Tenure

[Roger Hui]

Name 3 Turing Award winners who were denied tenure at their universities.
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[Jim Field]

Roger Hui wrote:
> Name 3 Turing Award winners who were denied tenure at their universities.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>
>  
WHY?
Are you trying to prove a point?
JCF
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[John Baker-11]

Somewhat off topic but I am looking for the famous "J - I feel it's awesome
power - shall we worship it or kill it" cartoon that
made the rounds a few years ago.  It's a classic but I cannot find it on the
wiki.
On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Roger Hui <rhui000@...> wrote:

> Name 3 Turing Award winners who were denied tenure at their universities.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>
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[Raul Miller-4]

On 7/11/08, John Baker <bakerjd99@...> wrote:
> Somewhat off topic but I am looking for the famous "J - I feel it's awesome
> power - shall we worship it or kill it" cartoon that
> made the rounds a few years ago.  It's a classic but I cannot find it on the
> wiki.

>From http://jsoftware.com/ click on "Jsoftware" at the top of the page.

--
Raul
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[Roger Hui]

http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/Symbol-Minded



----- Original Message -----
From: John Baker <bakerjd99@...>
Date: Friday, July 11, 2008 15:24
Subject: Re: [Jchat] Tenure
To: Chat forum <chat@...>

> Somewhat off topic but I am looking for the famous "J - I feel
> it's awesome
> power - shall we worship it or kill it" cartoon that
> made the rounds a few years ago.  It's a classic but I
> cannot find it on the
> wiki.
> On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Roger Hui <rhui000@...>
> wrote:
> > Name 3 Turing Award winners who were denied tenure at their
> universities.

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[John Baker-11]

Thanks - this is an easter egg worth finding

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 3:33 PM, Raul Miller <rauldmiller@...> wrote:

> On 7/11/08, John Baker <bakerjd99@...> wrote:
> > Somewhat off topic but I am looking for the famous "J - I feel it's
> awesome
> > power - shall we worship it or kill it" cartoon that
> > made the rounds a few years ago.  It's a classic but I cannot find it on
> the
> > wiki.
>
> >From http://jsoftware.com/ click on "Jsoftware" at the top of the page.
>
> --
> Raul
>  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>

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[John Randall-3]

I know Iverson and Cook, but I cannot get #3.

John

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[dly]

James Hardy Wilson? of Cambridge who helped to build Turing's  
Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) - after retiring from the National  
Physics Lab he was a part time professor at Stanford.

Donna
dydre@...




On 11-Jul-08, at 10:52 PM, John Randall wrote:

> I know Iverson and Cook, but I cannot get #3.
>
> John
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

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[Roger Hui]

Ken Iverson was denied tenure at Harvard in 1959,
went to IBM Research, and won the Turing award in 1979.
http://keiapl.info/anec/#one_little_book

Edsger Dijkstra was denied tenure at Amsterdam in 1970,
went to UT Austin, and won the Turing award in 1972.
http://www.cbi.umn.edu/oh/pdf.phtml?id=317 page 12

Stephen Cook was denied tenure at UC Berkeley in 1970,
went to the University of Toronto, and won the Turing
award in 1983.
http://www.cbi.umn.edu/oh/pdf.phtml?id=317 page 12



----- Original Message -----
From: Roger Hui <rhui000@...>
Date: Friday, July 11, 2008 10:41
Subject: [Jchat] Tenure
To: Chat Forum <chat@...>

> Name 3 Turing Award winners who were denied tenure at their
> universities.
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[Dan Bron]

Roger posted:
>  http://www.cbi.umn.edu/oh/pdf.phtml?id=317


This is an interesting article; here's a passage that really highlights how the insights of the past become the common sense of
the present:

        Frana: The idea of time being the most important complexity
               measure seems rather straightforward to me now
               because I've heard it and read it several places, but
               it apparently wasn't.


         Cook: I think time was an important measure. It was Alan
               Cobham who was trying to think of some intrinsic
               measure like "work," but in fact his theorem was about
               the characterization of polynomial time, so that was
               the thing he talked about-time. Time seemed to be
               the most obvious measure of complexity. Certainly space
               memory was also considered right from the start.

Before reading this, it never even occurred to me that there could be other measures of complexity than "time to solve the
problem".  It was "obvious".

