Module 1

The “Big Tent” view of CS

As CS expands to include more cross-disciplinary work and new programs of the form “Computational Biology,” “Computational Engineering,” and “Computational X” are developed, it is important to embrace an outward-looking view that sees CS as a discipline actively seeking to work with and integrate into other disciplines.

ACM KA: Computational Science (CN)

Computational Science is a field of applied computer science, that is, the application of computer science to solve problems across a range of disciplines. In the book Introduction to Computational Science [3], the authors offer the following definition: “the field of computational science combines computer simulation, scientific visualization, mathematical modeling, computer programming and data structures, networking, database design, symbolic computation, and high performance computing with various disciplines.” Computer science, which largely focuses on the theory, design, and implementation of algorithms for manipulating data and information, can trace its roots to the earliest devices used to assist people in computation over four thousand years ago. Various systems were created and used to calculate astronomical positions. Ada Lovelace’s programming achievement was intended to calculate Bernoulli numbers. In the late nineteenth century, mechanical calculators became available, and were immediately put to use by scientists. The needs of scientists and engineers for computation have long driven research and innovation in computing. As computers increase in their problem-solving power, computational science has grown in both breadth and importance. It is a discipline in its own right [2] and is considered to be “one of the five college majors on the rise [1].” An amazing assortment of sub-fields have arisen under the umbrella of Computational Science, including computational biology, computational chemistry, computational mechanics, computational archaeology, computational finance, computational sociology and computational forensics.

References

[1] Fischer, K. and Glenn, D., “5 College Majors on the Rise,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, August 31, 2009.

[2] President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, 2005: p. 13. http://www.nitrd.gov/pitac/reports/20050609_computational/computational.pdf

[3] Shiflet, A. B. and Shiflet, G. W. Introduction to Computational Science: Modeling and Simulation for the Sciences, Princeton University Press, 2006: p. 3.

Introduction to Modeling and Simulation

Abstraction is a fundamental concept in computer science. A principal approach to computing is to abstract the real world, create a model that can be simulated on a machine. The roots of computer science can be traced to this approach, modeling things such as trajectories of artillery shells and the modeling cryptographic protocols, both of which pushed the development of early computing systems in the early and mid-1940’s. Modeling and simulation of real world systems represent essential knowledge for computer scientists and provide a foundation for computational sciences. Any introduction to modeling and simulation would either include or presume an introduction to computing. In addition, a general set of modeling and simulation techniques, data visualization methods, and software testing and evaluation mechanisms are also important.