Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!noao!arizona!mike
From: mike@cs.arizona.edu (Mike Coffin)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: CS education [engineering, mathematics, and computer science]
Message-ID: <15812@megaron.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 30 Nov 89 19:45:16 GMT
References: <34795@regenmeister.uucp>
Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson
Lines: 25

[Regarding the relationship between mathematics and computer science]

From article <34795@regenmeister.uucp> (Chris Prael):
> My observation and experience is that this relationship is
> historical in origin.  It traces to the fact that most computer
> science departments were spun off from mathematics departments. ...
> There are two other sources of the mathematical misapprehension.
> The first is that the earliest applications performed with computers
> were mainly numerical analysis problems. ... The other is the fact
> the programs are completely abstract.

I think the alleged ``misapprehension'' has more to do with the fact
that computer programs are algorithms than the reasons suggested
above.  Algorithms have been, at least since Euclid, the realm of
mathematicians.  A large part (but not all) of mathematics has been
the development of algorithms and proofs of their correctness.  Since
a very large portion of computer science is the design and analysis of
algorithms, it is natural that mathematicians would find the field
interesting and that computer scientists would find mathematical
reasoning useful.

-- 
Mike Coffin				mike@arizona.edu
Univ. of Ariz. Dept. of Comp. Sci.	{allegra,cmcl2}!arizona!mike
Tucson, AZ  85721			(602)621-2858


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