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compsci•28 February 2014

Confusing Christmas with Halloween

Understanding how computers work is essential in allowing us to use them as tools. We therefore need to translate some of their codes and numbers to things that we more naturally understand. Unfortunately, there’s no escaping the mathematics of it – converting binary numbers to decimal and vice versa is an algebraic operation. Though it can be done with a scientific calculator, the process is straightforward and can be done simply enough with a pen and some paper. To convert from binary to decimal is the easiest base transformation there is. We’ll walk through an example by converting $1001 \space...

9 min readRead more →

follies•15 January 2014

How Not To Do a Hackathon

I'm a strong believer in learning by doing. I don't think it's necessarily the best way to learn because you invariably learn inefficiently, repeating well known mistakes and suboptimal practices. If you have a mentor throughout the learning process they can lead you away from bad habits and, crucially, explain why they're bad in the first place. But there are plus points to learning by doing. Firstly, you can't argue with the results. It's not a theoretical endeavour and if you manage to build a bookcase in two weeks, you can be fairly certain you've learnt a thing or two...

7 min readRead more →

compsci•28 December 2013

The 10 Types of People

We’ve now established that knowing the base of a number system is crucial to counting, and that computers exclusively use the binary number system i.e. base-two. You may well have seen a calculator application on your phone or desktop computer that works perfectly normally using decimal. How can that be if everything a computer does is in binary? New to this blog? This is the third in an ongoing series of blog posts about teaching Computer Science in plain English from scratch i.e. for non-programmers and other non-technical people. Use this link to follow the series. As with foreign languages,...

12 min readRead more →

compsci•30 November 2013

Counting Like A Computer

The journey of learning about Computer Science will start by revisiting a simple lesson first encountered by most as a toddler: how to count. Indeed, it’s such an easy skill it’s hard to remember a time when you didn’t know how to do it. But one of the commonly known facts about computers is that everything is done in ones and zeros ie. binary. Just what does that mean though and how is any of this relevant to humans? Well, to understand how a computer works, you have to be able to work things out like they do. The first...

10 min readRead more →

follies•28 October 2013

Helping a stranger (and why you should understand NP-complete)

Earlier this year I helped out a random Hacker News commenter. This was covered in a recent blog post where I discussed the trade off between being an expert or a generalist. Realising my GitHub repository was littered with short, generalist introductions and experiments, I concluded that I should add the complex NP-complete constraint solver I had been working on for the past few years - an area in which I had some expertise. At least, I thought that was the conclusion. Help comes at a great cost, you must first ask for it Hacker News isn't just about start...

21 min readRead more →

compsci•18 September 2013

Computer Science in Plain English

Computer science is a subject dear to my heart and I feel constantly aggrieved by how misunderstood and misreported the discipline is by the media, programmers and everyone inbetween (see my complaint with University Challenge). I decided therefore to write a short series of blog posts that explains computer science from the very basics, the most fundamental principles. I want everyone to know that computer science has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with, well, I'm about to explain exactly what... The difference between Computer Science and Technology I love the British sitcom The IT Crowd which...

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