ppxscal/embedding_network huggingface dataset:
Designing effective documentation
Authors: Willam W. McMillan, Gayle M. Lambert
Venue: Proceedings of the 9th annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User services (1981)

We borrow from research in educational psychology and document design, and from intuitive guidelines to make suggestions about the design of computer documentation. We discuss general characteristics of design, specifics, and different techniques for empirical evaluation of documents.
The generation of order statistics in digital computer simulation: A survey
Authors: Bruce W. Schmeiser
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th conference on Winter simulation - Volume 1 (1978)

Order statistics are often needed in computer simulation. Common examples are quantile estimation and censored data test statistics. Methods for generating order statistics in various contexts are surveyed. Sorting and the use of histograms, the most general methods, are first discussed, followed by a method for non-identically distributed samples. Finally, the very powerful methods applicable to iid random variables are surveyed.
Keynote address - the processor instruction set
Authors: Maurice V. Wilkes
Venue: Proceedings of the 15th annual workshop on Microprogramming (1982)

This keynote address contains a brief account of the arguements being advanced in favor of reduced instruction sets. These arguements have relevance both to single chip computers and to larger computers. Some comments are made on instruction set design from a compiler writer's point of view, and on the advantages to be gained from regarding the design of an instruction set and the code generator of the compiler as a single task.
Decentralized parallel algorithms for matrix computation
Authors: Rajani M. Kant, Takayuki Kimura
Venue: Proceedings of the 5th annual symposium on Computer architecture (1978)

It is shown that a mesh-connected n&times;n multiprocessor system can compute the inverse of a n&times;n matrix in linear time to n. The algorithm is based on a theorem known to Sylvester in 1851. It computes the cofactor matrix in n steps, each of which involves 4 unit distance message routing and 4 arithmetic operations for every processor. A coding and memory requirement for each processor is the same and is independent of n. It is also shown that the same algorithm solves systems of n linear equations in linear time of n with n &times; (n+l) processors.
Computer science for teachers
Authors: Judith G. Malkin
Venue: Proceedings of the second SIGCSE technical symposium on Education in computer science (1972)

As computing systems in general, and timesharing systems in particular, are becoming less expensive and more reliable, a number of small colleges, junior colleges, and secondary schools are in a position to use computers in the classroom. Immediately this presents the problem of training and education, since many teachers may not have had the opportunity to learn about computers and computer programming when they were in school themselves, or if they had, a lapse of several years would have made much of their knowledge out of date. If a school is obtaining its own computer, the manufacturer may provide training in operation and programming, but this may have several drawbacks. There may be a cost associated with the training, the courses may be at a time prohibiting the attendance of the teacher, and, most importantly, the courses are probably not precisely what the teacher needs to use the computer in the classroom. If the teacher is fortunate enough to be close to a university offering computer science courses, the same drawbacks mentioned above may apply. Many university computer science courses are either pure programming courses or highly theoretical courses. Courses in computer-assisted instruction (lesson design) also do not meet the teacher's needs. With this in mind, and with a growing population of secondary school and small college users, the University of Texas Computer Science department offered a special course, specifically for teachers, in the 1971 summer session.
The modeling and synthesis of bus systems
Authors: Chia-Jeng Tseng, Daniel P. Siewiorek
Venue: Proceedings of the 18th Design Automation Conference (1981)

A bus oriented interconnection of registers and data operators is the dominant mode of design for the data paths of digital systems. A study of ten processor implementations, ranging in size from microprocessors to large mainframes, spanning almost 20 years in the practice of digital design, indicated a strong similarity. From this study bus style primitives and generic bus models were developed. The generic bus models were simplified to match each of the ten processors composing the study. An algorithm for generating a bus style design is presented. The algorithm is used to generate the data paths of the PDP-11/40 resulting in lower cost and shorter delays than the original implementation. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of the bus synthesis algorithm's implementation and its role in the CMU functional-to-hardware Design Automation System.
Near real-time shaded display of rigid objects
Authors: Henry Fuchs, Gregory D. Abram, Eric D. Grant
Venue: Proceedings of the 10th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques (1983)

Described is a visible surface algorithm and an implementation that generates shaded display of objects with hundreds of polygons rapidly enough for interactive use &mdash; several images per second. The basic algorithm, introduced in [Fuchs, Kedem and Naylor, 1980], is designed to handle rigid objects and scenes by preprocessing the object data base to minimize visibility computation cost. The speed of the algorithm is further enhanced by its simplicity, which allows it to be implemented within the internal graphics processor of a general purpose raster system.
Design feedback and its use in software design aid systems
Authors: Allan M. Stavely
Venue: Proceedings of the software quality assurance workshop on Functional and performance issues (1978)

