A proper appeal: computer science curricula

[banazir]

I was going to call this "An Immodest Proposal" or "A Proper Rant", but as you well know, I'm too much of a pragmatist not to get straight down to brass tacks on this subject.

I've been thinking - not just this morning, nor only this past week, but really this whole semester - about what we need to get some foundations of mathematics and

Comments

[altamira16]

I am not sure it is an aversion to courses numbered 500 and above but a time and money thing. By the time you hit senior year you may have an elective or two to take 500 level courses. That is if you are not making up something you royally screwed up in the past.

I am hating that accredited universities are not somewhat standardized in their curriculums. It makes it quite difficult to go from one to another for a different portion of your academic career.

500-level courses, our curriculum, and accreditation

[banazir]

I am not sure it is an aversion to courses numbered 500 and above but a time and money thing. By the time you hit senior year you may have an elective or two to take 500 level courses...
Hrm, I should have mentioned that we have course numbers 2, 3/4, 5, and 6/7 for CS majors instead of 1-4:

• 100: strictly service courses for nonmajors
• 200: intro CS (currently there is only CS1 == 200; intro programming courses have been lifted to 300 level)
• 300: foundational courses - 300 is Data Structures, 301 is Logic for CS (really rudiments of propositional logic, FOL, proof theory, and proof rules for imperative programs), 308 is an Intermediate Programming in C/C++ now required between 300 and 501, 350 is a Hardware/Logic course for nonmajors
• 400: more foundational courses - 450 is an Architecture course for majors, 462 is the Computers and Society course (Computing Ethics and some survey of the ramifications and impact of computing), and there is at least one course just for Information Systems here
• 500: "upper-division" undergrad

[kakarigeiko]

Hey banazir

[gondhir]

I think most undergraduate degree plans aren't intended to make you an expert at anything. They're intended to give you a broad outline of a particular field. That's why you get degrees in things like biology, geology, english literature, math, computer science, etc. That's also why you have to take more broad courses (general history, writing, science, math, etc. courses) that really have little or nothing to do with your major.

[twinbee]

I know a lot of that stuff, but we don't use such big, fancy words ;-)

Irony is not lost on Banazir!

[banazir]

OK, I'll bite.
Your emoticon and icon imply some satiric or ironic meaning.

Tell me, then: what's "big and fancy" about anything in the lists above?
(And see my addendum about our curriculum in particular; I think it adds some context.)

--
Banazir

Re: Irony is not lost on Banazir!

[prolog]

I'll bite at the bite.

I understand just about all the concepts you listed in your post, or did at some point, as it's been five years or more since I've had to deal with some of them in any detail. I had a pretty solid grounding in CS theory in the past, as my B.Sc. was the non-SE honours option, which at the U of S emphasizes theory.

Anyway, what I believe Matt might have been getting at is that the concepts above are often taught in very rigid formalisms. In some sense, this is good, as precision and brevity altum est in mathematics and mathematical sciences. Personally, I find that half the battle can be in simply learning to read and think in formalisms. I'm not mathematically oriented. My math marks at the undergraduate levels were exceedingly average. To be honest, it takes me a little longer than most to read through formalisms. And yet, once I got past the formalisms, past the let x be a foo bar with properties a, b, and c, I understand what's going on

theory^2

[zengeneral]

I have an interesting idea:
Create SE (Software Engineering) track (which is the current program),
Let CS = SE + Math Degree

Seriously, force students that want to don the title of Computer Scientist to get a Math degree.

Why?
In Computer Science, you should know how to write a “proof”. At KSU, there are only two required "proof” courses (570, 575). (301 not listed because it is trivially easy in the same manner that Calc III is trivially easy). In math, there are five. Only two more? no, 575 and 570 had assignments (of 4-6 problems per) every two weeks. Math had assignments (5-15 problems per) every week. So, in effect, 5 math proof courses = 10-15 CS courses. Thus, CS students are deficient by many “proof” courses. Keep in mind, I treat CS and Math majors the same in how they should learn, by doing. Thus, each problem should be rewarding in some regard.

Wah-Wah-Wah, I am a programmer, I don’t need to prove thingsThis thinking is simply wrong; yet, I heard it all the time before and after class. I hear in the halls of Cardwell

Re: theory^2

[zaimoni]

Fun. Dual major in Engineering and Arts & Sciences.

As long as CIS remains damned to the Dept. of Engineering at KSU, it's going to be proof-deficient. It went to Engineering from Arts & Sciences the semester after I dropped back to a single-major in Math, rather than dual-major Math/CIS (as undergraduate). The theoreticians like Myron Calhoun ["Today is the last day to drop with a W"] and Marten Van Swaay [normal curve grading...cool until you realize that all grades are recomputed when anyone drops the course....] were less than popular in short order.

Dept. of Engineering is voc-ed :( Pricey voc-ed that requires moderate intellect to survive and highly trained intellectual reflexes, but voc-ed.

right on

[mapjunkie]

As a fellow UIUCer, I only say right on!

Even UIUC is beginning to change, with the new undergrad curriculum. I don't know if the new changes were necessary. All that UIUC needed was a required systems programming class (as a prerequisite to OS, networking, advanced hardware architecture, and embedded systems) and a required internet application programming class (possibly as a prerequistite to a user-interface design track), and the ability to better integrate CS classes into application-sequence programs (like a data-mining/ML sequence applied to a specific discipline, like a bioinformatics sequence that came straight-out-of-the-box).

Oh, yeah, and a graduate curriculum that integrated the pragmatics of academic publishing and the academic social networking better into the evaluation of student performance.

The Orange and Blue perspective on the Purple and White

[banazir]

As a fellow UIUCer, I only say right on!
*high five*

So, I noticed that UIUC turned CS373 and 375 into 473 and 475. I'm not sure this is a great thing. Back when Pravin Vaidya taught the course, it was a holy terror: he would give exams where the mean was 17% and the stdev 14%. People would go in knowing that 40% was a solid B and that anything far over 50% got you an A. I remember people coming out estimating their scores at about 30% and getting 3% instead. If Deja News/Google News/Google Groups kept uiuc.cs.general, you could see some of these gems from the early to mid-90s. Fortunately for me, I took Algorithms I (old CS373) from Mike Goodrich at Hopkins (now at UC Irvine) and Algorithms II (old CS473) from S. Rao Kosaraju, who was head of JHU-CS between Masson and Smith.

All I got were some harsh remarks from Edelsbrunner (I think) on the comp geometry question my Theory Comp, but I still passed with a 74% (which was 7th of 17 people to take the exam, 16 of whom passed). Oh, and there were 8 questions in 3 hours there,

Re: The Orange and Blue perspective on the Purple and White

[prolog]

Algorithms II (old CS473) from S. Rao Kosaraju

Damn!

Kosaraju

[banazir]

You've heard of him?

--
Banazir