Tune in. Enjoy. Learn.

Here, Erik interviews John Cook, an applied Mathematician currently working at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Center. R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics (see his Lang.NEXT 2012 session on R here). John is an avid blogger.

Tune in. Meet John and learn more about R and how he uses it to solve real world statistical problems in cancer research. You'll also get insights John's consistent sharing of and musings on a wide variety of technical topics. His blog is exceptional.

Thank you Erik and John for this excellent conversation.

It's been WAY too long since we've had Brian Beckman sharing knowledge, insights and perspectives on Channel 9. This changes now!

Needless to say, I was incredibly happy to spend an hour with Brian learning all about what he's up to these days. Not surprisingly, he's writing code and employing Rx and monads to solve very interesting problems. In this conversation (a code lesson, algorithm survey, a splash of random topical diversion), Brian explains and demonstrates his latest endeavor: implementing the Viterbi algorithm in C#. What's the Viterbi algorithm, Brian? What are hidden Markov models? What are you using this stuff for? Where does Rx fit into this? What's going on? By the way, it's awesome to learn that a Niner has been sharing C# monadic implementations with Brian (state monad, maybe monad).

Of course, no conversation with Brian - a physicist by training and a software architect at Microsoft - is complete without talking about some current physics problem: Finding the elusive Higgs Boson is all the rage these days, so we talk about what it means.

Brian also shares insights on Haskell, functional and hybrid programming languages (C# is imperative, but it provides functional capabilities like LINQ, for example, upon which Rx is built (Rx is LINQ-to-Streams or observable sequences of events, really)...). We also finally discuss his previous work at MS that we never got a chance to talk to him about while he was doing it. Before joining the Bing Mobile team, Brian was working on a project to create a new functional programming language. What was it?

Thank you, Brian!

Happy holidays from Channel 9 wherever you are and whatever, if anything, you're celebrating!


Notes and More:

The code Brian demos (download it, unzip it, launch VS, open the solution, then watch this video and play along): https://github.com/rebcabin/DotNetExtensionsImproved

From Wikipedia - information on Markov and Viterbi:

A hidden Markov model (HMM) is a statistical Markov model in which the system being modeled is assumed to be a Markov process with unobserved (hidden) states

The Viterbi algorithm is a dynamic programming algorithm for finding the most likely sequence of hidden states – called the Viterbi path – that results in a sequence of observed events, especially in the context of Markov information sources, and more generally, hidden Markov models.

Gamers give back

Windows 8 boots fast!

Show me the MATH

Ballmer is bullish on the future

In this video, Peli de Halleux, from the Research in Software Engineering group (RiSE) at Microsoft Research, gives a tutorial using the TouchDevelop editor. Learn how to chart mathematical functions in TouchStudio.

• follow TouchDevelop on Facebook

The Research in Software Engineering team (RiSE) coordinates Microsoft's research in Software Engineering in Redmond, USA.

Each algorithm is a list of well-defined instructions for completing a task. Starting from an initial state, the instructions describe a computation that proceeds through a well-defined series of successive states, eventually terminating in a final ending state. The transition from one state to the next is not necessarily deterministic; some algorithms, known as randomized algorithms, incorporate randomness.

Here, the great Yuri Gurevich, mathematician, computer scientist and inventor of abstract state machines, will teach us about algorithms beginning with this introductory lecture that includes plenty of historical context. This is the first in a series of lectures exploring the fundamental logic that powers all that we as software engineers and computer scientists do in computing--the algorithm. What is an algorithm, exactly? You may be surprised to learn that this is actually not a very simple question...

Find some time to watch this introduction on a truly fascinating topic by one of the world's premiere minds in the field of mathematical logic and algorithms. We designed this to increase in complexity over time, like a typical college course, so Yuri moves slowly through several topics, providing plenty of time for viewers to catch up before moving on to more advanced topics.

Thank you, Yuri, for taking the time to share your extensive knowledge and gentle, kind spirit with Niner nation. We all really appreciate it! Thanks, too, to Karsten and Sampy for being our live audience for this lecture and asking great questions!

