Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
What do computer scientists know about performance?
Scientists make predictions and are judged on these predictions. If you study global warming, then your job is to predict the climate for the next few decades....
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
To solve hard problems, you need to use bricolage
People who think that they can design efficient solutions in the abstract, effectively believe in Oracles. That is, they somehow believe that from their desk, and...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Are 8-bit or 16-bit counters faster than 32-bit counters?
Programmers often want to count things. They typically use 32-bit counters (e.g., the int type in Java). But what if you are counting small numbers? Maybe a 16-bit...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
To succeed, adopt the post-industrial view
From time to time, students ask me wether such degree or certificate in computer science will help them get a good job. There is no shortage of studies showing...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Funding science: When bureaucrats get out of control
Throughout most of the world, scientists are almost entirely dependent on one source of funding: their government. So every few years (or more often), professors...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Picking N distinct numbers at random: how to do it fast?
To test my algorithms, I like to generate synthetic data. To do so, I often need to generate distinct randomly chosen numbers from a range of values. For example...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Privacy and the Internet: Is Facebook evil?
For several of my classes, I open Facebook groups so that my students can exchange online. In some instances, it has worked great. Facebook tends to do a better...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Honey bees are not going extinct
There is much argument about what science is. To some people, it appears to be mostly the belief that information should be derived reputed sources. That is, if...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Big-O notation and real-world performance
Classical Newtonian mechanics is always mathematically consistent. However, Newtonian mechanics assumes that bodies move without friction and that we stay far from...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Should computer scientists run experiments?
Jeffrey Ullman, a famous computer science professor, published an essay pushing back about the need to run experiments in computer science. Apparently, some conference...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Fast integer compression in Java
Last year, we published a fast C++ library to quickly compress and decompress arrays of integers. Out of habit, I ported it to Java and published it under the name...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Staying sharp requires “intellectual gardening”
Gardening requires consistency. A beautiful garden is unstable. Some plants want to expand their reach and kill out the competition. Some plants are simply out...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Hashing and the Birthday paradox: a cautionary tale
If you meet a stranger, the probability that he will have the same birth date as yourself is probably less than 1%. It is roughly 1/365 if you make simplifying...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Meetings are like sex
Meetings are like sex. Everybody thinks that they are good at it… until they ask for the truth. We never have real discussions about it: I did not want to say anything…...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Why I never give straight answers
There are some questions that you should never answer. This is true when you are facing justice, your angry wife, or students. Carl Zimmer, a famous science writer...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Three questions about e-learning in college
Timothy Taylor observes that research about online instruction tells us that online teaching is just as effective as classroom teaching. The main drawback of asynchronous...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Crash course in modern economics
I sometimes find it difficult to understand the financial news. So I have written down some notes to help me understand commonly used terms: Austerity: When a government...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
A criticism of computer science: models or modèles?
I was recently on a review committee for a PhD proposal. The student was brilliant. His proposal sounded deep and engaging. The methodology looked scientific: build...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How to be effective at open source: by programmers, for programmers
Though it does not get much press, one of the great social and technological innovation of the last 30 years has been open source software. To about 90% of the...
From Daniel Lemire's Blog