-
Mathematics education needs probability and art
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhMKmovNjvc&w=427&h=352] I agree with this but really, basic ideas of calc are simple and could be taught easily early on too. Found here. But this paper is also good and even though I don’t agree with it 100%, I think it is a brilliant diagnosis A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream…
-
Wind Power slowdown in Germany
The idea that Germany is playing catch-up with Europe’s most promising strategy for renewable energy is jarring. This is Germany, after all, the country that 11 years ago put the Green Party in government, decided to phase out nuclear power, and pushed wind energy and photovoltaics to grid scale. Today Germany’s installed wind-turbine capacity of…
-
The source of error (updated)
Here’s Edsger Dijkstra discussing the birth of the use of axiomatics in computer science – the start of “formal methods” research. What’s striking is the assumed choice between “axiomatic” and “mechanistic” as if there was no other way. In a later note he writes: And now we are back at our old dilemma. Either we…
-
OS design
Working on a “process algebra” post, I had to look up previous posts on microkernels where I wrote this: Information hiding is only good design when the hidden information is not needed by the software it is hidden from! If you hide information that you need to share you’re just wasting time. A great example…
-
Robin Milner and Automata theory
I always had the impression that the entire group of “process algebra” people didn’t know much about automata, but this is surprising. But meanwhile I got somehow interested, and I don’t know how, in concurrency. I remember that, without linking it to verification particularly, I wondered about interacting automata. I had an idea that automata…
-
Recursion and state
Despite some deep results, algebraic automata theory has fallen out of favor in theoretical computer science. Reasons include the disciplines failings such as a love of over-generality, weak mathematical background of people working on “formal methods”, and gap between theoreticians and engineers. But perhaps the key reason is that traditional state machine presentations in terms…