See Part 2
See Part 3

Leslie Lamport is a computer scientist and mathematician best known for his work with distributed systems. In fact, Dr. Lamport’s research contributions laid the foundations for the theory of distributed systems. He currently works in Microsoft Research where most of his time is spent developing formal semantics (with mathematical logic) for specifying and reasoning about algorithms.

Here, Dr. Erik Meijer, computer scientist and programming language/library designer, sits down with Dr. Lamport to discuss several aspects of Dr. Lamport's body of work in computer science.

Dr. Lamport's TLA, the Temporal Logic of Actions, is a logic for specifying and reasoning about concurrent and reactive systems. TLA+ is the latest incarnation of this formal specification toolset.

Presenters: Mark Michaelis, Enterprise Software Architect, Itron, Inc.

Mark Michaelis is an Enterprise Software Architect at Itron Inc. Additionally, Mark recently started intelliTechture, a software engineering and consulting company with high end skills in Microsoft VSTS/TFS, BizTalk, SharePoint, and .NET 3.0. Mark also serves as a Chief Software Architect and Trainer for IDesign Inc. Mark holds a BA in philosophy from the University of Illinois and an MS in computer science from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is also recognized by Microsoft as a Regional Directory. Starting in 1996, he has been a Microsoft MVP for C#, Visual Studio Team System, and the Windows SDK. He serves on several Microsoft software design review teams, including C#, the Connected Systems Division and VSTS/TFS. Mark speaks at developer conferences both nationally and internationally and has written several articles and books, in addition to maintaining a blog at http://mark.michaelis.net/Blog/. His most recent book is Essential C# 3.0 (Addison-Wesley, 2008). When not bonding with his computer, Mark is busy with his family or training for the Ironman.

Steve is awesome. 

Check out the Microsoft ISV site for more information about ISVs working with Microsoft.

Have you ever heard of Microsoft Math? It’s a downloadable product for students which features a graphing calculator, formula & equations library, triangle solver, unit conversion tool, and more. Math is pretty affordable at only $14.95 (U.S.), but that’s not the free Math download I’m referring to in this blog post’s title. The free download I’m talking about is a Microsoft Math add-in for Word 2007 users. This add-in lets Word handle things that you may have thought only Excel was capable of doing. With the Math add-in, for example, you can create graphs, perform calculations, and solve for variables – and all from within Word. You can even plot elements in 2-D and 3-D. This is great for those who are writing research papers on mathematical subjects, for teachers who are creating study guides for students, as well as anyone else who needs to do some math in Word. But you won’t find this free add-in on the Microsoft Math homepage, though – you’ll need to go straight to this page on the Microsoft Download Center site instead.

But there was something else Rick talked about this morning that has far more profound implications for our industry, and certainly for our country. He reported that only about 1 in 100 college freshman today are selecting computer science and engineering as a major, a trend that has been on a downward spiral for the last several years and has reached its lowest point ever. In my own travels I’ve been hearing colleagues, and deans of medical schools, bemoaning the quality and quantity of young people seeking careers in medicine today. Yet surprisingly both fields, IT and medicine, are forecasted to be leading industries for new job creation far into the future. Clearly, the number of jobs will far outstrip the supply of qualified candidates.

What's going on here? Somehow I think we are failing to instill a work ethic in our youth. Perhaps I can't blame them when all they see on television, magazines and the Net are glorifications of the rich and famous among us; movie icons, sports stars, rockers, rappers, instant celebrities and wanna-be's. Math and science are hard. It takes time to build a fortune the old fashioned way. Who wouldn't want to rake in millions for singing on the radio, blasting a home run, or acting on the silver screen? But you need only watch American Idol to confront the hard fact that the odds of that happening are solidly stacked against you. It's also interesting to note that even those American Idols generally got there by working very very hard, and often for many years in poverty and total obscurity, before hitting it big.

Yes, majoring in computer science is hard. Becoming a doctor is perhaps even harder. There are years of self sacrifice, delayed gratification, and countless hours studying and taking tests. But doing anything really worthwhile in life takes an equal amount of effort. That's why they call it "work". It's a message that seems to be getting lost on an entire generation of young people. And, it's a loss for which we will all pay dearly.

What do you think? Let us know.

Bill Crounse, MD          Worldwide Health Director            Microsoft