I can’t wait to get started with Applied Mathematical Analysis next week.

Presented annually to an outstanding educator who is: appointed to a recognized educational baccalaureate institution; recognized for advancing new teaching methodologies, or effecting new curriculum development or expansion in Computer Science and Engineering; or making a significant contribution to the educational mission of the ACM. Those who have been teaching for ten years or less will be given special consideration. A prize of $5,000 is supplied by the Prentice-Hall Publishing Company.

Via Matthias via ACM via Shriram.

Could be very interesting considering how prevalent MATLAB is in the scientific community.

THE PURPOSE OF COMPUTING IS INSIGHT, NOT NUMBERS.

(via Wikipedia via John)

I’m pleased to announce that the full text of
Simply Scheme: Introducing Computer Science
is available online in PDF and HTML form at
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/ss-toc2.html

– Brian Harvey

Thanks Brian!

(via comp.lang.scheme)

In this zip directory you can find file lc-with-Redex.doc which is a short intro in Lambda Calculus and contains info on how to use the material that goes with the essay. I have included a very condenced note on a system even without lambda, which is called ‘combinatory logic’. My essay is adressed to Schemers and uses PLT Scheme, particularly PLT’s redex library. It has become somewhat more verbose than I had in mind originally. If you have any ideas how to condence and simplify further without loosing too much content and accuracy, I welcome your suggestions. Comments about inaccuracies and other faults are welcome too, of course. My essay does not contain any new views. It is a compilation of views taken from books that have inspired me. They are mentioned in the essay.

If the format of the above link does not suit you, give me a ping and I’ll try to send you the material in a format that suits you.

With thanks to Douglas R. Hofstadter, Daniel P Friedman, Matthias Felleisen, Roby Findler, Casey Klein and others, in all feasible orders.

– Jos

I did not read it yet; this is on my long list.

(via plt)

Programming Paradigms (CS107) introduces several programming languages, including C, Assembly, C++, Concurrent Programming, Scheme, and Python. The class aims to teach students how to write code for each of these individual languages and to understand the programming paradigms behind these languages.

The videos are available here.

(via reddit)

What is fractal imaging? Well, it’s more than just the algorithmic generation of ferns (like the generated image above) from non-linear equation systems. It’s a way of looking at ordinary (bitmap) images of all kinds. The hypothesis is that any given image (of any kind) is the end-result of iterating on some particular (unknown) system of non-linear equations, and that if one only knew what those equations are, one could regenerate the image algorithmically (from a set of equations) on demand. The implications are far-reaching. This means:

1. Instead of storing a bitmap of the image, you can just store the equations from which it can be generated. (This is often a 100-to-1 storage reduction.)
2. The image is now scale-free. That is, you can generate it at any scale — enlarge it as much as you wish — without losing fidelity. (Imagine being able to blow up an image onscreen without it becoming all blocky and pixelated.)

– Kas Thomas

Here is the book, Fractal Imaging, referenced by the article.

This text is the first comprehensive presentation of reduction semantics in one volume; it also introduces the first reliable and easy-to-use tool set for such forms of semantics. Software engineers have long known that automatic tool support is critical for rapid prototyping and modeling, and this book is addressed to the working semantics engineer (graduate student or professional language designer). The book comes with a prototyping tool suite to develop, explore, test, debug, and publish semantic models of programming languages. With PLT Redex, semanticists can formulate models as grammars and reduction models on their computers with the ease of paper and pencil.

The text first presents a framework for the formulation of language models, focusing on equational calculi and abstract machines, then introduces PLT Redex, a suite of software tools for expressing these models as PLT Redex models. Finally, experts describe a range of models formulated in Redex.

PLT Redex comes with the PLT Scheme implementation, available free at http://www.plt-scheme.org/. Readers can download the software and experiment with Redex as they work their way through the book.

For me this is a long, long, long goal :).