Indeed, I remember doing this for my Grade 12 computer science class.. The whole 9 yards too, including finding a 'customer' (in our case, a teacher that wanted a curling rink scheduler that's based on round robin playoffs between teams.), an interview for gathering requirements, planning, coding, testing, documentation, etc. All done in Java with a nice GUI (Swing specifically).
Ya, those were fun times, especially the debates and discussions with the group members, and the final satisfaction we got from completing it.:)
I'm surprised there's nothing equivalent to that in U.S. high schools, or even in some universities as it seems.
Personally, I would propose the name "Computing Theory" instead, since this essentially deals with that issue itself.
You are right about the Computational Science, since there is a similar problem like that at the University of Waterloo, but under the name "Computational Mathematics", which deals with a lot of problems in scientific computing.
real programmers use languages that can wipe the OS by accident if the OS is stupid.
Sorry? Besides maybe some early versions of Windows, and others in the 80s, are there still operating systems out there that don't have some form of memory protection? I agree with the point of using suitably powerful languages for the job, but I don't think that modern OSes are THAT primitive.
I agree with your points, but it should just be something that people learn on workterms or in a college/trade school. Universities are not the places you should expect to teach software maintenance stuff from your list, as has been pointed out by several others in the discussion.
Last time I checked, The Theory of Hilbert Spaces and Functional Analysis in general isn't considered discrete mathematics (rather, the continuous sort). Really, if one really wants to get a grasp on stuff with numerical analysis and other parts of Computer Science like artifical intelligence, computer graphics, signal processing, etc. you would need knowledge in continuous math as well. It is unwise to eschew that only for 'Discrete Mathematics', however it's defined at various institutions.
In my experience, it is true in the math and science courses that for the most part some minor spelling and grammatical errors you make are ignored.
However, when I did some documentation for some of my CS classes, they did mention that they would deduct marks for poorly written or incomprehensible writing. This is more or less the same true for my Pure Math courses, where pretty much in any proof you do, most of it is written with the english itself for the most part, with the usual amount of standard conventions used as well. In some cases as well, unreadable assignments aren't marked at all. So it's in a person's best interest to do just write in standard english, since it's just much more immediately understandable than IM-speak.
I do agree using acronyms in an essay are fine as long as you define the full form before using them.
That happens with my University. For some courses, instead of just forcing a student to buy a $120 textbook, they'll usually just make course notes. The amount of material they contain works quite well, and for only $15-$25 CDN.
Otherwise, if it's required, some profs will vehemently be opposed to it, and just suggest to use it in the library if you need it. This was the case I had with one prof. who absolutely hated the Linear Algebra textbook that was assigned for the two courses. After taking those two courses, I can easily see why, since it doesn't even work well for the applications, since there's no point in doing tons of applications if you skimp out on the theory.
Well, that's my take anyways. I got a replacement text that's used in the advanced sections, and I've been satisfied with it, since it did help me out a lot with my future courses.
Could you explain what the hell you mean 'algorythmization'? I doubt you mean that it uses typical algorithms to do stuff, since ALL computer programs use algorithms. Or do you mean that commands tend to be automated through the interface?
Or I could be completely off, and this could be some feature involving some kind of music remixing with Al Gore?!
Oh, and one more thing too that bugged me about SC:BW interface was that although the list of commands could have been made to easily adapt to the number pad on a keyboard, they still stuck with the somewhat backwards way of doing it in Warcraft 2 where each command had a hotkey letter associated with it.
However, I know there was a modification released for that a long time ago. However, I got to wonder about Blizzard's user interfaces for its RTS games at times.
Other than these gripes, and some others for their hack 'n slash games, it is still a very fun game that does fill me with nostalgia.
In addition, you can group units with the keyboard using ctrl+#. However, this does require more micromanagement of the keyboard.
Limiting the amount of units you can select to make a game more 'strategic' though (i.e. who can click faster) seems like a poor solution. But, this is Blizzard we're talking about, who never seem to be able to put in good solutions to problems. Just take a look at Diablo and some of the poor coding that was done with that as an example (Mana Shield no stun bug, duping bug, etc.)
Huh? The wikipedia page here gives an example implementation in C/Java (an iterative solution no less) that involves nothing less than 9 lines of code.
With a bit of elementary number theory to back up the correctness as to why it works, I would still hardly call this a difficult algorithm. If you think this is a hard algorithm, you should attempt to try to implement a linear-time planarity test for an arbitrary graph.