It is argued that software system designers would benefit greatly from feedback about the consequences of a proposed design if this feedback could be obtained early in the development process. A taxonomy of possible types of feedback and other design aids is presented, and the capabilities of several existing design aid systems are described relative to this taxonomy.
Effects of distributed processing in a data processing environment
Authors: Fred J. Maryanski, Daniel E. Kreimer
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th annual symposium on Simulation (1978)

Most data processing installations utilize a single large mainframe computer to execute their three principal software functions - data base management, teleprocessing, and batch processing. Recently, distributed processing systems composed of a network of minicomputers have been proposed as alternatives to the single large mainframe. The study described herein determines the conditions under which it is feasible, in terms of performance, to distribute the data base, teleprocessing, and batch functions to configurations of two or three processors. The simulation results indicate that distributing a software data processing function provides performance benefits if the demands for that function are heavy.
An extensible interpreter
Authors: Stephen A. Schuman
Venue: Proceedings of the international symposium on Extensible languages (1971)

The purpose of this brief paper is to propose an alternative approach for the implementation of an extensible language. The idea outlined here will be referred to as an extensible interpreter. In this particular case, the term itself constitutes an exceptionally concise description of the basic concept, even though there exists another, equally valid way of viewing the same notion, namely as a strategy for integrating an optimizing compiler into an essentially interpretive system. Regardless of which point of view is preferred, however, both are indicative of the fundamental assumption which underlies the present proposal: that the &ldquo;semantics&rdquo; of a programming language must ultimately be defined by means of an interpreter. This is to say that the definition of a given language must finally be formulated in terms of an &ldquo;abstract machine&rdquo; which is capable of carrying out, in an appropriate environment, the &ldquo;unit operations&rdquo; comprising the semantic primitives that language. Thus, an implementation which reflects the definition of the language in question must necessarily include a realization of this abstract machine, whether it is present implicitly, in the processing performed by the compiler, or whether it appears explicitly. In the latter case, the abstact machine may be represented in the form of a conventional software interpreter, or more directly, by means of a suitable set of micro-instructions, the only distinction being the number of different &ldquo;layers&rdquo; of interpretation which are actually interposed between this machine and the supporting hardware. In the context of an extensible language, one can immediately identify the natural instruction set for such an abstract machine: it corresponds to the repertoire of primitive operations provided by the base language. Since it is axiomatic to extensibility that new linguistic elements are constructed by systematic composition of previously defined and/or primitive constructs, the &ldquo;meaning&rdquo; of every operation in any subsequent extended language is ultimately defined by its derivation in terms of the operations belonging to the base language. Given that it is, conceptually, the definition of the language which is expected to evolve as a consequence of extension, there are strong motivations for explicitly representing the definition itself in any implementation of that language. The logical point of departure, therefore, is to implement an interpreter for the base language, thereby providing a direct realization of the underlying abstract machine.
Knowledge-based debugging (Session Summary)
Authors: Mark A. Linton
Venue: Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN software engineering symposium on High-level debugging (1983)

Robert Balzer began the session by presenting an overview of where debugging fits into knowledge-based programming systems. He distinguished between differences in paradigm (the traditional software engineering approach in which the source code is the first formal representation vs. the operational specification approach in which the specification is both formal and executable and from which the implementation is formally derived) and differences in technology (traditional debuggers vs. knowledge-based tools), pointing out that it is possible to use traditional debugging techniques with the operational specification paradigm as well as use knowledge-based tools with the traditional software engineering paradigm. Balzer presented the operational specification paradigm for software development. The basic idea is that an implementation is derived from a specification through transformations chosen by the programmer and applied by the system. Assuming each transformation is correct, the resulting implementation will accurately reflect the intentions of the specification.
Slam tutorial
Authors: A. Alan B. Pritsker, Claude Dennis Pegden
Venue: Proceedings of the 11th conference on Winter simulation - Volume 1 (1979)

SLAM is a simulation language that allows for alternative modeling approaches. It allows systems to be viewed from a process, event, or state variable perspective. These alternate modeling world views are combined in SLAM to provide a unified systems modeling framework. The ability to construct combined network-event-continuous models with interactions between each orientation greatly enhances the modeling power of the systems analyst. In the following sections of this tutorial, illustrations of network, event, and continuous models are given.
APL as a lingua franca in the computer science curriculum
Authors: Aaron H. Konstam, John E. Howland
Venue: Proceedings of the fourth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education (1974)

