[3430] in Central_America
New quotes for Wed Jun 12
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Initializer.SysDaemon)
Wed Jun 12 01:30:28 1991
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 91 01:29:46 EDT
From: root@charon.MIT.EDU (Initializer.SysDaemon)
To: ca-mtg@bloom-beacon.mit.edu
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brlewis (Bruce R Lewis):
Opryland Hotel
2800 Opryland Drive
Nashville, TN 37214
(615) 889-1000
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chiharu (Chiharu Osawa):
Jun 12 11:00 Learner's Permit
Jun 14 16:00 Dr.Mills(MIT-Japan Pro)
Jun 17 14:00 Japanese Reading TA
Jun 19 14:00 Japanese Reading TA
Jun 22 Pick up Prof.Fukuda at Logan
Jun 24-27 PESC (MIT)
Jun 25 Prof.Hori's visit to MIT
Jun 26-28 ACC (Park Plaza Hotel, Boston)
Jul 7 out of town
Jul 14-22 out of town
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dhbernst (David H Bernstein):
Teaching: 1.973 -- Geographic Information Systems for Transportation
Planners and Engineers
M,W 4:30 - 6:00 Room 1-242
Research: Congestion Reduction Policies
Transportation and Land-Use Interactions
Visualization and Data Management in Transportation
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ginakim (Regina Y Kim):
{From system: This user's .plan file is not world readable}
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hetyei (Gabor Hetyei):
I have no plans, I like surprises.
My coordinates are
Home address: Room 005 A, Ashdown House;305 Memorial Drive,Cambridge MA 02139
Office address: Room 2-342, Dept. of Mathematics, MIT, Cambridge MA 02139
Phone: (617) 253-7578 (office)
(617) 225-8193 (Ashdown House)
E-mail addresses: hetyei@athena.mit.edu hetyei@math.mit.edu
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honor (Andrew John Cassidy):
To be true to myself.
To eat. Alot.
Thoughts to consider:
Of all the people who have ever fingered me, you are now one.
'Gather ye rose buds while ye may
old time is still a flying
and the same flower that blooms today
tomorrow will be dying'
--Uncle Walt (Whitman, you moron)
FOR A GOOD TIME TYPE: /mit/honor/tryme &
honor@athena.mit.edu
honor@space.mit.edu
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jdmarko (Jim Davenport):
Mail last read on Jun 11 15:52.
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jwilson (John Wilson):
ADDRESS:
June 1 - August 31, 1991:
323 Crescent Rd.
Beckley, WV 25801
(304) 253-3992
Starting Sept. 1, 1991:
Somewhere near the Harvard Medical Area
yet to be determined!
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marc (Marc Horowitz):
Date: Sun, 09 Jun 91 00:36:11 EDT
From: Ed Nilges <EGNILGES@pucc.princeton.edu>
Subject: The RISKS of political correctness in computer science
An article in Communications of the ACM for November 1990, "Women and
Computing", by Karen A. Frankel, cites Danielle Bernstein of the Kean College
of New Jersey on Edsger Dijkstra's comments in Communications for December
1989. In the Dijkstra article, "On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer
Science", Professor Dijkstra argued for a reform in computer science education,
basing it on formal mathematics and logic rather than on early exposure to the
computer. Bernstein, according to Frankel, feels that Dijkstra is being
sexist! This is because, Bernstein claims, that women prefer experimentation
and teamwork to the sort of solitary abstract thinking that Dijkstra emphasizes
in all of his work.
Bernstein is echoing other feminist authors on logic and mathematics, including
Andrea Nye. Nye's "feminist reading of the history of logic", Words and Power,
"deconstructs", if you please, the history of logic from the pre-Socratics to
Gottlob Frege (the 19th century German mathematician who attempted to found
mathematics on logic.) Nye, and apparently Bernstein, believe that solitary
abstract thinking is a typically male activity and to force women to engage in
it is sexist.
Nye presents a rather vicious caricature of Frege as a solitary old man. Nye
avoids any mention of Frege's intellectual honesty when the young Bertrand
Russell presented him with evidence that his theory was so flawed (by the
paradoxes of set theory) as to be unusable.
Unfortunately, if comp.risks is any guide, Dijkstra is right and Nye and
Bernstein are wrong. Given the scale and potential for disaster in errors in
software, programmers need to do MORE solitary and abstract thinking...not
less.
I teach the C programming language as a consultant at a major midwest financial
firm from time to time. In my classes, I have two distinct groups of students:
Americans and Russian emigres. The Russian students are significantly more
adept, although they are programmers originally educated in Soviet technical
institutes and universities that lag far behind American schools in computer
technology. When I talked to the Soviet students, I learned that they had
greatly benefited from a mathematical background that included calculus in
grade school. Add to this the UNavailability of machine time in the Soviet
Union (waits of a week for time on batch systems not unheard of), and these
programmers became skilled at the solitary, highly abstract, and distinctly
non-experimental activity of writing carefully designed programs and of desk
checking code.
Meanwhile, many of my American students, educated in the regimes of
experimentation and of teamwork that Bernstein recommends, are confused and
bored by the C programming language, with its more structured syntax, its
lvalues, and its rather difficult semantics. I admit to using a rather
formalist approach to teaching including railroad diagrams of syntax and
playing computer, but I do try to liven things up with jokes described by some
students (alas) as "corny."
I find NO sex differences. Russian emigre women in these classes are just as
adept as their male counterparts, whereas the American women by and large had
more difficulty. [There were American exceptions, students just as able as the
emigres, but NO outlier Russians: no Russians were confused by the course.]
It is true that teamwork can sometimes lead to better software. But Gerald
Weinberg et al. introduced the notion of "structured walkthrough" in the late
Sixties NOT as a way to design software, but as a way to review software, and
"typically male" solitary and abstract thinking a la Frege (not to mention
Frege's intellectual honesty) is an excellent preparation for the most grueling
structured walkthrough. Also, the results of group CREATIVE effort (as opposed
to group review effort) can often resemble the famous camel: "a horse designed
by committee". The history of software is littered with the bleached bones of
such camels, including Cobol.
It's sad that political correctness should find its way into formal computer
science where MATHEMATICAL correctness is what is needed. Anti-racist,
anti-war, anti-sexist "political correctness" is needed nowadays, and I am
doing some work in the applicability of "critical theory" (the philosophical
background of political correctness) to software creation. But forcing
teachers of introductory computer science to be "politically correct" and avoid
hard subjects in order not to be sexist does a disservice to the profession and
to women computer scientists.
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mein (Yu J Chen):
To graduate. Else to open a fast food joint.
550 Memorial Drive #2F
Cambridge, MA 02139
(617) 494-0910
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vgeorge (Varghese George):
Sloan School of Management, 50 Memorial Drive, E52-503, Cambridge, MA 02139
Voice: 617/253-2431 Fax: 617/491-5426 E-mail: VGEORGE@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
65C Dana Street, #25, Cambridge, MA 02138
Voice: 617/491-5426
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