[HN Gopher] Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science
___________________________________________________________________
Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science
Author : __rito__
Score : 72 points
Date : 2024-03-15 20:30 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cs251.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cs251.com)
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| What would versions of this course look like for other fields?
|
| Great Ideas in Theoretical Physics?
|
| Great Ideas in Experimental Physics?
|
| Great Ideas in Economics?
|
| etc
|
| I did teach a course once called, Inventing the Information Age,
| in which we discussed all the inventions and ideas (starting from
| writing) all the way to modern computing infrastructure needed
| for a civilization to replicate our information age. This was not
| a single-field course, because the ideas/inventions were in
| language, physics, mathematics, and computer science. That made
| it more fun.
| osti wrote:
| The CMU class is for freshmen, so students without advanced
| background can still comprehend most of it. But for physics I
| feel that without at least some good physics and math
| background, you can't really understand and appreciate the
| "great ideas".
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| If the students know the core concepts and mechanics of
| Calculus and Linear Algebra, which is entirely possible for
| high school students in certain parts of the world, it's
| possible to teach a lot of core physics ideas with simple
| models.
|
| In fact, in my undergrad, the Physics lab and theory courses
| were flipped - you look the lab course before the theory
| course. In the lab course you used simple maths and simple
| experimental setups to probe phenomena in mechanics,
| thermodynamics, electromagnetism, optics etc. Doing
| experiments/observations in astronomy, quantum mechanics are
| also possible at that level.
| josh-sematic wrote:
| Sean Carrol has a series he's working on called "The Biggest
| Ideas in the Universe" which is on physics. Only the first one
| is out now (Time, Space, and Motion), but the second is due in
| May I think (on Quanta and Fields). Its intended audience is
| anyone with a high school education. It introduces basic ideas
| in calculus and then does use equations to motivate
| understanding, but not at the level you'd need if you were
| actually studying physics. I have a bachelor's in physics but
| still deepened my understanding of General Relativity from the
| first one. Highly looking forward to part 2.
| https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/biggestideas/
| thejazzman wrote:
| The most painful class I ever took. I know, I'm not a real nerd,
| or something. I'm okay with it.
| russfink wrote:
| Interesting to read your experiences. Looking over this, it
| seems to take a highly theoretical approach and work up, rather
| than a practical/applied approach and work down. I was
| surprised to see automata covered so early, which is more in
| the vein of computability theory than that of introductory
| concepts.
| leetrout wrote:
| There are literally dozens of us making great careers solving
| problems with computers without CS degrees or any particular
| interest in the lowest levels of computing nor the mathematical
| backings / abstractions.
|
| Horses for courses.
| __rito__ wrote:
| Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15153838
| rramadass wrote:
| You might find this motivating :
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39721301
| pvg wrote:
| A previous thread from 2017
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15146905
| __rito__ wrote:
| A more complete version:
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm3J0oaFux3aafQm568blS9bl...
| djaouen wrote:
| I have nothing to add other than saying that Physicists and
| Philosophers often make better programmers than Computer
| Scientists. :)
| DrDroop wrote:
| Sometimes you find the truth at the bottom of HN. It hurts, I
| spend my early adulthood trying to learning most of the topics
| on this page thinking it would make me a great software
| engineer. These are good ideas, but I wouldn't call them great,
| they are often very dull and don't make one a great thinker.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I think there should be a companion class on anti patterns or bad
| ideas in computer science. It's much harder to see a horrible
| idea and then you have to argue why not to do something.
|
| Something like variable names being too long or short. How to
| figure out what to do with unrealistic timelines.
| soganess wrote:
| I don't know where, but there is another version of this class
| that includes "The Probabilistic Method"[1]. While not the same
| thing, I can't imagine doing modern existential (vs constructive)
| proofs of topological solution space obstructions without that
| style of thinking.
|
| [1]:
| https://math.bme.hu/~gabor/oktatas/SztoM/AlonSpencer.ProbMet...
|
| Bonus points for those interested -- I think this paper(sadly,
| not mine) has a concise collection / history of obstruction
| proofs in its background section (1.3 and since it is a paper all
| of them are cited!): https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.09913
| pushedx wrote:
| You may be referring to the version of this course that was
| taught by Luis von Ahn (the creator of reCAPTCHA and the
| founder of Duo Lingo), when he was a professor at CMU.
|
| https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/academic/class/15251-s...
|
| He liked to call the course "SOME Theoretical Ideas FOR
| Computer Science", and it was known to be a very popular (and
| difficult) course.
| rramadass wrote:
| Nice!
|
| If folks would like to learn these ideas by hand via programming,
| i highly recommend Tom Stuart's _Understanding Computation From
| Simple Machines to Impossible Programs_ -
| https://computationbook.com/
| NlightNFotis wrote:
| My favourite computing book.
|
| Very highly recommended.
| bo1024 wrote:
| Interesting positioning as "great ideas" -- it seems like the
| topics are a pretty standard undergrad Theory of Computer Science
| course.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-03-15 23:00 UTC)