institute in 1954. In 1957 he rejoined the Mathematics Department at Stanford as Professor, became director of the Computation Center, and eventually Chairman of the Computer Science Department when it was founded in 1965. George greatly influenced the development of modern numerical analysis, especially in numerical linear algebra where his 1953 classification of methods for solving linear systems gave structure to a field of great importance. -
The Art of Proof
Matthias Beck & Ross Geoghegan The Art Of Proof Basic Training For Deeper Mathematics August 8, 2011 Springer Great teachers introduced us to the arts of mathematics and writing: To Harald Kohl and Hartmut Stapf To the memory of Fr. Harry Lawlor, SJ and Fr. Joseph Veale, SJ Preface PEANUTS: c United Feature Syndicate, Inc. Reprinted with permission. We have written this book with several kinds of readers in mind: (a) Undergraduates who have taken courses such as calculus and linear algebra, but who are not yet prepared for upper-level mathematics courses. We cover mathematical topics that these students should know. The book also provides a bridge to the upper-level courses, since we discuss formalities and conventions in detail, including the axiomatic method and how to deal with proofs. (b) Mathematics teachers and teachers-in-training. We present here some of the foundations of mathematics that anyone teaching mathematics beyond the most elementary levels should know. (c) High-school students with an unusually strong interest in mathematics. Such students should find this book interesting and (we hope) unconventional. (d) Scientists and social scientists who have found that the mathematics they studied as undergraduates is not sufficient for their present needs. Typically, the problem here is not the absence of training in a particular technique, but rather a general feeling of insecurity about what is correct or incorrect in mathematics, a sense of material only partly understood. Scientists must be confident that they are using mathematics correctly: fallacious mathematics almost guarantees bad science. In so far as possible we try to “work in” the formal methods indirectly, as we take the reader through some interesting mathematics. -
Naval Postgraduate School
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Calhoun, Institutional Archive of the Naval Postgraduate School Calhoun: The NPS Institutional Archive Faculty and Researcher Publications News Articles 2015-01-06 Iconic Researcher, Teacher Richard Hamming Maintains Lasting Legacy on Campus Stewart, Kenneth A. Monterey, California, Naval Postgraduate School http://hdl.handle.net/10945/44775 Naval Postgraduate School - Iconic Researcher, Teacher Richard Hamming Maintains Lasting Legacy on Campus Library Research Technology Services NPS Home About NPS Academics Administration Library Research Technology Services NPS Home About NPS Academics Administration Calendar | Directory SEARCH About NPS Academics Administration Library Research Technology Services Iconic Researcher, Teacher Richard Hamming Maintains Lasting Legacy on Campus NPS > About NPS > News Article By: Kenneth A. Stewart “The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers,” once noted renowned mathematician and former Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) Professor Richard W. Hamming. For the man who set aside a lifetime of groundbreaking discoveries for the love of teaching, at a self-imposed $1 per year salary, it would prove to be a prophetic statement indeed. Hamming held his final lecture at NPS in December of 1997, some 17 years ago, but his presence is as identifiable on campus as the vibrant red plaid sport coat he frequently donned to draw attention … “Because great ideas require an audience,” he would say. Hamming’s name is front and center each year, when the university honors its best teacher with the Richard W. Hamming Award for Teaching, and its top researcher with the Hamming Interdisciplinary Achievement Award. -
Turing Award • John Von Neumann Medal • NAE, NAS, AAAS Fellow
15-712: Advanced Operating Systems & Distributed Systems A Few Classics Prof. Phillip Gibbons Spring 2021, Lecture 2 Today’s Reminders / Announcements • Summaries are to be submitted via Canvas by class time • Announcements and Q&A are via Piazza (please enroll) • Office Hours: – Prof. Phil Gibbons: Fri 1-2 pm & by appointment – TA Jack Kosaian: Mon 1-2 pm – Zoom links: See canvas/Zoom 2 CS is a Fast Moving Field: Why Read/Discuss Old Papers? “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” - George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905 See what breakthrough research ideas look like when first presented 3 The Rise of Worse is Better Richard Gabriel 1991 • MIT/Stanford style of design: “the right thing” – Simplicity in interface 1st, implementation 2nd – Correctness in all observable aspects required – Consistency – Completeness: cover as many important situations as is practical • Unix/C style: “worse is better” – Simplicity in implementation 1st, interface 2nd – Correctness, but simplicity trumps correctness – Consistency is nice to have – Completeness is lowest priority 4 Worse-is-better is Better for SW • Worse-is-better has better survival characteristics than the-right-thing • Unix and C are the ultimate computer viruses – Simple structures, easy to port, required few machine resources to run, provide 50-80% of what you want – Programmer conditioned to sacrifice some safety, convenience, and hassle to get good performance and modest resource use – First gain acceptance, condition users to expect less, later -
A Debate on Teaching Computing Science
