Bruce S. Elenbogen

Teaching recursion using fractals in Prolog

Recursion has traditionally been a difficult concept for students to understand, both as a control structure and as an analytical tool. This paper explores recursion using Prolog (whose predominate control structure is recursion) and through fractals which possess a visually recursive form. We discuss several simple Turbo Prolog programs which demonstrate recursion graphically and whose resultant figures are fractals whose recursive nature is particularly easy to analyze in the Turbo Prolog environment.

Attracting K-12 students to study computing

There is general agreement that the need for computing professionals in the near term is increasing, while enrollment in computer science degree programs is decreasing. We hope to address this situation by attracting pre-college students to study computer science and information technology at the collegiate level through participation in short term events focused on different aspects of computing technology. The authors hosted several one-day events on our campus (computing workshops and competitions) during the past three years. The event activities allow participants opportunities to experience the engineering design process, use their programming skills, and create multimedia content using software tools. Participants were self selected pre-college students. Participants completed an established attitude scale before and after each event to assess the impact of the project activities on their attitudes toward computing and their future plans to take information technology courses. This paper investigates which if any short term events create favorable participant attitudes toward the study of information technology. Initial data analysis indicates significant positive attitude changes toward the study of computing and technology on the part of many participants.

Computer network management: theory and practice

This paper discusses a non-traditional course in computer networking. The course is a laboratory course with substantial hands-on experiences, which can help to prepare students for jobs in industry as soon as they graduate from an undergraduate institution. This course is not meant to replace the traditional network course but to supplement it by teaching how computer networks work in practice and by exploring new topics such as internetworking, high speed networking, client/server computing and security.

Teaching programming algorithms aided by computer graphics

Effects of operations on abstract data objects are often difficult for students to comprehend. Visual models can be helpful to students, when the connections among the data object models, virtual machine representations of data objects, and algorithms operating on the data objects are made clear to the students. This paper discusses the design criteria used to develop a series of Pascal programs, implemented on widely used microcomputers, which make use of graphics to illustrate the effects of programming algorithms on common data structures. These programs were designed to be used in classroom demonstrations and by individual students working in the computing laboratory.1 A non-machine specific design of an algorithm teacher is proposed. It is a programmed environment to help students in a beginning computer science course learn problem solving skills. This paper provides an overview of the problem, a motivation and justification, followed by a brief description of what the program should provide the student.

Mathematics preparation for undergraduate degrees in computer science

Throughout the history of computer science education there has been debate on what should be the appropriate mathematics background for computer science majors. The first computer science instructors were mathematicians and the first curriculums were just modifications of mathematics curriculums. However, as the discipline has grown and matured there has developed several areas of computer science where traditional undergraduate mathematics is not used and traditional mathematics preparation may not be appropriate. Although logic and problem solving skills are valued by the Computer Science community, exactly how many hours of mathematics and what areas of mathematics should be required, needs to be addressed. This panel was convened to discuss this issue from a variety of viewpoints. We hope that discussion will give the listeners new ideas on just what should be the appropriate courses and topics for their institution and program. The panel was chosen to present a wide range of view representing a variety of schools (large and small, public and private, traditional and non-traditional, preparation for the workplace or for disciplines (E-commerce, distributed computing, artificial intelligence, software engineering and graphics) viewpoints (both young and old, industrial and academic).

A weak estimate of the fractal dimension of the Mandelbrot boundary

Abstract A technique to compute fractal dimension as defined by the Kolmogorov capacity is discussed. The method is used to compute fractal dimension for several standard curves and the boundary of the Mandelbrot set. This estimate of fractal dimension, although very rough, refutes Milnors conjecture that the Hausdorff dimension of the Mandelbrot boundary is 2.

Work in progress - attracting K-12 students to study computing

There is general agreement that the need for computing professionals in the near term will continue to increase, while enrollment in computer science degree programs is decreasing. We hope to meet this need by attracting pre-college students to study computer science and information technology at the collegiate level through participation in summer camps and weekend events focused on different aspects of computing technology. The authors offered three game development camps and several one-day events (computing workshops and competitions). Participants were self selected pre-college students who experienced many aspects of the software development life cycle and used software tools to create original multimedia products. Participants completed an established attitude scale before and after the events to assess the impact of the project activities on multiple components of their attitudes and their future plans to take information technology courses. Initial data analysis indicates significant positive attitude changes toward the study of computing and technology.

A framework to support adaptation decisions for dynamic distributed systems

The increasing presence of mobile and ubiquitous applications has created a need for distributed systems and applications that are dynamic and can efficiently adapt to changes in quality of service (QoS), resource availability, user requirements and location of mobile nodes. This is done by dynamically reconfiguring system components. Reconfiguration should be done with minimal effect on system performance. A crucial issue is to determine what types of changes and how much change characterizes the need for reconfiguration, and what is the cost (in terms of resource usage) incurred on the system. We propose a reconfiguration framework based on policies and illustrate our initial prototype.

Remarks on Distance Distributions for Graphs Modeling Computer Networks

Abstract The Wiener polynomial of a graph G is a generating function for the distance distribution dd ( G ) = ( D 1 , D 2 ,…, D t ), where D i is the number of unordered pairs of distinct vertices at distance i from one another and t is the diameter of G . We use the Wiener polynomial and several related generating functions to obtain generating functions for distance distributions of graphs that model certain large classes of computer networks. These provide a straightforward means of computing distance and timing statistics when designing new networks or enlarging existing networks.

Experiences With an Open Systems Computing Laboratory

Open Systems are computing systems which are based on industry standards and nonproprietary multivendor components. As an increasing number of computing installations move away from single‐vendor proprietary architectures to more and more open architectures, academic institutions are increasingly faced with the responsibility of appropriately introducing open systems concepts into the undergraduate curricula. Using funding from the National Science Foundation, an open systems computing laboratory was recently set up at the University of Michigan‐Dearborn. The laboratory is based on the three most popular computing platforms today in the PC to Workstation range; namely IBM/PC, Macintosh, and Sun/UNIX. Supporting equipment include a postcript printer, a Novell network, a tape mass storage, and appropriate software and interfaces. A three credit‐hour course titled Open Systems Computing was offered in Summer 1995 to computer science and computer engineering majors. The course utilized the laboratory fully. T...