Talk:Hytmal:Classes
From Tractatus
I was a Teaching Assistant for Ed Clarke's Formal Languages, Automata, and Computabilty' for two semesters at CMU, so I am partial to the subject. So, I approve of this:
CSE 468: Theory of Automata, Language, and Computability
Dave. A word of warning. The subject can be very very very dry. But, what is beautiful about it is that it teaches you Truth. There are things which can be know to be true, in every universe, and knowing them is seeing the divine.
For example, saying "Wow, that problem seems hard" can be debated. But, saying "That problem is equivalent to the Halting Problem" is undebatable. For anyone reading not a Computer Science guy, the way to read that sentence is "That problem is impossible to solve." When I say impossible, I mean, impossible. It cannot be solved. period. Not even by a demi-God. It is Truth. Beauty in its purest form.
Phew. The textbook we used at CMU was Introduction to the Theory of Computation(Rotman). It is fine. Anyway, the challenging book I would recommend is Computational Complexity by Papadimitriou. It is not really for a beginner, but you should challenge yourself. Go to the Math Library at PSU (not Patee), and check it out. By check it out, I mean, submit a request for the book now, because some grad student out there has it checked out, and has not realized that at $60 he should buy it. Then, keep it for a few months, and refer to it from time to time. It will be very very useful. THere is a really nice diagram on page 499 (of 500). That is exactly what I did, and it was great.
--Iain 22:28, 1 Sep 2005 (EDT)
I am not so sure about Factorization and Primality testing. That seems like to specific a course to be worth taking. --Iain 22:28, 1 Sep 2005 (EDT)
OK, if Factorization is 3 credits, then forget about it. Take a Discrete Mathematics course instead, and you will learn everything you need to know to teach yourself that information. Way better. --Iain
Two courses you might not have considered. First, consider auditing(ask if you can just show up and listen) the CSE 590 COLLOQUIUM. I don't know what PSU is like, but one of the things I was very glad to attend was the Logic Colloquim. It did not require anything beyond showing up. And I got to listen to guest lecturers talking about Logic to a well-educated crowd.
I was also surprised that there was not a graphics course on your list(CSE 485 (E E) DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING?), since you seemed to be obsessed with that sort of thing while you were here. I know my tendency would be to recommend similar courses to the ones I took at CMU (MATH 457,MATH 557), but you will get the most milage out of taking courses you really want to take. My personal recommendaiton would be to find the 500+ level course you want to take, talk to the professor about it, and then if they make you take the prerequisite, take the prereq. Most profs will not object to you just showing up the first week or two if you seem at all interested about their field. But, I don't know... I ended up dropping a lot of courses at CMU. I also can't really comment on things like Compilers because I never took a Compilers course. But, a lot of people liked it at CMU.
That said, I higly recommend taking MATH 457. Logic changed my life. --Iain 22:55, 1 Sep 2005 (EDT)
I've put CSE 418, Computer Graphics, on there, but unless it involves some pretty heavy-duty graphics stuff, I think it'd be a waste. Apparently Digital Image Processing is basically just a Digital Signal Processing class that focuses on removing noise from images etc. I dunno, I might take it, but I think there are far more interesting classes in the department listing. I'm probably going to wind up taking CSE 520, which is a grad student class that Dr. Hannan teaches. What can I say, he's a cool dude. Anyway, time for my automata class :-) --Hytmal 16:28, 2 Sep 2005 (EDT)