They probably aren't directly supported in your favorite programming language because they are slow to work with when you need very high precision; after each calculation, the rational number needs to be reduced to its lowest terms. This involves factoring, which takes time proportional to the the terms themselves.
Why would you use a factoring algorithm when you could just use the Euclidean algorithm to find the GCD of (n/d), and then divide the numerator and denominator by them? That would be far faster than factoring both the numerator and denominator and cancelling common terms in the prime factorizations.
Otherwise, I agree with everything else in your post.
Ah, so I figured. Yes, the hardest assignment for CS 241 was the code generation for the compiler. Oh, how I spent many hours on that.. And I still didn't manage to finish all of it! Two weeks wasn't enough, damn it!:(
Which one was the 'hard' CS 251 assignment? When I took that class, they all had to be submitted into the drop box. Though, maybe they've switched having all of the written assignments submitted online, with the 'fishing' problem they've had with the drop boxes supposively. Well, it gave me an excuse to use LaTeX anyways.
And yes, I was mostly annoyed at that 500MB/week limit too when I was living in residence. It's a world of difference compared with my current local provider up here that doesn't give a shit (within reason) how much stuff you upload or download.
Re:24th Century Technology!
on
Talking iPods
·
· Score: 1
Ya, it's the one with Leonard Nimoy one of the little rascals...
It is possible that you can become your own guardian, but this is unusual.
Perhaps in schools in the US, but not where I went. The main example I can give is that once a student turned 18, any form of absense that would require a note to the teacher from a guardian could be written and signed by the student, once your parents or guardians gave written permission to the office for you to do so.
But then, I went to high school up here in Canada where everything seemed a bit more logical, so these kinds of stories really appal me.
Slashdot Mirror
Politician blabs on about a subject he knows nothing about. News story at 11.
Not necessarily. You can still charge someone if you license your software under the GPL.
Indeed, I remember doing this for my Grade 12 computer science class.. The whole 9 yards too, including finding a 'customer' (in our case, a teacher that wanted a curling rink scheduler that's based on round robin playoffs between teams.), an interview for gathering requirements, planning, coding, testing, documentation, etc. All done in Java with a nice GUI (Swing specifically).
:)
Ya, those were fun times, especially the debates and discussions with the group members, and the final satisfaction we got from completing it.
I'm surprised there's nothing equivalent to that in U.S. high schools, or even in some universities as it seems.
Personally, I would propose the name "Computing Theory" instead, since this essentially deals with that issue itself.
You are right about the Computational Science, since there is a similar problem like that at the University of Waterloo, but under the name "Computational Mathematics", which deals with a lot of problems in scientific computing.
real programmers use languages that can wipe the OS by accident if the OS is stupid.
Sorry? Besides maybe some early versions of Windows, and others in the 80s, are there still operating systems out there that don't have some form of memory protection? I agree with the point of using suitably powerful languages for the job, but I don't think that modern OSes are THAT primitive.
I agree with your points, but it should just be something that people learn on workterms or in a college/trade school. Universities are not the places you should expect to teach software maintenance stuff from your list, as has been pointed out by several others in the discussion.
(the more mathematics the better, my job involves statistics, noneuclidean geometry, differential equations, trig, etc on a daily basis)
Out of curiosity, what is your job? It sounds very interesting.
Last time I checked, The Theory of Hilbert Spaces and Functional Analysis in general isn't considered discrete mathematics (rather, the continuous sort). Really, if one really wants to get a grasp on stuff with numerical analysis and other parts of Computer Science like artifical intelligence, computer graphics, signal processing, etc. you would need knowledge in continuous math as well. It is unwise to eschew that only for 'Discrete Mathematics', however it's defined at various institutions.
In my experience, it is true in the math and science courses that for the most part some minor spelling and grammatical errors you make are ignored.
However, when I did some documentation for some of my CS classes, they did mention that they would deduct marks for poorly written or incomprehensible writing. This is more or less the same true for my Pure Math courses, where pretty much in any proof you do, most of it is written with the english itself for the most part, with the usual amount of standard conventions used as well. In some cases as well, unreadable assignments aren't marked at all. So it's in a person's best interest to do just write in standard english, since it's just much more immediately understandable than IM-speak.
I do agree using acronyms in an essay are fine as long as you define the full form before using them.
