How to Think like a Parrot

Think Python - How to Think Like a Computer Scientist

From "Think Like a Vertex" to "Think Like a Graph"

To meet the challenge of processing rapidly growing graph and network data created by modern applications, a number of distributed graph processing systems have emerged, such as Pregel and GraphLab. All these systems divide input graphs into partitions, and employ a “think like a vertex” programming model to support iterative graph computation. This vertex-centric model is easy to program and h...

Think Like a Rat

Since 1971 when the results of single electrode recordings of neurons with “place fields” were first documented, scientists have produced an enormous body of research in an attempt to understand these small but significant components of the rat brain. This research has confirmed that after a rat has gained familiarity with a simple test environment, a neuron will respond strongly and selectivel...

Think like a bacterium

Introduction We must, albeit reluctantly, dismiss the naive but comforting myth of the bacterial cell as a simple loner: a self-contained bag of uncompartmentalized enzymes, so exquisitely uncomplicated as to be understood outright and considered passé in this new millennium—a biological beaker for examining the more complicated eukaryotic versions of life. The recent EURESCO Conference on Bact...

How to Think About Algorithms

Thinking: Students are very good at learning how to apply a concrete code to a concrete input instance. They tend, however, to find it difficult to think abstractly about the algorithms. I maintain that the more abstractions a person has from which to view the problem, the deeper his understanding of it will be, the more tools he will have at his disposal, and the better prepared he will be to ...