In the last decade computer science has been struggling to establish it's independent identity, pressured on one side by those who refuse to admit the existence of any new sciences and on the other by those who see computer science as no more than the art of constructing computer programs. We who are teaching computer science are caught in the middle. We must teach our students some of the art of computer technology through programming courses, but we also must instill in them those principles of the science of computing which set it apart as a discipline in its own right. We must keep ourselves from spending all our time teaching our students to program in a variety of different languages so they can get jobs as technologists. But we must also beware of spending an inordinate amount of time on the theory without teaching programming basics.
Fitting Johnson curves to univariate and multivariate data
Authors: James R. Wilson
Venue: Proceedings of the 15th conference on Winter simulation - Volume 1 (1983)

Moment matching and percentile matching are the standard methods for fitting a distribution from Johnson's translation system (the SL, S U, S B, and S N families) to a univariate data set (Johnson and Kotz 1970). One method for fitting a multivariate Johnson distribution to a vector-valued data set is to: (a) fit each marginal distribution separately with a univariate Johnson distribution; and then (b) fit a multivariate normal distribution to the transformed vectors using the sample correlation coefficients between the transformed coordinates. To make this approach numerically feasible, Wilson (1983) implemented an interactive percentile matching algorithm based on a modified Newton-Raphson procedure. When the algorithm was applied to 80 trivariate data sets arising in a large-scale policy analysis project, excessive manual intervention was required in some situations to obtain acceptable fits (Martin 1983).
On-line documentation for application systems
Authors: Kimberly Hourigan, Carolyn Stockdale
Venue: Proceedings of the 1st annual international conference on Systems documentation (1982)

A critical factor in application development is delivering timely documentation to the end-user. An interactive solution to the development, maintenance, and distribution of application documentation meets this need. A table-driven software package provides control for three levels of user documentation, forming an immediately available description of application systems in an on-line environment. Users may select any or all descriptive information for a system. At the detailed level the choice is menu driven. Documentation levels are: Summary/overview&mdash;provides scope and purpose of system. Detailed operating level&mdash;lists terminal prompts, examples of appropriate user responses, and explanatory material to guide the user. News&mdash;brief descriptions of any changes which affect the end-user. Designed for ease of maintenance, the modular file structure facilitates addition, replacement, insertion, and deletion of user documentation. The system allows programmer interaction to install user documentation and provides the system librarian with central control. Features exist which provide documentation status reports and track usage by end-user, giving the librarian tools to determine the priorities with which systems are addressed. Remote high speed printing and terminal display are available for all documentation. The paper will describe system specifications, design criteria, and give examples of the implementation.
Processing power on the IBM personal computer
Authors: John K. Gotwals
Venue: Proceedings of the 1983 ACM SIGSMALL symposium on Personal and small computers (1983)

In the last 20 years there has been nearly a six-order-of-magnitude increase in computing power, and it is predicted that another five-to-six-orders-of-magnitude increase will occur by the year 2000 [1]. Although supercomputers such as the Cray-1 and Cyber 205 can perform certain vector operations with burst rates of up to 100 million floating-point operations per second (Mflops) [2], it is remarkable that a popular and affordable personal computer is only three-orders-of-magnitude slower. Indeed, with suitable software, the IBM Personal Computer (PC) represents a significant advance in usable memory size and floating-point computing power when compared with previous popular microcomputers. It is purpose of this paper to discuss several floating-point compute-intensive benchmark programs which have been run on the IBM PC. These programs utilize the Intel 8087 Numeric Data Processor (NDP), and when coded in FORTH, can approach the NDP maximum compute rate of 0.05 Mflops.
Automatic generation of logic diagrams
Authors: James A. Smith, James G. Linders
Venue: Proceedings of the 13th Design Automation Conference (1976)

This paper identifies the basic notions involved in the automatic generation of logic diagrams. A system (ALDGS) for generating logic diagrams automatically is described and sample diagrams are given.
Before, during, after burn out - or, nothing I try makes any difference
Authors: James F. Carruth
Venue: Proceedings of the 8th annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User services (1980)

Author's thesis is that obvious stress situations, known anger stimuli and frightening encounters, can be dealt with psychologically and physiologically.
Computer aided test pattern generation for digital processors
Authors: Klaus Pfeuffer
Venue: Proceedings of the 14th Design Automation Conference (1977)

Mathematical foundation and algorithm for the implementation of a test pattern generator for digital processors are described.
Computer chess
Venue: Proceedings of the 1975 annual conference (1975)