Now that I think about it, though, I can lift 1 lb weight 5 feet in 10 seconds, and I can do the same with a 100 lb weight; but
even though the time is the same, I wouldn't say the problems are "equally difficult".  I wonder if there's an equivalent measure
for "computational work".

-Dan

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[Roger Hui]

> Now that I think about it, though, I can lift 1 lb weight 5 feet
> in 10 seconds, and I can do the same with a 100 lb weight; but
> even though the time is the same, I wouldn't say the problems
> are "equally difficult".  I wonder if there's an equivalent
> measure for "computational work".

There is an analogous situation in computational complexity.
The RAM (random access machine) model has memory
registers that can hold integers of arbitrary size and 12
instructions.  It is equivalent to a Turing machine.  
(The RAM model is described in Aho, Hopcroft, and Ulllman,
"The Design and Analysis of Computer Algorithms",
Addison-Wesley, 1974.)

"Time" for a program is the number of machine instructions
executed.  But if you stop there then you get a biased
measure, equivalent to equating lifting 1lb 5 feet in 10 seconds
and lifting 100 lbs 5 feet in 10 seconds.  Instead, "time"
on a RAM instruction includes a "logarithmic criterion",
basically the length in bits (or length in some finite base)
of the contents of a memory register.  Now you can not
use the arbitrarily large integers to encode information
and get times that are the same as doing 1+2.  You can
still do that kind of encoding but it would come with
a realistic cost.

As an aside, sometimes it is easy for even experts to
forget that time complexity should be based on the
length of the input.  Once, I took a seminar course at
the U of T with Stephen Cook as the instructor. As is
usually the case several other professors sat in.
In one class we were categorizing algorithms according
to their time complexity, and someone put the "school
method" for multiplying two n-by-n matrices into the
O(n^3) category.  Cook pointed out that school method
matrix multiplication should be O(n^1.5) because the
convention is that n is the length of the input.
(The more long winded argument is that the length of
the input is O(m) where m=n^2 and the time complexity
of matrixmult is O(m^2).  With a change of variable to
use n as usual to indicate the length of the input,
the complexity of matrixmult is O(n^1.5).)

There are other, more practical, implications of this,
and the J interpreter exploits some of these implications.



----- Original Message -----
From: Dan Bron <j@...>
Date: Saturday, July 12, 2008 7:38
Subject: RE: [Jchat] Tenure
To: 'Chat forum' <chat@...>

> Roger posted:
> >  http://www.cbi.umn.edu/oh/pdf.phtml?id=317
>
>
> This is an interesting article; here's a passage that really
> highlights how the insights of the past become the common sense of
> the present:
>
> Frana: The idea of time being the most important complexity
>                measure seems rather straightforward to me now
>                because I've heard it and read it several places, but
>                it apparently wasn't.
>
>
>          Cook: I think
> time was an important measure. It was Alan
>                Cobham who was trying to think of some intrinsic
>                measure like "work," but in fact his theorem was about
>                the characterization of polynomial time, so that was
>                the thing he talked about-time. Time seemed to be
>                the most obvious measure of complexity. Certainly space
>                memory was also considered right from the start.
>
> Before reading this, it never even occurred to me that there
> could be other measures of complexity than "time to solve the
> problem".  It was "obvious".
>
> Now that I think about it, though, I can lift 1 lb weight 5 feet
> in 10 seconds, and I can do the same with a 100 lb weight; but
> even though the time is the same, I wouldn't say the problems
> are "equally difficult".  I wonder if there's an equivalent
> measurefor "computational work".

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[Roy A. Crabtree]

Better a symbol mind than a fee/bill one (proven amply by the luminaries at
JSoft);

...though my reasoning is probably tenurous at best ...

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 6:50 PM, Roger Hui <rhui000@...> wrote:

> http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Essays/Symbol-Minded
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: John Baker <bakerjd99@...>
> Date: Friday, July 11, 2008 15:24
> Subject: Re: [Jchat] Tenure
> To: Chat forum <chat@...>
>
> > Somewhat off topic but I am looking for the famous "J - I feel
> > it's awesome
> > power - shall we worship it or kill it" cartoon that
> > made the rounds a few years ago.  It's a classic but I
> > cannot find it on the
> > wiki.
> > On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 10:41 AM, Roger Hui <rhui000@...>
> > wrote:
> > > Name 3 Turing Award winners who were denied tenure at their
> > universities.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>

--
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[Roy A. Crabtree]

..because ten allows one to end. Unless ure  the Dean.

