No prerequisites for the course. The class will be self-contained, although a certain level of mathematical sophistication might be helpful.
There will be a total of 20 lectures.
The only assignment is a project, which will include a midterm progress report, as well as a final oral presentation.
One required text, Introduction to Lattices and Order, available from the ASUC bookstore.
A list of references is available.
Throughout the semester, we will carefully develop a glossary of terms for this course. Since there are no universally agreed upon definitions for many of these terms, be aware that our glossary may not make sense to anyone outside of the class. The terms we defined today were ontology, transformational systems, interactive systems, reactive systems, and concurrency. The definitions can be found in the glossary.
Points of discussion:
One must also define what constitutes the "environment" of a system. It is often up to the designer to choose where to draw the line between "system" and "environment." The measure of "speed" depends on the chosen environment.
Example: How does using the telephone differ from email?
Example: Scheduling a meeting via telephone vs. email. Here, time plays a role 1) in relative ordering, 2) as an absolute deadline, and 3) as a finite resource to be allocated.
In the specification of systems, one should avoid overmodeling. Don't specify properties that may be irrelevant to the behavior of the system. For example, do not specify that two communicating parties need a common notion of time if it is not necessary. It is easier to later refine an overly simplistic model than to simplify a complex one.