Photo by Matt Dilyard, College of Wooster

Jaymie Strecker

This page contains various "notes to self" that others might find useful.

Computer science, science, and research:

Resources for educators:

Scratch (programming for ages 8 and up---info for educators)
Alice (3D programming environment for middle school, high school, and college)
Computer Science Unplugged (activities for K-12)

Math/CS meets literature:

Arcadia and others by Tom Stoppard
The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, The Baroque Cycle, Cryptonomicon, and others by Neal Stephenson
Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

"People need some way to activate, boot up and change the discs in their minds. LSD may not be as necessary now."
(Timothy Leary: proponent of psychedelic drugs in the '60s ("Turn on, tune in, drop out."); later, software developer and proponent of virtual reality)

"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
(E. W. Dijkstra)

"[A]ny program is a model of a model within a theory of a model of an abstraction of some portion of the world or of some universe of discourse."
(Meir H. Lehman, "Programs, Life Cycles, and Laws of Software Evolution", Proceedings of the IEEE)

"Uncertainty is intrinsic to the scientific process, and sometimes you have to have the courage to stand up and say, 'Maybe.'"
(Joel Achenbach, "Global Warming Did It! Well, Maybe Not." The Washington Post)

"When considering the Edge Question [What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?], one has to remember the basis of the scientific method: formulating hypotheses that can be disproved. Those hypotheses that are not disproved can be believed to be true until disproved. Since it is more glamorous for a scientist to formulate hypotheses than it is to spend years disproving existing ones proposed by other scientists, and unlikely that someone will spend time and energy trying to disproved his or her own statements, our body of scientific knowledge is surely full of hypotheses that we believe to be true but will eventually be proved false."
(Jean Paul Schmetz)

"'It was a splendid chance of putting your theories into practice, Mr. Sherlock Holmes. There was really nothing wanting.'
"'Except Mr. Sherlock Holmes,' said my companion, with a somewhat bitter smile."
(A. Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez)

"I got the idea for the mouse while attending a talk at a computer conference. The speaker was so boring that I started daydreaming and hit upon the idea."
(Douglas Engelbart)

"Words which fail to satisfy the ear of the listener always either fatigue or weary him; and you may often see a sign of this when such listeners are frequently yawning. Consequently when addressing men whose good opinion you desire, either cut short your speech when you see these evident signs of impatience, or else change the subject; for if you take any other course, then in place of the approbation you desire you will win dislike and ill-will.
"And if you would see in what a man takes pleasure without hearing him speak, talk to him and change the subject of your discourse several times, and when it comes about that you see him stand fixedly without either yawning or knitting his brows or making any other movement, then be sure that the subject of which you are speaking is the one in which he takes pleasure."
(Leonardo da Vinci)

"We may frankly admit that certain people deceive themselves who apply the title 'a good master' to a painter who can only do the head or the figure well. Surely it is no great achievement if by studying one thing only during his whole lifetime he attain to some degree of excellence therein! But since, as we know, painting embraces and contains within itself all the things which nature produces or which result from the fortuitous actions of men, and in short whatever can be comprehended by the eyes, it would seem to me that he is but a poor master who makes only a single figure well."
(Leonardo da Vinci)