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Communications of the ACM

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Special message from the presidents of ACM and the IEEE Computer Society: where do parallel lines meet? or the common goals of ACM and the IEEE-CS

In the changing computer world of multiple opportunities, the greatest difficulty lies in deciding which of the many possible dreams to strive for, what goals to set. The IEEE Computer Society and the Association for Computing …

ACM forum


From Washington: The role of the Institute for Computer Sciences and Technology: the role of the institute from computer sciences and technology


A nation at risk: the imperative for educational reform


Self-assessment procedure XI: a self-assessment procedure dealing with one part of early computing history


Human factors guidelines for terminal interface design

This paper provides a set of guidelines for the design of software interfaces for video terminals. It describes how to optimize screen layouts, interactive data entry, and error handling, as well as many practical techniques  …

Natural command names and initial learning: a study of text-editing terms

In the first of two studies of “naturalness” in command names, computer-naive typists composed instructions to “someone else” for correcting a sample text. There was great variety in their task-descriptive lexicon and a lack  …

A hierarchical data structure for multidimensional digital images

A tree data structure for representing multidimensional digital binary images is described. The method is based on recursive subdivision of the d-dimensional space into 2d hyperoctants. An algorithm for constructing the tree  …

The k-distribution of generalized feedback shift register pseudorandom numbers

A necessary and sufficient condition is established for the generalized feedback shift register (GFSR) sequence introduced by Lewis and Payne to be k-distributed. Based upon the theorem, a theoretical test for k-distributivity …

Precision averaging for real-time analysis

An analysis of the computation of the arithmetic mean using only single-precision fixed-point arithmetic is presented. This is done to ease the timing constraints common to many on-line applications. Others have introduced several …