{"id":188,"date":"2009-10-05T09:21:02","date_gmt":"2009-10-05T16:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glencora.org\/?p=188"},"modified":"2009-10-05T09:21:02","modified_gmt":"2009-10-05T16:21:02","slug":"what-theory-should-every-non-theory-ph-d-student-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/2009\/10\/05\/what-theory-should-every-non-theory-ph-d-student-know\/","title":{"rendered":"What theory should every non-theory Ph.D. student know?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve survived my first week of teaching graduate algorithms and data structures.  &#8220;Survived&#8221; really isn&#8217;t the right word.  I&#8217;ve had a lot of fun and the students in the class are bright and interactive, which makes a 50 minute lecture go by in a flash.<\/p>\n<p>Since the time is going by so quickly, I realize the need to consider more systematically what should be taught in this course.  As you might know, I am the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.glencora.org\/silent-glen-speaks\/newly-minted\/\">only algorithms\/TCS person<\/a> in the department (who isn&#8217;t emeritus) and so I will likely be able to quite easily affect the graduate curriculum. \u00a0I&#8217;m impressed by the amount of theory that the CS Ph.D. students are required to take here (at least in comparison to Brown, a theory-heavy school). \u00a0Each student must take the (10-week long) courses called &#8220;Algorithms and Data Structures&#8221; and &#8220;Theory of Computation and Formal Languages&#8221;. \u00a0Beyond that, there are several other optional algorithms and complexity courses offered every second year.<\/p>\n<p>There has been some discussion on <a href=\"http:\/\/mybiasedcoin.blogspot.com\/2009\/10\/core-tcs.html\">My Biased Coin<\/a> on what every theory Ph.D. student should know. My question is: given 20 weeks of class time (three 50 minute lectures a week), what topics in TCS should every CS Ph.D. student know?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve survived my first week of teaching graduate algorithms and data structures. &#8220;Survived&#8221; really isn&#8217;t the right word. I&#8217;ve had a lot of fun and the students in the class are bright and interactive, which makes a 50 minute lecture go by in a flash. Since the time is going by so quickly, I realize [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[106167,106190,1000],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-grad-students","tag-tcs","tag-teaching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/glencora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}