An approach to software design that introduces a fully automated analysis giving designers immediate feedback, now featuring the latest version of the Alloy language. In Software Abstractions Daniel Jackson introduces an approach to software design that draws on traditional formal methods but exploits automated tools to find flaws as early as possible. This approach—which Jackson calls “lightweight formal methods” or “agile modeling”—takes from formal specification the idea of a precise and expressive notation based on a tiny core of simple and robust concepts but replaces conventional analysis based on theorem proving with a fully automated analysis that gives designers immediate feedback. Jackson has developed Alloy, a language that captures the essence of software abstractions simply and succinctly, using a minimal toolkit of mathematical notions. This revised edition updates the text, examples, and appendixes to be fully compatible with Alloy 4.
Cutting-edge historians explore ideas, communities, and technologies around modern computing to explore how computers mediate social relations. Computers have been framed both as a mirror for the human mind and as an irreducible other that humanness is defined against, depending on different historical definitions of "humanness." They can serve both liberation and control because some people's freedom has historically been predicated on controlling others. Historians of computing return again and again to these contradictions, as they often reveal deeper structures. Using twin frameworks of abstraction and embodiment, a reformulation of the old mind-body dichotomy, this anthology examines how social relations are enacted in and through computing. The authors examining "Abstraction" revisit central concepts in computing, including "algorithm," "program," "clone," and "risk." In doing so, they demonstrate how the meanings of these terms reflect power relations and social identities. The section on "Embodiments" focuses on sensory aspects of using computers as well as the ways in which gender, race, and other identities have shaped the opportunities and embodied experiences of computer workers and users. Offering a rich and diverse set of studies in new areas, the book explores such disparate themes as disability, the influence of the punk movement, working mothers as technical innovators, and gaming behind the Iron Curtain. Abstractions and Embodiments reimagines computing history by questioning canonical interpretations, foregrounding new actors and contexts, and highlighting neglected aspects of computing as an embodied experience. It makes the profound case that both technology and the body are culturally shaped and that there can be no clear distinction between social, intellectual, and technical aspects of computing. Contributors: Janet Abbate, Marc Aidinoff, Troy Kaighin Astarte, Ekaterina Babinsteva, André Brock, Maarten Bullynck, Jiahui Chan, Gerardo Con Diaz, Liesbeth De Mol, Stephanie Dick, Kelcey Gibbons, Elyse Graham, Michael J. Halvorson, Mar Hicks, Scott Kushner, Xiaochang Li, Zachary Loeb, Lisa Nakamura, Tiffany Nichols, Laine Nooney, Elizabeth Petrick, Cierra Robson, Hallam Stevens, Jaroslav Švelch
CONCRETE ABSTRACTIONS offers students a hands-on, abstraction-based experience of thinking like a computer scientist. This text covers the basics of programming and data structures, and gives first-time computer science students the opportunity to not only write programs, but to prove theorems and analyze algorithms as well. Students learn a variety of programming styles, including functional programming, assembly-language programming, and object-oriented programming (OOP). While most of the book uses the Scheme programming language, Java is introduced at the end as a second example of an OOP system and to demonstrate concepts of concurrent programming.
Abstraction is a fundamental mechanism underlying both human and artificial perception, representation of knowledge, reasoning and learning. This mechanism plays a crucial role in many disciplines, notably Computer Programming, Natural and Artificial Vision, Complex Systems, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Art, and Cognitive Sciences. This book first provides the reader with an overview of the notions of abstraction proposed in various disciplines by comparing both commonalities and differences. After discussing the characterizing properties of abstraction, a formal model, the KRA model, is presented to capture them. This model makes the notion of abstraction easily applicable by means of the introduction of a set of abstraction operators and abstraction patterns, reusable across different domains and applications. It is the impact of abstraction in Artificial Intelligence, Complex Systems and Machine Learning which creates the core of the book. A general framework, based on the KRA model, is presented, and its pragmatic power is illustrated with three case studies: Model-based diagnosis, Cartographic Generalization, and learning Hierarchical Hidden Markov Models.
It has been recognized since the inception of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that abstractions, problem reformulations, and approximations (AR&A) are central to human common sense reasoning and problem solving and to the ability of systems to reason effectively in complex domains. AR&A techniques have been used to solve a variety of tasks, including automatic programming, constraint satisfaction, design, diagnosis, machine learning, search, planning, reasoning, game playing, scheduling, and theorem proving. The primary purpose of AR&A techniques in such settings is to overcome computational intractability. In addition, AR&A techniques are useful for accelerating learning and for summarizing sets of solutions. This volume contains the proceedings of SARA 2002, the fifth Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation, and Approximation, held at Kananaskis Mountain Lodge, Kananaskis Village, Alberta (Canada), August 2 4, 2002. The SARA series is the continuation of two separate threads of workshops: AAAI workshops in 1990 and 1992, and an ad hoc series beginning with the "Knowledge Compilation" workshop in 1986 and the "Change of Representation and Inductive Bias" workshop in 1988 with followup workshops in 1990 and 1992. The two workshop series merged in 1994 to form the first SARA. Subsequent SARAs were held in 1995, 1998, and 2000.
This book explores the development of abstraction from the moment of its declaration around 1912 to its establishment as the foundation of avant-garde practice in the mid-1920s. The book brings together many of the most influential works in abstractions early history to draw a cross-media portrait of this watershed moment in which traditional art was reinvented in a wholesale way. Works are presented in groups that serve as case studies, each engaging a key topic in abstractions first years: an artist, a movement, an exhibition or thematic concern. Key focal points include Vasily Kandinskys ambitious Compositions V, VI and VII; a selection of Piet Mondrians work that offers a distilled narrative of his trajectory to Neo-plasticism; and all the extant Suprematist pictures that Kazimir Malevich showed in the landmark 0.10 exhibition in 1915.0Exhibition: MoMA, New York, USA (23.12.2012-15.4.2013).
For courses in Java Data Structures. Programming Abstractions in Java: A Client-First Approach Programming Abstractions in Java is intended for use in the second programming course in most college or university curriculum. Stanford University's Eric Roberts employs a novel strategy called the client-first approach while maintaining full coverage of the CS2 curriculum. In the traditional approach, students learn how to use a particular data structure, how to implement it, and what its performance characteristics are--all at the same time. Roberts exposes the weakness of this model. In short, students are trying to understand how a structure is implemented before they have mastered how one would use that structure in an application. With Programming Abstractions in Java and Roberts's client-first approach, students learn how to use the full set of collection classes before they tackle any implementation issues. By tackling compelling, real-world assignments in which they use the collection classes as clients, students gain a firm sense of the underlying data model and how each structure can be used. Once they have had time to master the client-side perspective, students are ready to explore the range of possible implementations and their associated computational characteristics. They can also begin to learn the software development skills so desperately needed in the technology industry today.
Multifaceted in its approach, this text provides a conceptual framework for thinking about, implementing and using data structures. It offers an introduction to C++, with emphasis on data structures, and teaches a modern data abstraction style of programming.
This volume contains the proceedings of the 6th Symposium on Abstraction, Reformulation and Approximation (SARA 2005). The symposium was held at Airth Castle, Scotland, UK, from July 26th to 29th, 2005, just prior to the IJCAI 2005 conference in Edinburgh.