Right, because some our current ability to live the way we do now has to do with some magic handed to us from the Gods above...
The answer to your question is undecidable.
Hmm, a Mathematician chef would probably be able to make one hell of a pie at least. :)
Ah yes, that's why I'm able to walk over air, since I don't believe in gravity.. Quit while you're ahead, troll.
No, he'll hurl a chair at them from Redmond.
That happens with my University. For some courses, instead of just forcing a student to buy a $120 textbook, they'll usually just make course notes. The amount of material they contain works quite well, and for only $15-$25 CDN.
Otherwise, if it's required, some profs will vehemently be opposed to it, and just suggest to use it in the library if you need it. This was the case I had with one prof. who absolutely hated the Linear Algebra textbook that was assigned for the two courses. After taking those two courses, I can easily see why, since it doesn't even work well for the applications, since there's no point in doing tons of applications if you skimp out on the theory.
Well, that's my take anyways. I got a replacement text that's used in the advanced sections, and I've been satisfied with it, since it did help me out a lot with my future courses.
Could you explain what the hell you mean 'algorythmization'? I doubt you mean that it uses typical algorithms to do stuff, since ALL computer programs use algorithms. Or do you mean that commands tend to be automated through the interface?
Or I could be completely off, and this could be some feature involving some kind of music remixing with Al Gore?!
Oh, and one more thing too that bugged me about SC:BW interface was that although the list of commands could have been made to easily adapt to the number pad on a keyboard, they still stuck with the somewhat backwards way of doing it in Warcraft 2 where each command had a hotkey letter associated with it.
However, I know there was a modification released for that a long time ago. However, I got to wonder about Blizzard's user interfaces for its RTS games at times.
Other than these gripes, and some others for their hack 'n slash games, it is still a very fun game that does fill me with nostalgia.
In addition, you can group units with the keyboard using ctrl+#. However, this does require more micromanagement of the keyboard. Limiting the amount of units you can select to make a game more 'strategic' though (i.e. who can click faster) seems like a poor solution. But, this is Blizzard we're talking about, who never seem to be able to put in good solutions to problems. Just take a look at Diablo and some of the poor coding that was done with that as an example (Mana Shield no stun bug, duping bug, etc.)
If you do that, you'd get the exact same fiasco that we're currently dealing with software patents.
Huh? The wikipedia page here gives an example implementation in C/Java (an iterative solution no less) that involves nothing less than 9 lines of code.
With a bit of elementary number theory to back up the correctness as to why it works, I would still hardly call this a difficult algorithm. If you think this is a hard algorithm, you should attempt to try to implement a linear-time planarity test for an arbitrary graph.
They probably aren't directly supported in your favorite programming language because they are slow to work with when you need very high precision; after each calculation, the rational number needs to be reduced to its lowest terms. This involves factoring, which takes time proportional to the the terms themselves.
Why would you use a factoring algorithm when you could just use the Euclidean algorithm to find the GCD of (n/d), and then divide the numerator and denominator by them? That would be far faster than factoring both the numerator and denominator and cancelling common terms in the prime factorizations.
Otherwise, I agree with everything else in your post.
Yes, indeed, just like his long lost proof of the Riemann Hypothesis...
Ah, so I figured. Yes, the hardest assignment for CS 241 was the code generation for the compiler. Oh, how I spent many hours on that.. And I still didn't manage to finish all of it! Two weeks wasn't enough, damn it! :(
Oh well. It's a neato course, I'll admit.
Which one was the 'hard' CS 251 assignment? When I took that class, they all had to be submitted into the drop box. Though, maybe they've switched having all of the written assignments submitted online, with the 'fishing' problem they've had with the drop boxes supposively. Well, it gave me an excuse to use LaTeX anyways. And yes, I was mostly annoyed at that 500MB/week limit too when I was living in residence. It's a world of difference compared with my current local provider up here that doesn't give a shit (within reason) how much stuff you upload or download.
Ya, it's the one with Leonard Nimoy one of the little rascals...
It is possible that you can become your own guardian, but this is unusual.
Perhaps in schools in the US, but not where I went. The main example I can give is that once a student turned 18, any form of absense that would require a note to the teacher from a guardian could be written and signed by the student, once your parents or guardians gave written permission to the office for you to do so.
But then, I went to high school up here in Canada where everything seemed a bit more logical, so these kinds of stories really appal me.