Lab Lunch: 16 October 2018 - He Sun

Title: Teaching Theoretical Foundations in Agda

Abstract:

Teaching theoretical computer science in an innovative manner is important to ensure that every student in Informatics is equipped with necessary knowledge in computation, and attract the most mathematically talented students to work towards a PhD in TCS. While the structures of many computer science courses have been significantly changed over the years through large projects and ACM/ICPC-like Black-Box tests for coursework, adjusting the structure of theory courses is significantly more challenging due to the mathematical background involved.

 In this Lab lunch, I will share with you my experience of co-teaching the course titled “Great Ideas in Theoretical Computer Science” with Kurt Mehlhorn at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in 2013 and 2014. By presenting the course content, evaluation methodology, students’ feedbacks, as well as my personal opinion about the pros and cons of the course, I hope this will bring us some discussions of running a similar course in our School, or a reading group among the PhD students within LFCS.