Eclectic Tours

Artificial Intelligence - The August 1^st and August 4^th entries discuss the use of disembodied robots called spiders to search the web looking for information. The entry on August 30^th deals with machine learning for detecting junk email and the September 10^th entry is about algorithms motivated by evolutionary biology. For additional study, I recommend the introductory text by Russell and Norvig [1995] and a good introduction to probability and statistics such as [DeGroot, 1986]. The text by Dean, Allen and Aloimonos [1995] is less advanced and less comprehensive than Russell and Norvig but it includes an introduction to programming and AI algorithms in Lisp. Mitchell [1997] provides a good introduction to machine learning.

Computer Architecture - The entries on July 21^st, July 26^th and July 27^th provide a very basic introduction to computer architecture with an emphasis on the logical design of modern computers and the interface between hardware and software. The text by Hennessy and Patterson is one of the best introductions to the subject at the college level [1997].

Databases - I don't have a lot to say about databases in this journal, but I present a brief introduction to related ideas in logic programming on July 5^th and demonstrate how to build an application using the relational model and an open-source database on July 6^th. I learned about databases from Ullman [1988] but the text by Silberschatz, Korth and Sudarshan [Silberschatz et al., 2001] provides a more modern perspective.

Operating Systems - There are operating system topics sprinkled throughout this journal but the sequence, July 27^th, July 28^th, July 29^th, July 30^th, July 31^st, touches on interrupts, subroutines, lightweight threads, task management, semaphores, virtual memory and several other topics important in the study of modern operating systems. I like Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne [Silberschatz et al., 2001] as an introductory text. I also recommend Tanenbaum [1996] for issues pertaining to networking that are only peripherally related to operating systems but I mention them here because I don't emphasize networking and distributed computing issues elsewhere in this journal.

Philosophy - I wasn't at all shy about talking about philosophical issues that relate to determinism and free will, August 8^th, things that think, August 16^th, and ethical and moral quandaries raised by the prospects of machine intelligence, September 6^th. Dennett is my favorite computer-savvy philosopher, e.g., [Dennett, 1998], but I actually prefer the philosophical musings of computer scientists, e.g., [Knuth, 2001] and [McDermott, 2001].

Programming Languages - I touched on Lisp and Scheme in a series of entries, July 9^th, July 11^th and July 12^th, using lightweight threads to write robot programs in C, July 28^th, and object-oriented programming and Java, August 24^th and August 28^th. I recommend [Abelson and Sussman, 1985] or [Felleisen et al., 2001] as an introduction to Scheme and, more generally, computer programming. If you feel compelled to go the object-oriented route right off the bat, then I recommend that you steer clear of C++ and try Java [Budd, 2000].

Theoretical Computer Science - I touched briefly on analyzing data structures and algorithms, July 14^th, and graphs and graph algorithms in particular, July 15^th. I also provided a high-level overview of computational complexity and the theory of NP-completeness, September 2^nd. I recommend Papadimitriou [1994] for a comprehensive introduction to computational complexity and Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein [2001] for a solid treatment of algorithms and methods for their analysis.