Now, something really à côté de la plaque... Jack Henahan terminates his useful advice addressed to A. Coppin:

Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. -- Edsger Dijkstra This citation makes me think, and since this became rare, I share it.

* It is unsourced, repeated without discernment, and Dijkstra cannot confirm (or deny) it any more. Somehow I cannot believe he said that... * Dijkstra began to study physics, and a physicist would be reluctant to make such puns. Why? o Astronomy, and physics are not only theories of galaxies or superfluids, but also methodologies of data acquisition and data processing. Telescopes evolve with our knowledge of the visible universe, as the accelerators evolve with our knowledge of elementary particles. You have to know where to look! And how to interpret the raw, experimental data. o So, whether you call it Informatique, Datalogi, or whatever, it is */also/* about computers. Do you really think that the algorithmics, the thory of parallel computation, etc., have nothing to do with concrete implementations? * These among you who touched just a bit of astronomy, should know what a horrendous amount of "truly astronomical" knowledge is necessary to make the telescope work! For example to synchronize it with the earth movement... * This citation seems to be a savant variant of: "The Fool Looks At The Finger That Points To The Sky" case... OK, if you wish. But I had an occasion to sit near a beautiful girl who pointed her hand and her eyes in the direction of wonderful Zodiac constellations; it was midnight in the mountains. I don't remember the details, but without being a fool, I didn't look at the stars... (Well, actually I was a fool, but it is a long story). Jerzy Karczmarczuk Caen, France

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Jerzy Karczmarczuk wrote:

It is unsourced, repeated without discernment, and Dijkstra cannot confirm (or deny) it any more. Somehow I cannot believe he said that... Dijkstra began to study physics, and a physicist would be reluctant to make such puns. Why?

Some googling takes me to the full quote:

"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes, or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes. Science is not about tools. It is about how we use them, and what we find out when we do."

Which is referenced to, inside _Invitation to Computer Science_ (G. Michael Schneider, Judith L. Gersting, Keith Miller; http://books.google.com/books?id=gQK0pJONyhgC ), to "Fellows, M.R., and Parberry, I. "Getting Children Excited About Computer Science", _Computing Research News_, vol. 5, no. 1 (January 1993)". Curiously, the preface to the quote is:

This distinction between computers and computer science is beautifully expressed by computer scientists Michael R. Fellows and Ian Parberry in an article in the journal _Computing Research News_:

*No* mention of Dijkstra. Searching that full book, the only Dijkstra mentions are unconnected to the quote. Chasing links, I head to http://archive.cra.org/CRN/issues/by_title_by_issue.html and download January 1993: http://archive.cra.org/CRN/issues/9301.pdf On page 7, I find it. The article title is different: "SIGACT trying to get children excited about CS". The money line is highlighted. The relevant paragraph and surrounding paragraphs:

Is it any wonder then that computer science is represented in many schools by either computer games or some antiquated approach to programming, which at worst concentrates on a litany of syntax and at best emphasizes expediency over effectiveness and efficiency? But computer science is not about computers—it is about computation.

What would we like our children- the general public of the future—to learn about computer science in schools? We need to do away with the myth that computer science is about computers. Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes. Science is not about tools, it is about how we use them and what we find out when we do.

It may come as a surprise to some that computer science is full of activities that children still find exciting even without the use of computers. Take theoretical computer science, for example, which may seem an unlikely candidate. If computer science is underrepresented in schools, then theoretical computer science is doubly so.

This is the precise quote, with no quotation marks or references or allusions of any kind; this seems to be the original, where the exact quote comes from. There are no mentions whatsoever of Dijkstra in the January PDF. On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 11:25 AM, Christopher Done wrote:

Wherever its origin, it is featured in SICP which was out in 1984: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQLUPjefuWA It's a sound analogy.

Abelson doesn't cite Dijkstra in the first minute where he makes the comparisons, either, unless I missed it. As well, in no Google hit did I find any specific citation to Dijkstra. Hence, I conclude that because it is insightful and sounds like Dijkstra (eg. his submarine quote), it has become apocryphally associated with him but is *not* actually a Dijkstra quote. -- gwern http://www.gwern.net

In fairness, I already knew it wasn't an actual Dijkstra quote. It's just one that gets thrown around with his name on it. The origins were misty enough that I just decided to pick the one that pop culture chose. Jack Henahan jhenahan@uvm.edu == Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes…. -- Michael R. Fellows and Ian Parberry == On Aug 29, 2011, at 12:08 PM, Jack Henahan wrote:

Better?

