Computer Science
pontiff | April 11, 2008Last week, in the class I'm teaching, we talked about the basics of deterministic finite automata. In week two we moved on to more interesting and slightly less basic material. In particular we introduced the notion of a nondeterministic finite automata and, by the end of the week, had showed that the class of languages accepted by deterministic finite automata is exactly the same class of languages accepted by nondeterministic finite automata.
What I love about this basic material is that you take a seemingly crazy idea: machines that can follow multiple computational paths at the same…
pontiff | April 8, 2008Whatever you do, Mr. and Mrs. Joe and Mary America, make sure to tell everyone you know not to go into science and engineering! You see those who major in science and engineering are certain to not get jobs, because, as many commenters love to point out, all those jobs are being exported overseas! But wait, what is this:
The overall unemployment rate of scientists and engineers in the United States dropped from 3.2% in 2003 to 2.5% in 2006...according to data from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System (SESTAT). This is the lowest…
pontiff | April 4, 2008The very first AP class I took in high school was the Computer Science AB test. Today, I learn from the Washington Post, that the Computer Science AB test is on the chopping block (along with Italian, Latin literature, and French literature.)
The AP Computer Science AB test is a superset of the AP Computer Science A test, yet I cannot help but thinking that this is a sad day for computer science education. Among the topics which are (or were) in the AB test but not in the A test are (or were)
Two-dimensional arrays
Linked lists (singly, doubly, circular)
Stacks
Queues
Trees
Heaps
Priority…
jane | April 3, 2008...since it does relate to my posts!
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jane | April 3, 2008In this next part of the strangely popular series "Is Computer Science a Science?", I'll look at whether Computer Science fits the definition of "science". (see parts 1 and 1a for the inaugural posts in the series)
Most people seem to apply a certain litmus test of sorts to determine if something is a science. Something is a science if
(1) it uses the scientific method (i.e., empirical research and observation)
(2) it involves studying "fundamental principles" of the natural or physical world
(1) is, I think, a bit easier to address. I use the scientific method all the time in my work: I…
sporte | March 29, 2008Our new Scibling, Jane, is a real life computer scientist. If you've ever wondered what computer scientists really do during the day, Jane will set you straight (I guess they're not playing Nintendo. Darn! Another illusion shattered, just like that.)
Jane has also promised to explain why computer science is a science and not engineering.
That part hasn't happened yet, but I work with software engineers and I have written a bit about the mysterious things that they do. Databases need to vacuumed? Who knew?
I'm looking forward to hearing Jane describe answer the question from the…
jane | March 27, 2008Before I get too deeply into the Is computer science a science? series, ScienceMama suggested that I give my non-computer scientist readers an idea of what computer scientists actually do on a daily basis.
I'm going to focus on what I do as a research scientist. Hopefully some of my readers who are working as computer scientists in industry/government will chime in in the comments with a snapshot of what they do as well.
So, what does a typical research-focused day in my life look like?
MORNING:
First thing: check email, very briefly, just to make sure I don't have to put out any fires or…
pontiff | March 25, 2008From the bits blog at the New York Times, a list of technology famous quotes which may or may not have been said. Two of which I believe I've used before (doh!):
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." This quotation is attributed to Bill Gates, but Mr. Shapiro suspects that it is apocryphal, and is seeking the person who either said it or first attributed it to Mr. Gates.
...
"I think there is a world market for about five computers." This is a attributed to Thomas J. Watson, Jr., but Mr. Shapiro suspects it of being apocryphal and is seeking the person who either said it or first attributed…
jane | March 24, 2008There's an old saying that my friends in other fields love to bring up from time to time: any discipline that has science in its name, probably isn't a science.
Are they right? Is there some truth in that statement?
When I started to think about this question, I thought I could get it all into a single post. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how complex this question really is. So this will be the first post in a series exploring whether (or under what circumstances) computer science can be considered a science.
First, some background. Why am I interested in this…
pontiff | March 15, 2008As noted by Lance, the new journal ACM Transactions on Computation Theory is now accepting papers. Note for quantum computing theorists:ACM Transactions on Computation Theory will cover theoretical computer science complementing the scope of the ACM Transactions on Algorithms and the ACM Transactions on Computational Logic including, but not limited to, computational complexity, foundations of cryptography, randomness in computing, coding theory, models of computation including parallel, distributed and quantum and other emerging models, computational learning theory, theoretical computer…
pontiff | March 13, 2008An interesting summer school for computer scientists interested in probabilistic techniques to be held in Bristol, UK (you know the school that had a chalkboard with the statement that quantum computers could efficiently solve NP-complete problems :) ) Deadline fast approaching. Details below.
