Want to be a computer scientist? Forget maths

[Sarad AV]

One of the most common ways used to prove algorithmic
correctness is mathematical induction, isn't it?

Sarad.

--- "R.A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com> wrote:

>
<http://www.itwire.com.au/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13339&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=53>
> 
> iTWire -
> 
> Want to be a computer scientist? Forget maths
> 
> 
> By Stuart Corner   
> 
> Thursday, 05 July 2007
> 
> 
> A new book seeks to demolish the concept that
> computer science is rooted in
> mathematics and, in particular that the notion of
> the algorithm is
> fundamental to computer science.
> 
> In particular, he says the notion of the algorithm,
> "has been largely
> ineffective as a paradigm for computer science."
> Fant argues that, because
> mathematicians, notably John Von Neumann and Alan
> Turing, were intimately
> involved with the early development of digital
> electronic computers in the
> 1940s they transplanted a mathematical model of
> computation, including the
> algorithm - commonly understood to be an exact
> prescription, defining a
> computational process, leading from various initial
> data to the desired
> result - into the fledgling science of computers.
> 
> He claims that "What is essentially a discipline of
> pure mathematics has
> come to be called "the theory of computer science,"
> and "the notion of the
> algorithm has been decreed to be a fundamental
> paradigm of computer
> science" However, he says this mathematical
> perspective "is the wrong point
> of view" and is asking the wrong questions.
> 
> "Mathematicians and computer scientists are pursuing
> fundamentally
> different aims, and the mathematician's tools are
> not as appropriate as was
> once supposed to the questions of the computer
> scientist. The primary
> questions of computer science are not of
> computational possibilities but of
> expressional possibilities. Computer science does
> not need a theory of
> computation; it needs a comprehensive theory of
> process expression."
> 
> This concept of 'process expression' is, he says, a
> common thread running
> through the various disciplines of computer science.
> "A logic circuit is an
> expression of a logical process; an architecture is
> an expression of a
> continuously acting process to interpret
> symbolically expressed processes;
> a program is a symbolic expression of a process; a
> programming language is
> an environment within which to create symbolic
> process expression; a
> compiler is an expression of a process that
> translates between symbolic
> process expressions in different languages; an
> operating system is an
> expression of a process that manages the
> interpretation of other process
> expressions; any application is an expression of the
> application process."
> 
> And, he argues, important process expressions do not
> qualify as algorithms.
> "A logic circuit is not a sequence of operations. An
> operating system is
> not supposed to terminate, nor does it yield a
> singular solution. An
> operating system cannot be deterministic because it
> must relate to
> uncoordinated inputs from the outside world. Any
> program utilising random
> input to carry out its process, such...is not an
> algorithm."
> 
> "The notion of the algorithm," he concludes "simply
> does not provide
> conceptual enlightenment for the questions that most
> computer scientists
> are concerned with."
> 
> Fant is the founder and CEO of Theseus Research, a
> consulting firm
> specialising in the design and implementation of
> real-time image processing
> systems as well as ongoing research into the theory
> of computers. "Computer
> Science Reconsidered: The Invocation Model of
> Process Expression" is
> published by John Wiley.
> 
> 
> -- 
> -----------------
> R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation
> <http://www.ibuc.com/>
> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
> "... however it may deserve respect for its
> usefulness and antiquity,
> [predicting the end of the world] has not been found
> agreeable to
> experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of
> the Roman Empire'
> 



       
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