Can Computer Algebra be Liberated from its Algebraic Yoke ?

So far, the scope of computer algebra has been needlessly restricted to exact algebraic methods. Its possible extension to approximate analytical methods is discussed. The entangled roles of functional analysis and symbolic programming, especially the functional and transformational paradigms, are put forward. In the future, algebraic algorithms could constitute the core of extended symbolic manipulation systems including primitives for symbolic approximations.Comment: 8 pages, 2-column presentation, 2 figure

Logical Interpretation of Relational Databases

The reformulation of data management type databases in a formal, logical calculus is described. Advantages of this logical form are to provide a framework for automatic inferencing on the database as well as a formal clarification of the databases semantics. Principle applications are to artificially intelligent managerial decision support systems

The Computational Attitude in Music Theory

Music studies’s turn to computation during the twentieth century has engendered particular habits of thought about music, habits that remain in operation long after the music scholar has stepped away from the computer. The computational attitude is a way of thinking about music that is learned at the computer but can be applied away from it. It may be manifest in actual computer use, or in invocations of computationalism, a theory of mind whose influence on twentieth-century music theory is palpable. It may also be manifest in more informal discussions about music, which make liberal use of computational metaphors. In Chapter 1, I describe this attitude, the stakes for considering the computer as one of its instruments, and the kinds of historical sources and methodologies we might draw on to chart its ascendance. The remainder of this dissertation considers distinct and varied cases from the mid-twentieth century in which computers or computationalist musical ideas were used to pursue new musical objects, to quantify and classify musical scores as data, and to instantiate a generally music-structuralist mode of analysis. I present an account of the decades-long effort to prepare an exhaustive and accurate catalog of the all-interval twelve-tone series (Chapter 2). This problem was first posed in the 1920s but was not solved until 1959, when the composer Hanns Jelinek collaborated with the computer engineer Heinz Zemanek to jointly develop and run a computer program. Recognizing the transformation wrought on modern statistics and communications technology by information theory, I revisit Abraham Moles’s book Information Theory and Esthetic Perception (orig. 1958) and use its vocabulary to contextualize contemporary information-theoretic work on music that various evokes the computational mind by John. R. Pierce and Mary Shannon, Wilhelm Fucks, and Henry Quastler (Chapter 3). I conclude with a detailed look into a score-segmentation algorithm of the influential American music theorist Allen Forte (Chapter 4). Forte was a skilled programmer who spent several years at MIT in the 1960s, with cutting-edge computers and the company of first-rank figures in the nascent fields of computer science and artificial intelligence. Each one of the researchers whose work is treated in these case studies—at some stage in their relationship with music—adopted what I call the computational attitude to music, to varying degrees and for diverse ends. Of the many questions this dissertation seeks to answer: what was gained by adopting such an attitude? What was lost? Having understood these past explorations of the computational attitude to music, we are better suited ask of ourselves the same questions today

Secure extensible languages, design of

The basic premise of this thesis is that extensible languages afford the user considerable power and flexibility. We argue that this flexibility can, and should, be provided in a secure and error-resistant manner, but that this objective is not realised in existing extensible languages. This thesis first investigates the nature of security in programming languages, building up a simple and informal theory of the design of secure languages, and relating this theory to the notions of structured programming and .transparency. We use this theory to build a conceptual model for a secure extensible language and its physical realisation. We show that existing extensible languages fail to meet the ideals of this model in total, and proceed to design an alternative and secure system which builds upon, but attempts to avoid the pitfalls of existing systems. We base this system on a string processing language (Snip) which is itself extensible. The remainder of this thesis discusses the design and implementation (based on an abstract machine, SAM) of this language

Programming Paradigms in Computer Science Education

Main styles, or paradigms of programming – imperative, functional, logic, and object-oriented – are shortly described and compared, and corresponding programming techniques are outlined. Programming languages are classified in accordance with the main style and techniques supported. It is argued that profound education in computer science should include learning base programming techniques of all main programming paradigms