Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!rutgers!ucsd!usc!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!shadooby!egrunix!nucleus!dar
From: dar@nucleus.UUCP (Dario Alcocer)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: CS education [engineering, mathematics, and computer science]
Message-ID: <5481@nucleus.UUCP>
Date: 16 Nov 89 20:20:48 GMT
References: <1398@cs.rit.edu> <34770@regenmeister.uucp>
Organization: The Nucleus Public Access Unix, Clarkston, MI
Lines: 41

In article <34770@regenmeister.uucp>, chrisp@regenmeister.uucp (Chris Prael) writes:
> 
> You were very polite about this, perhaps too.  My background in math,
> before I got into computing, early lead me to the conclusion that 
> computing and math have nothing fundamental in common.  Most of the 
> failings of Computer Science stem from the attempt to make computing a 
> branch of mathematics.  The attempt displays profound misunderstandings 
> of the fundamentals of mathematics and of the fundamentals of computing.
> 
> [text deleted...]
> 
> Computing does not have that excuse.  Only two modest segments of
> mathematics contains elements that can even remotely be called
> fundamental contents of our toolkit: elementry arithmetic and boolean
> algebra.  Both of these are pretty elementry when compared to the math
> recipies needed by civil, mechanical, and electrical engineers.  Is that
> why we pretend to mathematical content that is not there?
> 
> Chris Prael

I'll have to disagree with you Chris.  I can think of two branches of
mathematics that have _everything_ to do with computing...

Graph thoery - Has contributed many of the data structures we use,
trees, directed and non-directed graphs; just read DDJ, Sept 89, regarding
A* autorouting and simulated anealing.

Combinatorics - study of _discrete_ mathematics, useful in alogirth design
and analysis.

Many concepts in computing can be studied and learned without any regard to
the mathematics of them.  However, I think that the relevance of mathematics
is clear when it comes to develop new techniques and algorthims in the
computing field.

Dario Alcocer
dar@nucleus.mi.org
:wq


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