Subject: Re: CSIT curriculum
Resent-Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 07:25:44 -0500
Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox <gcf@npac.syr.edu>
Resent-To: p_gcf@npac.syr.edu
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 11:58:24 -0500
From: "Bernd A. Berg" <uberg@debitel.net>
Reply-To: "Bernd A. Berg" <berg@scri.fsu.edu>
To: "Geoffrey Fox" <gcf@npac.syr.edu>
CC: "Larry Dennis" <dennisl@scri.fsu.edu>

Geoffrey,

>So we need to have a plan that covers your material; useful stuff from my
> older lectures; what Mascagni in CS can do -- this would be multiple
> courses but we should think how they fit together and if you need to add
> or subtract basic topics

Clearly, you thought more than anyone here about curricula questions.
Therefore, I think, you should take the lead and I am certainly very
willing to help in my limited area of expertise.

My script emerged from teaching an introduction to Monte Carlo (MC)
Simulations and Statistics to physics graduate students at  FSU, in
Vienna and at a lattice gauge theory school in Trento. There, the focus
was to get the students, who mainly specialized on either statistical
physics or lattice gauge theory, quickly towards running simulations, but
without neglecting the fundamentals.

For the CSIT curriculum we are facing a somewhat different situation,
because we are in the fortunate situation that we can build up a broad
education.  Also, we do not want to specialize on physics students.
To have something to start with, I pulled the table of contents of my
script out. I started working on it only some  while after my 97 Trento
lectures  and try to broaden the target  group. The course includes
Fortran code (C versions planned).  My statistics teaching is novel in
the  sense that I first introduce (Marsaglia) uniform random numbers
as "god" given and subsequenly illustrate all concepts by simulations.
Students become used to MC long time before importance sampling
is introduced.

Let me address the following questions:

(a) Which material should be added to mine?

(b) Should the material stay together in one or two courses or become
      divided up and integrated in other courses?

(c) What material should become an integral part of the CSIT  core
     courses (required for all CSIT graduate students) and what should
     be moved to more specialized  advanced courses?

Concerning (b) and (c):
==================

My opinion is that there should be one  3h credit course in the CSIT
core part with the title

1. "Stochastic  Simulations  and Statistics" (or similar),

and my understanding is that there will be another  3h core course
to cover

2. PDEs.

This would still leave two (or more) 3h core courses (presumably
to be taught first) for

3.+4.+... "Introduction to Information Technology" and
"Computational Science" to the extent not covered by 1.+2.

Integrating the material of 1.+2. into general courses will most
likely water them out. Stochastic Simulations and PDEs are
core methods and it is by methods and enabling tools that
diverse multidisciplinary interests can  find common ground.
Students deserve that experts on  Stochastic Simulations or
PDEs will teach those parts. For instance, I would not consider
myself particularly qualified (or  interested) to teach about PDEs,
but would be interested in  picking up course 1.

On the other hand, to integrate MC simulations into the general
courses and let PDEs stand out, creates a serious imbalance of
methods. Stochastic simulations are central for many applications
in  physics, chemistry and structural biology, but some CSIT
related faculty appears to be be uneducated about it. To have
the wrong people teach stochastic methods  could seriously harm
multidisciplinary integration.

Concerning (a):
=============

I  scanned through  your  old courses for additional material,
may be Mascagni has more to add. Before finalizing things
we need to decide on the course structure. On the basis of
my opinion on (b) and (c) one may break up the material
into a core course and and advanced topics specialized
course.

In the order your links I find the following additional material:

Course I (your statistics for physicists course):
=======

     Borel sets - axioms,  Bayes Theorem and applications,
     Special distributions (Binomial, Bernoulli, Poisson),
      Fitting (estimation of parameters): Maximum likelihood,
      (Least square) Minimization and Marquardt's method.

Remarks: These topics were actually included in the Special
                  Topics course I taught at FSU, but they did not yet
                  make it into my script. I introduce goodness of fit early
                  with the Gaussian difference test. Jackknife ought to
                  be taught next and fitting later, but details are finally
                  up to the individual teacher.

Also: Difference tests for distributions (chi2 and Kolmogorov);
          maximum entropy methods (?) deserve to be included.

Further: You give many examples, mainly from physics. For the
              curriculum a statement like "examples from basic and
              applied sciences" is presumably sufficient and allows
              to broaden into chemistry and structural biology.

Course II  (your  MC simulations for stat. phys. course)
=======

Multigrid,  Simulated Annealing, possibly hybrid MC
(leapfrog) should be added to the CSIT curriculum.

The rest is either already covered by my table of contents
or would fall under "examples from basic sciences".

Course III (your numerical integration)
=======

MC for multidimensional integrals should be added.

The other MC parts of your course are already covered
and the non-MC parts should be scanned for inclusion in
a CSIT PDE course or other CSIT courses.

Course IV (Your statistics and random numbers)
========

The topics are, in principle, already included.

Please let me know how you think we should proceed.

Happy y2k!  Bernd