

Is Computer Science a science? [pdf] - mdasen
http://cs.gmu.edu/cne/pjd/PUBS/CACMcols/cacmApr05.pdf

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tokenadult
"In a sample of 400 computer science papers published before 1995, Walter
Tichy found that approximately 50% of those proposing models or hypotheses did
not test them [12]. In other fields of science the fraction of papers with
untested hypotheses was about 10%. Tichy concluded that our failure to test
more allowed many unsound ideas to be tried in practice and lowered the
credibility of our field as a science."

That's quite an important observation for further development of computer
science.

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madmanslitany
I'm not sure if I agree with the author's conclusion, which seems to be that
the newer generations of computer scientists are going to identify less with
its separate sub-domains (science, math, engineering) than with the discipline
as a sort of whole. Typically, I'd expect that undergraduates and graduates
going through universities are going to have their perception of the field
shaped heavily by which of the three sub-domains the university faculty most
closely identifies with. A lot of the major computer science schools do have a
greater emphasis in certain areas--for instance, I went to Cornell, and you
could really feel how much emphasis the school placed on theory (i.e.
mathematics), and that's shaped my impression of what CS really is.

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RK
No.

Science is the study of the natural world and his argument that CS meets this
requirement fails. Think about mathematics. Just because mathematicians are
interested in, say, calculus, and calculus can be used to model physical
phenomena, does not make mathematics a science. CS can be a tool used for
science, just like math, but it in itself is not a science.

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psyklic
Mathematics and CS are formal sciences, which observe and study theoretical
ideas to discover new truths.

Biology and physics are natural sciences, which observe and study the natural
world to discover models of it.

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lallysingh
Funny. My advisor always wants a simulation to back up anything I do. Then
again, any sort of scientific method isn't used until you do research. It's
not taught as a way of operations in classes directly.

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jaytee_clone
I have only worked in machine learning sub-domain of computer science.

People in this field are all about testing hypotheses. This make sense of
course, considering it's data and result oriented.

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gne1963
Totally agree with the conclusions: "The science paradigm has not been part of
the mainstream perception of computer science. But soon it will be."

GNE, BS in Computer Science

