Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Suresh Venkatasubramanian and the "Foundations" Book

Suresh Venkatasubramanian of the famed Geomblog has offered to co-manage this Future of CS: Foundations book project with me, so we hopefully will get more chapters soon. Our goal is to arm-twist a half dozen or so people over the summer, and then once people see it get started, maybe more will join. At least, now I have a good excuse to arm-twist Suresh!

I've had some people e-mail me with interest -- I'm very enthused, and I'm hoping you'll all follow through! (And if you haven't yet, please e-mail us with interest.) I think the key rules, again, to remember are that it should be written for smart high school sophomores, and that each chapter should include a "glimpse into the future", which I think of as a description of a specific, big, open problem that one hopes might be solved in about the next 10 years.

It also, I think, helps to think of right-sized "nuggets" for such chapters. (Although I'm open to more experimental approaches, a la Chazelle.) One person suggested they'd write a chapter on universal hashing, which I think is a great idea. Trying to cover all of hashing seems too big. But explaining the basics of hashing, and then the specific role of universal hashing and why it's interesting, seems just right.



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