COMS 1001 Biography Assignment (HW 4)

Columbia University Introduction to Computers (Spring 2006)

Directions:

Material from primary sources (such as that gathered from live interviews, phone calls, or emails) is a plus. Make sure to ask the subject if they mind being taped if you're doing so. Portraits of contemporary subjects are greatly preferred. I can learn all about Charles Babbage or Alan Turing at the library. It's a bit more difficult to learn about Donald Knuth. One word of caution: remember that the people you're asking to interview are people, not a means to an end for your grade on this assignment: that is, they are probably very busy and have committments in their life that probably outweigh your mini-bio, so remember to be considerate, appropriately humble, and thankful for their time. Since many people would feel uncomfortable answering personal questions for someone they don't know (and who isn't writing a book about them), it is not at all necessary to obtain this sort of source material, but if you can, great. Good candidates for this type of personal contact are professors in our CS department.

Purpose:

Detailed Instructions:

Your grade will be based on the following deliverables, the first three of which must be submitted as an HTML document with appropriate and simple formatting (including formatting of any mathematical equations)

1. a sketch of the person's career (25 pts)
2. a demonstration of your understanding of the subject's technical work or contribution you focus on. You don't need to summarize their whole career: pick one particular project or accomplishment. (50 pts)
3. the quality of your writing, including grammar (25 pts)
4. an oral presentation of your research to the class (30 pts)

The important thing here is not the length, but rather the quality of the content and your writing. I encourage non-standard ways of story-telling: an annotated transcript of your person-on-person interview with the subject is a great example. Another good technique is to examine a particular incident, problem, or technology that the person dealt with or contributed to. I do not want a book report. Let me repeat that: I don't want a book report. The drier and duller the essay, the less it will impress when it comes time to grade it. Above all, show me that you learned and explored something interesting. If your initial choice isn't interesting, then pick someone else. If you feel a connection with one of the suggested subjects because you both share a passion for photographing birds, use it as a way to enlighten the rest of us.

Suggestions:

• Charles Babbage
• Ada Lovelace
• Alan Turing
• Alonzo Church
• The founders of Intel, Microsoft, Google, Red Hat, Netscape, or Apple
• Any ACM Fellow
• Any ACM Turing Award winner (Turing Award == Nobel Prize for CS)
• Columbia CS faculty

Reserved List