For a second straight year, the winner of the U.S. Teacher of the Year, is a University of Washington graduate. Of course I'm not supposed to say that, as not bragging is an sacred northwest tradition. (Did you know that...
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Posted on May 10, 2008 3:13 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks• View blog reactions
Last week, in the class I'm teaching, we talked about the basics of deterministic finite automata. In week two we moved on to more interesting and slightly less basic material. In particular we introduced the notion of a nondeterministic finite...
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Posted on April 11, 2008 6:36 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks• View blog reactions
This quarter I am teaching CSE 322: Introduction to Formal Models in Computer Science. Good fun. As part of my teaching I am LaTeXing up lecture notes from the class, which follow closely the book we are using, Sipser's "Introduction...
Posted on April 5, 2008 10:03 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks• View blog reactions
...realizing that the class you are teaching for the first time this quarter ends on the half hour, not the hour, and therefore the fact that you are rushing through the material must seem extremely amusing to the students who...
Posted on March 31, 2008 5:37 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks• View blog reactions
Addition, for me, is intimately connected up with my concept of a number. When I think of numbers in my head, I often think of the number in connection with its constituent parts, and when I divide these parts up...
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Posted on December 7, 2007 2:03 PM • 47 Comments • 0 TrackBacks• View blog reactions
...is finding a homework stuck to my door, with duck tape, along with the note "Gone to Mt. Baker" (Mt. Baker is a local ski area.) Actually this reminds me of a policy I've always wanted to try: require every...
Posted on November 30, 2007 4:20 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks• View blog reactions
Dave Bacon is a theoretical ski bum who is also an assistant research professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. His research is on quantum computing, his scientific passions extend to everything in physics, mathematics, computer science and beyond, and his personal pleasures include making wine, playing poker, skiing, camping, and daydreaming (although not all of those at the same time.)
