ladkin@kestrel.ARPA (Peter Ladkin) (03/11/86)
In article <1099@burl.UUCP>, rcj@burl.UUCP (Curtis Jackson) writes: > > I, too, am much better at algorithmic thinking, which leads me to wonder > why so many universities put such a heavy emphasis on exotic mathematics > in their CS degree programs. How many people actually use this stuff > in day-to-day work life? Me. My colleagues. The people next door. The folks at SRI. The guys at IBM Almaden and Stanford. In short, a significant proportion of the people who are helping to define how we will use computers in 10 years time. e.g. Modal Logic helps you define and verify concurrent algorithms, algorithms for consistent local/global memory in an unreliable distributed system. Universal algebra is used in most systems which implement abstract data types declaratively. Combinatorics helps you decide if your favorite algorithm is going to be workable once the sample size is increased 10,000 fold over your simple test programs. Logic is used all over the place. Try programming in Prolog without understanding any. Enough for now. Peter Ladkin