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 5:01 PM, Jim Field <jamescfield@...> wrote:

> Roger Hui wrote:
>
>> Name 3 Turing Award winners who were denied tenure at their universities.
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>>
>>
>>
> WHY?
> Are you trying to prove a point?
> JCF
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>

--
Use Reply-To: & thread your email
after the first: or it may take a while, as
I get 2000 emails per day.
--

Roy A. Crabtree
UNC '76 gaa.lifer#
(For TN contact, email me to set up a confirmed date/time)
voicemail inbound only

[When you hear/read/see/feel what a y*ehudi plays/writes/sculpts/holds]
[(n)either violinist {Menuhin} (n)or writer {"The Y*ehudi Principle"} (n)or
molder (n)or older]
[you must strive/think/look/sense all of it, or you will miss the meanings
of it all]

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(Copyright) Roy Andrew Crabtree/In Perpetuity
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Profits Always Safe Traded
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[Roy A. Crabtree]

The point seems clear: you can end without ten, you jest have to persev a
little longer, ere ure accepted.

RH is very clear in his points; you have to read them with full attention.

On Sat, Jul 12, 2008 at 12:02 PM, Roy A. Crabtree <roy.crabtree@...>
wrote:

> ..because ten allows one to end. Unless ure  the Dean.
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 5:01 PM, Jim Field <jamescfield@...>
> wrote:
>
>> Roger Hui wrote:
>>
>>> Name 3 Turing Award winners who were denied tenure at their universities.
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> WHY?
>> Are you trying to prove a point?
>> JCF
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Use Reply-To: & thread your email
> after the first: or it may take a while, as
> I get 2000 emails per day.
> --
>
> Roy A. Crabtree
> UNC '76 gaa.lifer#
> (For TN contact, email me to set up a confirmed date/time)
> voicemail inbound only
>
> [When you hear/read/see/feel what a y*ehudi plays/writes/sculpts/holds]
> [(n)either violinist {Menuhin} (n)or writer {"The Y*ehudi Principle"} (n)or
> molder (n)or older]
> [you must strive/think/look/sense all of it, or you will miss the meanings
> of it all]
>
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> roy.crabtree@... CC: auto to:
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> currently offline
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>
> http://www.authorsden.com/royacrabtree
> http://skyscraper.fortunecity.com/activex/720/resume/full.doc
> --
> (c) RAC/IP, ARE,PRO,PAST
> (Copyright) Roy Andrew Crabtree/In Perpetuity
> All Rights/Reserved Explicitly
> Public Reuse Only
> Profits Always Safe Traded

--
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--

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(For TN contact, email me to set up a confirmed date/time)
voicemail inbound only

[When you hear/read/see/feel what a y*ehudi plays/writes/sculpts/holds]
[(n)either violinist {Menuhin} (n)or writer {"The Y*ehudi Principle"} (n)or
molder (n)or older]
[you must strive/think/look/sense all of it, or you will miss the meanings
of it all]

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--
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(Copyright) Roy Andrew Crabtree/In Perpetuity
All Rights/Reserved Explicitly
Public Reuse Only
Profits Always Safe Traded
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[dly]

Hi Dan

In your example about lifting weights:

you mention moving a given MASS a given DISTANCE in a given interval  
of TIME

but that is not the same as comparing the WORK done in a given  
interval of TIME because

WORK=.FORCE*DISTANCE

and

FORCE=.MASS*ACCELERATION

ACCELERATION=.VELOCITY/TIME

VELOCITY=.DISTANCE/TIME

So TIME is a most important measure of difficulty because by the TIME  
you measure the difficulty which is what you really want to measure,  
you have a lot of TIME on your hands because the amount of work that  
can be done in an interval of time is a measure of the difficulty.

DIFFICULTY=.WORK/TIME

DISTANCE and TIME intervals have different magnitudes depending on  
the coordinate system used in measuring but there is always an error  
in these measures because we cannot know the precise momentum or  
precise energy due to the uncertainty principle.

Today's atomic clocks are maintained to an accuracy of 10^-9 or 1e_9  
and 1 second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of  
radiation corresponding to the transition between two energy levels  
of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.

