TITLE: The Importance of Giving Credit in Context
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: April 16, 2019  3:40 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
From James Propp's
<A HREF="https://mathenchant.wordpress.com/2017/08/16/prof-engels-marvelously-improbable-machines/">
   Prof. Engel's Marvelously Improbable Machines</A>:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
 Chip-firing has been rediscovered independently in three different
 academic communities: mathematics, physics, and computer science.
 However, its original discovery by Engel is in the field of math
 education, and I strongly feel that Engel deserves credit for
 having been the first to slide chips around following these sorts
 of rules.  This isn't just for Engel's sake as an individual; it's
 also for the sake of the kind of work that Engel did, blending his
 expertise in mathematics with his experience in the classroom.  We
 often think of mathematical sophistication as something that leads
 practitioners to create concepts that can only be understood by
 experts, but at the highest reaches of mathematical research,
 there's a love of clarity that sees the pinnacle of sophistication
 as being the achievement of hard-won simplicity in settings where
 before there was only complexity.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

 First of all, Petri nets!  I encountered Petri nets for the first
 time in a computer architecture course, probably as a master's
 student, and it immediately became my favorite thing about the
 course.  I was never much into hardware and architecture, but
 Petri nets showed me a connection back to graph theory, which
 I loved.  Later, I studied
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2009-11.html#e2009-11-11T13_08_28.htm">
   how to apply temporal logic</A>
 to modeling hardware and found another way to appreciate my
 architecture courses.

 But I really love the point that Propp makes in this paragraph
 and the section it opens.  Most people think of research and
 teaching as being different sort of activities.  But the kind of
 thinking one does in one often crosses over into the other.  The
 sophistication that researchers have and use help us make sense
 of complex ideas and, at their best, help us communicate that
 understanding to a wide audience, not just to researchers at the
 same level of sophistication.  The focus that teachers put on
 communicating challenging ideas to relative novices can encourage
 us to seek new formulations for a complex idea and ways to
 construct more complex ideas out of the new formulations.
 Sometimes, that can lead to an insight we can use in research.

 In recent years, my research has benefited a couple times from
 trying to explain and demonstrate concatenative programming, as
 in Forth and Joy, to my undergraduate students.  These haven't
 been breakthroughs of the sort that Engel made with his probability
 machines, but they've certainly help me grasp in new ways ideas
 I'd been struggling with.

 Propp argues convincingly that it's important that we tell stories
 like Engel's and recognize that his breakthrough came as a result
 of his work in the classroom.  This might encourage more
 researchers to engage as deeply with their teaching as with their
 research.  Everyone will benefit.

 Do you know any examples similar to the one Propp relates, but in
 the field of computer science?  If so, I would love to hear about
 them.  Drop me a line via
<A HREF="mailto:wallingf@cs.uni.edu">
   email</A>
 or
<A HREF="https://twitter.com/wallingf">
   Twitter</A>.

 Oh, and if you like Petri nets, probability, or fun stories about
 teaching, do read Propp's entire piece.  It's good fun and quite
 informative.
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