uk univs and "computer science"

[ml2316]

i notice a lot of the top uk universities (based on research and teaching quality assessments) offer computer science degrees without offering courses in analysis of algorithms, theory of computation, or numerical analysis. to me, it seems like any program without any of these courses could not be called "computer science". any thoughts?

there are many such programs, but for example

http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/Teaching/conversion/

[aesthetic_ascetic]

Another thing is that they all insist on calling it Computing Science... also, most US schools lump Computer Engineering with Electrical/Electronics Engineering, in ECE departments... there are of course CSE departments too, but ECE departments are more numerous... but in the UK, CSE departments outnumber ECE ones... of course this is all based on the infor I gathered during the time I spent looking around at UK Universities' websites a few months back, so maybe I overlooked quite a few...

[galois_uk]

Originally Posted by ml2316

i notice a lot of the top uk universities (based on research and teaching quality assessments) offer computer science degrees without offering courses in analysis of algorithms, theory of computation, or numerical analysis. to me, it seems like any program without any of these courses could not be called "computer science". any thoughts?

there are many such programs, but for example

http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/Teaching/conversion/

The Bristol example is actually a one year conversion course, so not really the same as a full degree. To make a fair comparison you need to look at 3 year BSc or a 4 year MSc/MEng degree.

As far as I can tell what we call CS in the UK is somewhat different from CS in the USA. Admittedly there are some newer universities who claim to have CS courses, but on closer inspection they are Software Engineering courses in disguise, but setting those aside:

In the UK many of the older CS degrees tend to focus on some of the more theoretical topics, e.g. Type theory, Computability, Verification, Compilers and Language Theory. And less on the more practical aspects e.g. Databases, Networking, Internet. This is because usually the older CS degrees were established in maths departments, and those mathematicians who were interested split off into separate departments over the 60s,70s and 80s.

Find any older UK uni's CS offering, and it'll have an "Algorithms and Data structures course" (probably in the first year.) This is where students would learn about things like linked lists, up to Red-Black trees and also learn how to compute the space/time complexity. A typical second/third year course is "computability" i.e results from Turing: TMs, Church: Recursive Fn theory/Lamba Calculus, etc.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that in the UK, the A Level system (ignoring the fact that it has been dumbed down over the years!), still means many UK students entering a CS degree with a good Maths A level have already encountered many of the tools you'd need to cope with a CS degree. I.e. it's assumed knowledge and there's no need to go teaching MacLaurin series to analyse limits, because it was covered at ages 16-18.

Just a Brit's opinions

[galois_uk]

Ha, as a disclaimer I should also say I have a CS degree from a UK uni