Jack Henahan jhenahan@uvm.edu == Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes…. -- Michael R. Fellows and Ian Parberry ==

<398E692F.gpg>

On Aug 29, 2011, at 11:47 AM, Gwern Branwen wrote:

...

...

Michael R. Fellows and Ian Parberry

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On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 12:18 PM, aditya siram wrote:

I'm afraid you're going to have a lot of OCD's completely miss the point of your email and annoy you with comments about the quote which you'll then have to refute.

I dunno, I found the quote interesting. I had typed up a scornful response to the effect that everyone knows it's a Dijkstra quote and he could find sourcing in seconds with Google, but as the seconds passed, I had to rewrite the seconds bit, then as I found actual cites, I had to rewrite the Dijkstra bit, and then I realized that replying to that email might take a while... -- gwern http://www.gwern.net

On 29/08/2011 01:13 PM, Christopher Done wrote:

There's also #math on freenode, but it's a scary wilderness.

On 29 August 2011 13:34, Benedict Eastaugh wrote:

...

On 29 August 2011 09:34, Andrew Coppin wrote:

...

This is fairly wildly off-topic but... does anybody know of a good forum where I can ask questions about mathematics and get authoritative answers?

Apart from math.stackexchange.com and mathoverflow.net, which people have already mentioned, people often discuss mathematics on #haskell-blah on Freenode.

I know of several places where I can ask maths questions and half a dozen people will take guesses at what the correct solution might be. I haven't yet found anywhere where I can say "when would a chi-squared test be more appropriate than a KS test?" and get an informed, knowledgeable answer. (Answers from people who /know/ what they're talking about rather than just /think/ they know.) Anyway, from this thread I've got the names of a few places to start looking. And that's really what I was hoping for. Thanks for the tips.

On Tue, 2011-08-30 at 20:58 +0200, Jerzy Karczmarczuk wrote:

With all my respect: I think I know several mathematicians who learning that a person asking for help begins with trying to distinguish between knowledgeable, and those who just think they are, will simply - to say it politely - refuse to engage.

I don't agree with this. It's the most natural thing in the world to listen to an answer and then try to figure out whether the speaker knows what they are talking about or not. Those who expect us to forego that step aren't really engaged in mathematics any more. -- Chris Smith

On 30/08/2011 07:58 PM, Jerzy Karczmarczuk wrote:

I think I know several mathematicians who learning that a person asking for help begins with trying to distinguish between knowledgeable, and those who just think they are, will simply - to say it politely - refuse to engage.

I didn't intend to sound snobbish. It's just that there are people who will have read about XYZ in a book one time, and there are people who actually use XYZ every day of their working lives. The latter probably know a tad more about it. That's all.

Peter Simons :

Now, a person who has profound knowledge of the subject you're asking about is not very likely to do this, because he is probably not going to learn anything in the process. Dedicating time and effort to studying your particular problem is not an appealing prospect. You might be right. You may be dead wrong... Some people like to teach, find some pleasure in explaining things they know, and find a pleasure in trying to be useful. But they might refuse, if they hear: "...if you are a real specialist and you know what you are talking about, tell me what is better, the chi-square test or (...)". Knuth admitted that he had learnt a lot while teaching things he already knew. So did Feynman. And Landau.

All the best. Jerzy K.

Statistics questions tend to end up on http://stats.stackexchange.com/, so you could try that, too. It's a well-informed community. Jack Henahan jhenahan@uvm.edu == Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes…. -- Michael R. Fellows and Ian Parberry == On Aug 30, 2011, at 2:04 PM, Andrew Coppin wrote:

On 29/08/2011 01:13 PM, Christopher Done wrote:

...

There's also #math on freenode, but it's a scary wilderness.

On 29 August 2011 13:34, Benedict Eastaugh wrote:

...

On 29 August 2011 09:34, Andrew Coppin wrote:

...

This is fairly wildly off-topic but... does anybody know of a good forum where I can ask questions about mathematics and get authoritative answers?

Apart from math.stackexchange.com and mathoverflow.net, which people have already mentioned, people often discuss mathematics on #haskell-blah on Freenode.

I know of several places where I can ask maths questions and half a dozen people will take guesses at what the correct solution might be. I haven't yet found anywhere where I can say "when would a chi-squared test be more appropriate than a KS test?" and get an informed, knowledgeable answer. (Answers from people who /know/ what they're talking about rather than just /think/ they know.)

Anyway, from this thread I've got the names of a few places to start looking. And that's really what I was hoping for. Thanks for the tips.

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