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From: ladkin@kestrel.ARPA (Peter Ladkin)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: CS degrees, are they useful?
Message-ID: <5246@kestrel.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 27-Feb-86 22:54:14 EST
Article-I.D.: kestrel.5246
Posted: Thu Feb 27 22:54:14 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Mar-86 18:22:36 EST
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Organization: Kestrel Institute, Palo Alto, CA
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(ladkin - non-numerical curriculum)
> >Propositional and predicate calculus, complexity
> >theory (concrete and asymptotic), graph theory, combinatorics,
> >some universal algebra (plus a bit of groups, rings and fields
> >for concreteness), Boolean algebra, relational algebra, model
> >theory, theory of computation, theory of formal languages,
> >recursion theory (Turing machines, recursive functions),
> >lambda calculus and denotational semantics.

(harter)
> [....] I will contend
> that for most applications mathematical logic is of no particular
> value.  Almost every thing that you list is of importance or is
> critical for pure computer science and is of no particular value
> in end user applications except algebra.

I'm glad you asked........I claim that all of the above topics
are needed to a greater or lesser extent by *applications*.
(That filtered my choice of examples).
It really is true that yesterday's theory is today's application.
It's also true that an undergraduate doesn't need *much*
of these, but then an ug doesn't need *much* of any one thing.
I'll include the list in a separate posting.


> On the other hand, if you are going to work in scientific and
> engineering applications you should have a working knowledge of
> numerical analysis.  

I agree wholeheartedly. Many computer scientists believe that
numerics isn't computer science, but that e.g. data-base
handling is. I have never understood this view.
I taught numerics as a TA at UCBerkeley, to ugs and grads.
The ugCS majors dropped the ug course, almost without exception.
(There were non in the graduate course to begin with). This despite
the presence of eminent numerical mathematicians in the CS Dept,
as well as in the Math Dept.

Peter Ladkin