Posts with keyword: computer+science

12 entries

What Use is a Master of Science in CS?

Wed Feb 22 11:40:00 2017

Don't botch a hiring situation because you don't understand what your candidate's credentials mean. An advanced degree in Computer Science has little to do with programming, but says a lot about the candidate's ability to solve difficult, open-ended problems.
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Why Do CS Majors Study Calculus

Fri Nov 14 08:49:00 2014

Studying calculus is part of learning to think abstractly and programmers need all the experience with abstract models they can get.
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Quit Your Job and Get a PhD

Thu Dec 24 11:27:00 2009

Every once in a while I run across this question from people wanting to get a PhD: "I am interested in going on to the PhD level but I have run into a wall. Most of the traditional schools I have looked into want me to quit my job and attend full-time. I can't do this because of my family and house payment." There's a reason schools want you to be a full time student at the PhD level: it's the only way it will work. Getting a PhD isn't like getting a BS or MS;
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Programming Languages as a Notation

Tue May 5 10:04:00 2009

I was listening to Jon Udell's interview of Joan Peckham on computational thinking and the subject of whether a general education computational thinking course should include programming. I've thought a lot about this and have some strong opinions. Computational thinking will be, at its heart, a study of algorithms. That's what computer science is, after you strip away the blinking lights: algorithms. Teaching computational thinking will involve the elucidation of a set of skills that computer scientists use to solve problems that have usefulness in other domains as well. Each of those will involve some kind
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Book Review: The Advent of the Algorithm

Mon Feb 16 10:44:00 2009

Computers are important--everyone knows that. But computers aren't nearly as important as the ideas behind them. If you want to understand why computer science is important, then you need to read Berlinski's book, The Advent of the Algorithm: The 300-Year Journey from an Idea to the Computer. Berlinski ranks the algorithm as the idea, next to calculus, that has most shaped modern science and, consequently, our world. If there's one things that gives me pause in recommending this book, it is that I'm not sure how accessible it is to the layman. For someone with a Ph.D. in Computer
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The Halting Problem, in Verse: Scooping the Loop Snooper

Fri Nov 21 19:27:00 2008

Geoffrey K. Pullum, Professor of General Linguistics in the School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences University of Edinburgh has written a marvelous verse, in the style of Dr. Suess, that explains the proof that the Halting Problem is undecidable in a clear and humorous way. The verse is called Scooping the Loop Snooper (PDF). If only all of Computational Theory were this easy to understand!
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Computational Thinking

Mon Jun 18 14:05:00 2007

When Jon Udell interviewed Phil Libin, on IT Conversations, Libin said that in the future people will have to understand asymmetric encryption in order to function in the world. At first I was incredulous--that seems like a pretty esoteric concept to force on everyone. But then he said this: when Adam Smith first put forth idea of free markets, the notion that most adults would have an intuitive understanding of the concept seemed equally ludicrous, but in fact around 80% of U.S. adults do. Why understand encryption? Because it affects your life in multiple ways. People who understand encryption
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Great Principles of Computer Science

Wed Jun 6 17:44:00 2007

Today at lunch, I was watching how the person who took orders communicated the type and number of sandwiches to the sandwich makers. She had a stack of cards for each sandwich type and she'd place them in order on the table by the sandwich making station. I remarked to my friend that there were using a queue to decouple the order taking unit from and processing unit (sandwich makers) so that order taking could happen independently of sandwich making. They could add more processing units (competing consumers) if things got busy. The world is full of these kinds
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Jeannette Wing on Computational Thinking

Wed Apr 25 20:40:00 2007

Tonight is Jeannette Wing's general interest talk as part of her Organick Memorial Lecture at the University of Utah. The talk is on computational thinking. Here's an article she wrote for ACM Communications. These slides are close to the ones she used tonight. Computational thinking will be a fundamental skill, like reading, writing, and arithmetic, in the 21st century. Computational thinking enables what one person cannot do alone. There are two components: abstraction and automation. CT involves thinking at more than one layer of abstraction at a time. Automation mechanizes the abstraction layers and their relationship. These allow the
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2007 Organick Lecture: Jeannette Wing

Thu Apr 5 11:03:00 2007

This year's Organick Lecture at the University of Utah will be delivered by Jeannette Wing, President's Professor of Computer Science and Head of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. In keeping with tradition, the lecture consists of two parts, a general interest lecture and a research lecture. The general interest lecture, entitled "Computational Thinking" will be on Wed April 25, 2007 at 7:30 p.m. in the 220 Aline Wilmot Skaggs Biology Research Building on the University of Utah campus. The research lecture will be on "Automatic Generation and Analysis of Attack Graphs" and will be given on Thursday, April
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John Backus Dies

Wed Mar 21 10:13:00 2007

John Backus, the inventor of FORTRAN, BNF, and winner of the 1977 Turing Award (read his lecture) has passed away at 82. I tell my CS330 students about Backus and the development of FORTRAN every semester when we discuss BNF (he's the "B" in BNF). As I said when Ralph Griswold died a few months ago, Computer Science has always been a discipline where the founders were still around. That's changing.
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Chuck Knutson's Blog

Tue Mar 20 14:42:00 2007

One of my colleagues at BYU, Chuck Knutson, has started a blog and is posting some good stuff there. Chuck's a thoughtful guy, so I look forward to following what he writes. A mixture of management insight (Chuck has industry experience), computer science, academics, and general ramblings make up the topics, as far as I can see.
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