From the summer school webpage:The purpose of this school is to provide a graduate-level introduction to probabilistic methods in modern theoretical computer science, and to the mathematics underlying these methods. The school is primarily aimed at research students, postdocs and early career…
jane | March 7, 2008Say you are a woman in computing. Maybe you're struggling to get through school. Maybe you're trying to start up a mentoring program, or have a great project idea, or are facing a career transition. And maybe you need some funds to get your project/schooling/transition off the ground, or at least help it along.
There's a program that might be of assistance....
The Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology, and the Systers Online Community, sponsor a program called Pass-It-On Grants. The idea behind the grants is to develop a network of women, who provide financial assistance to their…
pontiff | February 12, 2008Via the Computational Complexity (welcome back Lance), the list of accepted papers for CCC 2008 has been posted. Woot, that's a lot of quantum inspired papers. By my count 7 of 33. Quoteth Feynman...and I'm not happy with all the analyses that go with just the classical theory, because nature isn't classical, dammit, and if you want to make a simulation of nature, you'd better make it quantum mechanical...
pontiff | February 4, 2008Microsoft, which to me is that big collection of buildings across the lake where I yell when Vista bogs down my laptop, has announced a new Research Lab to be located in Cambridge, MA. It will be run by mathematical physicist turned comptuer scientist Jennifer Tour Chayes who was the manager for Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science and Cryptography at Microsoft Research in Redmond.
For some strange reason I get the feeling that Microsoft and Google are playing a large game of Risk with the pieces being replaced by offices, and the countries being replaced by top teir university towns.
pontiff | February 4, 2008The Turing Award, the Nobel Prize of computing (but really how can we fault Nobel for not having a computing prize when computers for Nobel would have been people), has been won by Edmund Clarke (CMU), E. Allen Emerson (UT at Austin) and Joseh Sifakis (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/CARNOT Institute) for research on Model Checking. The citation readsFor their role in developing Model-Checking into a highly effective
verification technology, widely adopted in the hardware and software
industries.
The winners will share a $250,000 prize ($150,000 more this year due to the sponser…
pontiff | February 1, 2008Colorado State scores Keck money, D-Wave scores venture money, QICIQ 2008, Reversible computation tutorial, and a review of "Quantum Hoops."
The Keck Foundation has given some dinero to Colorado State for quantum computing research:
The primary goal of the research program is to demonstrate laser cooling and trapping of a single silicon atom. Then, on demand, researchers will ionize the atom and deliver it to the desired qubit location with nanometer accuracy, said Siu Au Lee, a professor of physics at CSU and principal investigator for the program.
D-Wave has closed a $17 million dollar…
pontiff | January 11, 2008Sean watches a panel discussion on whether the universe is a computer, looks up the definition of a computer, and decides that instead the universe is a calculation. If thinking about the universe as a computer is designed to make computer scientists feel important, thinking about the universe as a calculation seems designed to make theoretical physicists feel important :) But what I find interesting is that Sean points to a question asked by Tony Leggett: "What kind of process does not count as a computation?"
Now first of all, let me preface this by saying that the word "computation" has…
pontiff | January 10, 2008
Birthday tributes: Da Optimizer, Da Theorizer, BILL GASARCH, Da Geomblog, and Good Math, Bad Math.
pontiff | December 29, 2007Miguel Pais points to an interesting behavior of Mathematica, where he plots the function which is the square of the square root of x. Now, if the domain of x is taken to be complex numbers, Mathematica's behavior seems to me to be fine. But can anyone explain this behavior
as anything other than a bug?
Update: Oops. That wasn't the one I was trying to paste. See what happens when I disconnect from the intertubes for a few days. How about this one:
pontiff | December 5, 2007Since I got into trouble for posting about the need for more, not less, funding for science and engineering, (and, I might add, a reengineering of our approach to what it means to produce a successful Ph.D.), I thought I'd continue the trouble by linking to a post over at the Computing Research Policy Blog, "Computer and Mathematical Science Occupations Expected to Grow Quickest Over the Next Decade."