Distances could be expressed in a number of wavelengths of a given  
spectral line.

But you cannot know exactly what happens at a precise TIME nor  
exactly at what TIME a precise event happened.

To move this to computational theory you need to consider Shannon's  
information theories which show how to quantify the information in a  
message and also a way to determine the limits on compressing a  
message without loss of information.  You would want to measure the  
amount of INFORMATION (akin to force) multiplied by the PROCESSING  
(akin to distance)

COMPUTAIONALwork=.INFORMATION*PROCESSING

The amount of COMPUTATIONALwork that can be done in a given time is a  
measure of complexity.

COMPLEXITY=.COMPUTATIONALwork/TIME

And one more TIME - you are usually considering TIME to be a fixed  
interval required for PROCESSING an instruction on a particular  
machine but this can actually be varied according to the processor  
clock.



Donna
dydre@...




On 12-Jul-08, at 2:40 PM, Dan Bron wrote:

> Roger posted:
>>  http://www.cbi.umn.edu/oh/pdf.phtml?id=317
>
>
> This is an interesting article; here's a passage that really  
> highlights how the insights of the past become the common sense of
> the present:
>
> Frana: The idea of time being the most important complexity
>       measure seems rather straightforward to me now
>       because I've heard it and read it several places, but
>       it apparently wasn't.
>
>
> Cook: I think time was an important measure. It was Alan
>       Cobham who was trying to think of some intrinsic
>       measure like "work," but in fact his theorem was about
>       the characterization of polynomial time, so that was
>       the thing he talked about-time. Time seemed to be
>       the most obvious measure of complexity. Certainly space
>       memory was also considered right from the start.
>
> Before reading this, it never even occurred to me that there could  
> be other measures of complexity than "time to solve the
> problem".  It was "obvious".
>
> Now that I think about it, though, I can lift 1 lb weight 5 feet in  
> 10 seconds, and I can do the same with a 100 lb weight; but
> even though the time is the same, I wouldn't say the problems are  
> "equally difficult".  I wonder if there's an equivalent measure
> for "computational work".
>
> -Dan
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

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[frank clooter]

Winning a Turing or Nobel Prize does not necessarily mean that one
deserves tenure.

Teaching, which at its best happens to be exceptionally creative, is
different from creating in a context of being worth a Turing
(computing's Nobel Prize) or a Nobel Prize or a _______ prize.

That being said, I guess that Dijkstra and Cook both received tenure
later in their careers.

Tenure in itself is not necessarily the great yardstick that it ought to be.

While presumably based on merit, tenure is just as likely to be based
upon how much revenue one's connections might bring to the tenuring
institution.  Politics is likely key.  Being engaged to the dean's
daughter probably helps too.

Ken would have likely become tenured had he stayed in academia.  For
all intents and purposes, becoming an IBM Fellow is at the very least
equivalent to tenure.  To the often exhibited degree that Ken was
talented for and capable of teaching, I think that he could easily
have stood shoulder to shoulder with the cream of the tenured crops.

FC
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[dly]

It was my impression from a conversation with Ken that IBM recruited  
him before he qualified for tenure rather than the university not  
granting him tenure.  He was already teaching in the University at  
that time and I think he might easily have been their best teacher.

Donna
dydre@...




On 17-Jul-08, at 7:24 PM, frank clooter wrote:

> Winning a Turing or Nobel Prize does not necessarily mean that one
> deserves tenure.
>
> Teaching, which at its best happens to be exceptionally creative, is
> different from creating in a context of being worth a Turing
> (computing's Nobel Prize) or a Nobel Prize or a _______ prize.
>
> That being said, I guess that Dijkstra and Cook both received tenure
> later in their careers.
>
> Tenure in itself is not necessarily the great yardstick that it  
> ought to be.
>
> While presumably based on merit, tenure is just as likely to be based
> upon how much revenue one's connections might bring to the tenuring
> institution.  Politics is likely key.  Being engaged to the dean's
> daughter probably helps too.
>
> Ken would have likely become tenured had he stayed in academia.  For
> all intents and purposes, becoming an IBM Fellow is at the very least
> equivalent to tenure.  To the often exhibited degree that Ken was
> talented for and capable of teaching, I think that he could easily
> have stood shoulder to shoulder with the cream of the tenured crops.
>
> FC
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm

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