Perhaps in response to this, Zeroth posted about computer science on his blog with an article entitled “What is Computer Science?” He commented that many people in other disciplines make use of computer science as a way of expressing some of their complex ideas that would otherwise be very difficult to express.

I’m always quite interested in this kind of debate and will continue to follow anything further on the subject. After all the time I’ve been in school and all the profs and other computer type people I’ve encountered I still have to side closest to Zeroth and his post. Computer Science is separate from anything else we have right now. It’s a tool used to help describe complex phenomenon and ideas that could not be otherwise expressed well. It’s not completely math, engineering or an art.

Computer Science is like connection between everything. With computers we can express math through equations and logic within the computer. We can use computers to aid in engineering with CAD and blueprints and models that help with simulation of structures and devices. We can use a computer to create, enhance and distribute music, paintings and video. To me computer science should be trying to do what physics has always aimed for. Since we can use computer science to connect everything we know and understand, we should try to understand everything through the use of computer science. The aim of physics is some magical grand unified theory of everything and I think this theory or “concept of everything” will only be possible from advances in computer science.

http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/audio/07-08/crm-fields-pims/borodin/

His lecture was quite interesting and there was a really good turnout, the room was packed. The talk was entitled: Understanding Simple Algorithms: Towards a More Systemic Study of Algorithms. One funny portion of the lecture is where he compares the idea of an algorithm to the definition of profanity by the United States courts. Of course while I listened I tried to figure out ways in which I could use the ideas in his talk in my own research.

The part of the lecture that stood out to me in this respect were the multiple pass algorithms. Perhaps this approach could be used in Wireless Mesh Networks research for making routing decisions. I’m quite sure whether this approach would be fast enough to make quick routing decisions but it could be worth a try when I manage to get some time. He mentions that this approach may be used in scheduling which is partially what I’m interested in right now since I’m working with fair scheduling and load balancing in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs).

In general the talk gave a good background on algorithms and in particular greedy algorithms. Allan mentions how its very difficult for us to even define what a greedy algorithm is. In one situation a greedy algorithm can be very different than another situation. He talks about how you can look at what we can’t do with algorithms to figure out what we can do with them. Furthermore, in some situations we can’t even tell what we can and cannot do. Allan then went on to give alternative approaches to solving common problems such as dynamic programming, multi-pass algorithms etc.

The main point of the lecture was a framework that he proposes that uses an adversarial game to evaluate the algorithm. The framework allows us to evaluate an algorithm without having to worry about the P-NP complete problem. I guess the best way to figure out what it is about is to listen to Dr. Borodin himself via the link provided in the first bit of this.