Interest In Computer Science Research Articles

Chu I: cofree equivalences, dualities and *-autonomous categories

We study three comonads derived from the comma construction. The induced coalgebras correspond to the three concepts displayed in the title of the paper. The comonad that yields the *-autonomous categories is, in essence, the Chu construction, which has recently awaken much interest in computer science. We describe its couniversal property. It is right adjoint to the inclusion of *-autonomous categories among autonomous categories, with lax structure-preserving morphisms. Moreover, this inclusion turns out to be comonadic: *-autonomous categories are exactly the Chu-coalgebras.

Palindromes in the Fibonacci word

The present paper is devoted to the proof of a new property of the Fibonacci word F, namely the characterization of all the palindromes that occur in F. This property is also important because palindromes are objects of great interest in computer science

Some models for developmental systems Part XIV. Parallelism with applications to developmental systems and to queueing systems

Parallism, i.e. synchronous execution of several operations or subprograms, is of interest for computer science in general, for modelling complex developmental processes, and also for investigations related to queueing theory.

Does Scheme enhance an introductory programming course?

There is no consensus within the Computer Science community as to which programming language or languages ought to be used in introductory courses. In recent years a substantial contingent has proposed the use of Scheme, a dialect of Lisp, as a candidate for "Best First Language"; however, despite the articles touting success with this approach, there have been no empirical studies comparing the results of using Scheme versus other languages. This paper is a first step towards collecting data that might answer this question. We compare two pre-major courses at a four-year college, one taught using a structured version of Basic, the other taught using Scheme. A survey was used to compare student attitudes towards computer science and programming at the end of the course. While the survey was too small to provide statistically significant answers, there were indications that Scheme may in fact do a better job of capturing and holding students' interest in Computer Science.

Trends in Educational Computing: Decreasing Interest and the Changing Focus of Instruction

This article presents a rationale for changing the current emphasis of precollege computer courses. It suggests that as an interim approach, to be used before computers are integrated effectively across the curriculum, computer courses deemphasize BASIC programming skills and instead focus on teaching applications software skills. The research evidence regarding the quality of computer literacy courses is reviewed, and the parallel cognitive and affective consequences of programming and applications software are discussed. The primary source of evidence regarding student interest in specific undergraduate majors comes from reports on college-bound seniors prepared for the College Board (College Board, 1983b, 1984, 1985). More than 800,000 high school seniors annually complete information regarding their intended college majors, choosing from a list of over 115 fields or specializations. Computer science was first listed as a possible major choice in 1974, with subcategories of systems analysis and data processing added in 1975. Between 1973 and 1983, interest in computer science rose dramatically. Less than 1% of high school seniors chose computer science as their intended major in 1974 (College Board, 1974), w ereas in 1983, more than 10% of high school seniors chose it (College Board, 1983b). In the next two years, however, interest in computer science took a sudden downward turn, with the level of interest in 1985 approximating that of 1981 (see Figure 1). This trend represents a decline of 27%, with women's interest decreasing 35% and men's interest 22%. No other intended major suffered such dramatic shifts during the same period of time. Although this rise and fall may simply reflect the fortunes of the computer industry in general, another explanation for this decline in interest also may be tenable. Students in the 1970s enrolled in untried and novel computer curricula. By 1985, due to their increased exposure to computers and computer literacy courses at elementary and secondary school levels, students had more information with which to evaluate computer science (Becker, 1983a, 1983c; Lockheed, 1985a). The increase in students taking precollege computer courses began around 1979. In 1980, 15% of elementary and 50% of secondary schools provided students access to microcomputers in their instructional programs (Goor, 1982); by 1985, 82% of elementary and 93% of secondary schools provided students access to computers (Becker, 1985). The most frequent use of microcomputers was for national, state, and locally mandated computer literacy courses (Boyer, 1983; College Board, 1983a; National Science Board Commission on Precollege Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology, 1983). In general, the mandates provide for required, not elective, computer course participation. It is the contention of the authors that the generally poor quality and restricted curriculum of these courses, which in 1985 were required for many high school seniors, accounts at least in part for the declining interest in computer science at the college level. Inadequate Computer Literacy Courses Early computer literacy courses, which stressed learning to program in BASIC, were generally of poor quality in terms of teacher training, course curSupport for the preparation of this paper was provided by Educational Testing Service. Marlaine E. Lockheed is a Sociologist in the Education and Training Department, The World Bank, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20433. Her specializations are the sociology of education, education technology, and gender in education. Ellen B. Mandinach is Associate Research Scientist, Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ 08541. Her special zations are individual differences and educational uses of microcomputers.

Limit distributions for coefficients of iterates of polynomials with applications to combinatorial enumerations

AbstractThis paper studies coefficientsyh, nof sequences of polynomialsdefined by non-linear recurrences. A typical example to which the results of this paperapply is that of the sequencewhich arises in the study of binary trees. For a wide class of similar sequences a general distribution law for the coefficientsyh, nas functions ofnwithhfixed is established. It follows from this law that in many interesting cases the distribution is asymptotically Gaussian near the peak. The proof relies on the saddle point method applied in a region where the polynomials grow doubly exponentially ash→ ∞. Applications of these results include enumerations of binary trees and 2–3 trees. Other structures of interest in computer science and combinatorics can also be studied by this method or its extensions.

B74-14 Data Base Systems

This excellent book is the sixth in a series of volumes stemming from symposia in areas of current interest in computer science by the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University.

Towards color picture processing

Picture processing by computer has been of considerable interest in computer science. So far, most efforts in picture processing have been concerned with monochromatic pictures. But, as everyone realizes, actual scenes and pictures all contain color, and color information plays important roles in human perception and recognition of scenes and pictures. This suggests the importance of using color information in picture processing by computer. In this paper we discuss the technical feasibility and effectiveness of color picture processing, and we describe some research efforts toward color picture processing in our laboratory.