arvind@utcsri.UUCP (Arvind Gupta) (01/06/88)
*** REPLACE THIS LINE WITH YOUR MESSAGE ***
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 87 22:25:24 CST
From: dsj%research.att.com@relay.cs.net
Subject: SIGACT News Educational Forum
SIGACT News needs YOU!
Announcing the inauguration of a new feature of SIGACT News:
The THEORETICAL COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATOR'S FORUM.
This free-form "forum" will be a place for those who teach theoretical
computer science to exchange ideas about courses, books, etc.
Although many types of contributions are possible, we would
like initially to solicit COURSE OUTLINES. In a fast-developing
field like theoretical computer science, there often do not exist
textbooks to cover advanced courses, so educators regularly create
new courses based on technical papers, etc. Even when texts
do exist, the courses based on them are often organized very
differently from the texts. I have seen much evidence of this
in visiting universities around the country, where I almost always
see interesting outlines and prospectuses taped on office doors
or tacked to bulletin boards. So this is a plea that you share
your educational ideas with the rest of us, by submitting your
outlines to SIGACT News. No fixed format is required, but if
there is an associated bibliography, please include that too.
If you have already taught the course, comments about its success,
(and whether you were really able to cover all the topics in
the outline) would also be welcome.
Other kinds of contributions to the forum: (1) general articles
on the theory curriculum as it is taught at your institution (or
should be taught), (2) comparative reviews of the available standard
texts, (3) brief technical papers descibing new and presumably better
ways of presenting standard material or of proving old results,
(4) ``Letters to the editor'' (controversy welcomed).
We hope to initiate the forum in the next issue of SIGACT News, the
deadline for which is tentatively set at February 1, so please start
sending us your course outlines as soon as possible. As with all
other submissions, they should go to the Newsletter Editor:
Victor Miller
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
P.O. Box 218
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
Electronic submissions are also possible: victor@ibm.com (arpanet,csnet)
or victor@yktvmx (bitnet).
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with SIGACT News, it is one
of the main benefits of membership in SIGACT (ACM Special
Interest Group in Automata and Computability Theory - the SIG for
theoretical computer science), and as such provides an audience
of over 2000 members (a circulation that exceeds that of SICOMP).
Here are some other ideas for the kinds of contributions that would be
of interest to SIGACT News. If you do not wish to volunteer yourself,
we would welcome suggestions as to whose arms we might productively twist.
(If you know of anyone who has already written something appropriate,
please urge them to submit it, or let us know about it.
1. Quarterly reports on the backlogs of Theoretical Computer Science
journals. Here we're looking for a single volunteer to take on the
job or regularly gathering data and preparing a half-page table,
something like what is done in the AMS Notices. We can probably
help dig up names of journal contacts for you, if needed.
2. More book reviews, both of research monographs and of standard
course texts.
3. Brief (2 or 3 page) descriptions of your institution, the people
there, and the research going on there.
4. Conference reports (with pictures if possible).
4. Annotated bibliographies and surveys in relevant areas. More
columns analogous to Joe O'Rourke's Computational Geometry
column would be welcome.
5. Brief technical papers of reasonably general interest. We are NOT
interested in long and highly technical papers, as our papers are
not refereed.
6. Humorous articles with a theoretical computer science bent.
7. Articles about the theoretical computer science community from a
historical or sociological point of view, like the ``Genealogy of TCS''
published 5 years ago. (An update is due in 1988 and if anyone
is willing to help, please contact me.)
David Johnson, SIGACT Chairman
Room 2D-150
AT&T Bell Laboratories
(dsj@research.att.com)