Several authors from the Sixth Annual Computer Chess Championship will discuss their views on the present and future developments in this highly specialized field. David Levy, a chess master from Scotland, will comment on the progress made since he made his world famous wager in 1968 (that no computer would be able to beat him in a match within the next ten years). Breakthroughs in this field will be of considerable interest to artificial intelligence researchers, and also to those involved in the theory of long-range planning.
A proposal for a measure of program understanding
Authors: Mark Haas, Johnette Hassell
Venue: Proceedings of the fourteenth SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education (1983)

This paper investigates the needs of computer science educators and experimental researchers for a measure of programmer performance. Operational and comprehensional problem solving is differentiated and their manifestations in computer science are presented. Measures that have been used by experimental researchers to evaluate programmer performance are described. The lack of adequate measures of comprehensional problem solving leads to the definition of the concept of Program Understanding. A measure of Program Understanding is discussed and its uses in education, experimental research, and industry are explored.
Computer selection procedures
Authors: Roy F. Keller, Charles R. Denham
Venue: Proceedings of the 1968 23rd ACM national conference (1968)

During the early 1960's and prior to third generation computers, several computer centers developed at each of most large universities. One central computer facility provided computing for the majority of the users while several other computers, operating independently, served other special functions. In the early stage of development the central facility was an &ldquo;open shop&rdquo; operation. As demand for increased computer power and the number of customers increased, economics dictated a &ldquo;closed shop&rdquo; operation preventing user-machine interaction. When it became necessary to operate the central facility under &ldquo;closed shop&rdquo; procedures, some heavy users opened their own centers retaining the &ldquo;open shop&rdquo; method of operation.
On-line index term predictions using bigram-term associations
Authors: Jon T. Rickman, Harry W. Gardner
Venue: Proceedings of the ACM annual conference (1973)

Predicting index terms (or keywords) by examining a word's component letter strings is investigated. The weights or string-term associations for the letter strings are determined by using relative frequencies computed from a representative sample of the total abstract (or document) collection. The experimental results indicate that the terms predicted by using bigrams (letter pairs) are effectively the same as those predicted by using bigrams and longer letter strings.
Application of MACSYMA to an asymptotic expansion problem
Authors: Paul S. Wang
Venue: Proceedings of the ACM annual conference - Volume 2 (1972)

An algebraic manipulation system called MACSYMA is used to compute the asymptotic expansion of a definite integral. The usefulness of the many facilities and features of MACSYMA is clearly demonstrated.
Parallel processing techniques for hidden surface removal
Authors: Michael Kaplan, Donald P. Greenberg
Venue: Proceedings of the 6th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques (1979)

Previous work in the hidden-surface problem has revealed two key concepts. First, the removal of non-visible surfaces is essentially a sorting problem. Second, some form of coherence is essential for the efficient solution of this problem. In order to provide real-time simulations, it is not only the amount of sorting which must be reduced, but the total time required for computation. One potentially economic strategy to attain this goal is the use of parallel processor systems. This approach implies that the computational time will no longer be dependent on the total amount of sorting, but more on the appropriate division of responsibility. This paper investigates two existing algorithmic approaches to the hidden-surface problem with a view towards their applicability to implementation on a parallel machine organization. In particular, the statistical results of a parallel processor implementation indicate the difficulties stemming from a loss of coherence and imply potentially important design criteria for a parallel configuration.
Strategies and interfaces
Authors: David W. Stemple
Venue: Proceedings of the ACM '82 conference (1982)

While it is difficult to devise human-computer interfaces which work well, it is even more difficult to determine why a good interface is good. In programming and database query languages, many human factors experiments have been performed. These experiments have led to little hard knowledge about the nature of learning or using computer languages. The paucity of results suggests that we may be examining the wrong factors; we are looking at syntactic features of the interface when perhaps we should be looking at its cognitive features. One of the cognitive features of an interface language is the strategy employed when the language is used to solve a problem. The relationship of a language to the problem-solving strategies it encourages should be the focus of more human factors experiments. There are a number of problems associated with determining cognitive strategies. The first has to do with the &ldquo;thinking-out-loud&rdqu; interview approach. While beginning students can sometimes articulate their thoughts and confusions while solving problems, they tend to internalize strategies as they progress, becoming unaware of some of their more powerful cognitive techniques. Learning a computer language, like learning most things, is a progression of &ldquo;chunkings&rdquo;, each level of which may lead to a different kind of hidden strategy. If we are to discover what strategies a language encourages, we must find a way of monitoring this iceberg-like hierarchy of strategies. Error analysis may be the best way. We need to construct cognitive models of language users, predict what kinds of errors would occur if the models were correct, and run experiments to test the predictions.