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SUMMARY:The long road from ideas to bits and back: a traveller's guide to 
 verifiable computational research - Konrad Hinsen
DTSTART:20170321T133000Z
DTEND:20170321T143000Z
UID:TALK71541@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Matthew Danish
DESCRIPTION:The translation of a scientific question into bit patterns in 
 a\n            computer's memory involves many steps\, as does the back-tr
 anslation\n            of the results of a computation into scientific ins
 ight. Each step\n            is a potential source of mistakes\, and thus 
 requires some form of\n            verification before we can trust its co
 rrectness. In this talk\, I\n            will outline appropriate verifica
 tion approaches for each step\,\n            which range from purely human
  efforts\, in particular the critical\n            inspection of formulas 
 and program source code\, to fully mechanical\n            procedures such
  as type or unit checking. I will also adopt a\n            long-term pers
 pective\, focusing on the tools\, procedures\, and\n            teaching c
 urricula that we ought to develop in order to establish a\n            tru
 stworthy verification chain for computational science\, even if\n         
    they require a change of habits compared to today's state of the\n     
        art. In particular\, I will argue for the necessity to develop\n   
          digital scientific notations as the main human-computer interface
  of\n            computer-aided research.\n\nIn the course of this discuss
 ion\, I will also try to shed some light\n            on a few long-standi
 ng mysteries in computational science: Why is\n            testing floatin
 g-point code so difficult? Why is it so hard to make\n            scientif
 ic computations reproducible?  Why is there less use of\n            stati
 c type checking in science\, despite it being considered\n            evid
 ently beneficial in computer science?  Why do we trust\n            comput
 ations uncritically\, even though we witness the unreliability\n          
   of computing technology in daily life?
LOCATION:FW26
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