Teaching Computing Science t the ACM Computer Science Conference last Strategic Defense Initiative. William Scherlis is February, Edsger Dijkstra gave an invited talk known for his articulate advocacy of formal methods called “On the Cruelty of Really Teaching in computer science. M. H. van Emden is known for Computing Science.” He challenged some of his contributions in programming languages and the basic assumptions on which our curricula philosophical insights into science. Jacques Cohen Aare based and provoked a lot of discussion. The edi- is known for his work with programming languages tors of Comwunications received several recommenda- and logic programming and is a member of the Edi- tions to publish his talk in these pages. His comments torial Panel of this magazine. Richard Hamming brought into the foreground some of the background received the Turing Award in 1968 and is well known of controversy that surrounds the issue of what be- for his work in communications and coding theory. longs in the core of a computer science curriculum. Richard M. Karp received the Turing Award in 1985 To give full airing to the controversy, we invited and is known for his contributions in the design of Dijkstra to engage in a debate with selected col- algorithms. Terry Winograd is well known for his leagues, each of whom would contribute a short early work in artificial intelligence and recent work critique of his position, with Dijkstra himself making in the principles of design. a closing statement. He graciously accepted this offer. I am grateful to these people for participating in We invited people from a variety of specialties, this debate and to Professor Dijkstra for creating the backgrounds, and interpretations to provide their opening. -
Alan Mathison Turing and the Turing Award Winners
Alan Turing and the Turing Award Winners A Short Journey Through the History of Computer TítuloScience do capítulo Luis Lamb, 22 June 2012 Slides by Luis C. Lamb Alan Mathison Turing A.M. Turing, 1951 Turing by Stephen Kettle, 2007 by Slides by Luis C. Lamb Assumptions • I assume knowlege of Computing as a Science. • I shall not talk about computing before Turing: Leibniz, Babbage, Boole, Gödel... • I shall not detail theorems or algorithms. • I shall apologize for omissions at the end of this presentation. • Comprehensive information about Turing can be found at http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/turing2012/ • The full version of this talk is available upon request. Slides by Luis C. Lamb Alan Mathison Turing § Born 23 June 1912: 2 Warrington Crescent, Maida Vale, London W9 Google maps Slides by Luis C. Lamb Alan Mathison Turing: short biography • 1922: Attends Hazlehurst Preparatory School • ’26: Sherborne School Dorset • ’31: King’s College Cambridge, Maths (graduates in ‘34). • ’35: Elected to Fellowship of King’s College Cambridge • ’36: Publishes “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheindungsproblem”, Journal of the London Math. Soc. • ’38: PhD Princeton (viva on 21 June) : “Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals”, supervised by Alonzo Church. • Letter to Philipp Hall: “I hope Hitler will not have invaded England before I come back.” • ’39 Joins Bletchley Park: designs the “Bombe”. • ’40: First Bombes are fully operational • ’41: Breaks the German Naval Enigma. • ’42-44: Several contibutions to war effort on codebreaking; secure speech devices; computing. • ’45: Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) Computer. Slides by Luis C. -
Richard Hamming. the Art of Doing SCIENCE and Engineering: Learning to Learn
858 BIBLIOGRAPHY [69] Richard Hamming. The Art of Doing SCIENCE and Engineering: Learning to Learn. Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, 1997. [70] Seif Haridi and Sverker Janson. Kernel Andorra Prolog and its computation model. In 7th International Conference on Logic Programming, pages 31– 48. The MIT Press, June 1990. [71] Seif Haridi, Peter Van Roy, Per Brand, Michael Mehl, Ralf Scheidhauer, and Gert Smolka. Efficient logic variables for distributed computing. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems, May 1999. [72] Seif Haridi, Peter Van Roy, Per Brand, and Christian Schulte. Program- ming languages for distributed applications. New Generation Computing, 16(3):223–261, May 1998. [73] Seif Haridi, Peter Van Roy, and Gert Smolka. An overview of the design of Distributed Oz. In the 2nd International Symposium on Parallel Symbolic Computation (PASCO 97). ACM, July 1997. [74] Martin Henz. Objects for Concurrent Constraint Programming.Interna- tionale Series in Engineering and Computer Science. Kluwer Academic Pub- lishers, Boston, MA, USA, 1997. [75] Martin Henz. Objects for Concurrent Constraint Programming, volume 426 of The Kluwer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, November 1997. [76] Martin Henz. Objects in Oz. Doctoral dissertation, Saarland University, Saarbr¨ucken, Germany, May 1997. [77] Martin Henz and Leif Kornstaedt. The Oz notation. Technical re- port, DFKI and Saarland University, December 1999. Available at http://www.mozart-oz.org/. [78] Martin Henz, Tobias M¨uller, and Ka Boon Ng. Figaro: Yet another con- straint programming library. In Workshop on Parallelism and Implementa- tion Technology for Constraint Logic Programming, International Confer- ence on Logic Programming (ICLP 99), 1999. -
The Scholarly Work of Reliable and Well-Designed Mathematical Software a Personal Perspective
The Scholarly Work of Reliable and Well-Designed Mathematical Software A personal perspective Tim Davis July 9, 2014 1 The Scholarly Work of Reliable and Well-Designed Mathematical Software Outline: What defines a scholarly work? Does mathematical software fit that definition? Why publish prototype-quality mathematical software? Why publish robust, reliable, and full-featured mathematical software? Troubling trends and a troubling status quo My recommendations for you and for SIAM 2 Definition of \scholarly work" Scholarly or artistic works, regardless of their form of expression: intended purpose is to disseminate the results of academic research, scholarly study, or artistic expression, ... in any medium. When is a work scholarly (software or any other form)? Proposed metrics: 1 peer-reviewed 2 published in reputable academic journals 3 published in academic-quality books 4 topic of discussion at academic conferences 5 citation for academic society fellow 3 Peer-reviewed software ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software Founded in 1975 Purpose: As a scientific journal, ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS) documents the theoretical underpinnings of numeric, symbolic, algebraic, and geometric computing applications. It focuses on analysis and construction of algorithms and programs, and the interaction of programs and architecture. Algorithms documented in TOMS are available as the Collected Algorithms of the ACM in print, on microfiche, on disk, and online. 942 Collected Algorithms of the ACM since 1975: peer-reviewed scholarly software I serve as an Associate Editor of this journal 4 ACM TOMS Editorial Charter The purpose of the ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS) is to communicate important research results addressing the development, evaluation and use of mathematical software.