Comments on: Why we owe it all to Alan Turing

By: Ian Watson

Ian Watson — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 04:16:20 +0000

The UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an official apology for the appalling way he was treated by the UK establishment. You can read the full text here: http://goo.gl/Vn8Ab It’s quite moving.

By: Bobbie Johnson

Bobbie Johnson — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 09:26:09 +0000

An editing error – now fixed, thanks.

By: Nitin Borwankar

Nitin Borwankar — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 19:16:48 +0000

The 1936 paper title seems to have been truncated ““On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem”
more on that – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem

By: projectzme

projectzme — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 16:43:45 +0000

Reblogged this on projectzme and commented: Tragic story from a time not so far in the past.

By: bayesrules

bayesrules — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 23:04:04 +0000

I second this recommendation. It is a very interesting podcast.

I just realized that it was just 50 years ago, when Turing would have been 50 had he lived, that I wrote and tested a Turing machine simulator on the IBM 1620. This was an ideal machine for this task as its memory model consisted of a long addressable sequence of digits, much like the tape on a Turing machine. We used this program to investigate Tibor Rado’s “Busy Beaver Game.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_beaver

Rado had come to my undergraduate institution, Wesleyan, and had given a course on computability and Turing machines.

By: bayesrules

bayesrules — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 22:51:54 +0000

The title of Turing’s seminal article got truncated in the above article. It should be “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem”

By: Sam Mellon

Sam Mellon — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 17:31:43 +0000

Thanks Dan for the wonderful article! It has been sometime since college, and thinking of Turing machines. And great to see you tying it effortlessly to the modern day tablet with the artwork. Enjoyed the read!

By: felix

felix — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 13:28:26 +0000

Re Turing’s death – this on the BBC this morning:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092

By: sguengerich

sguengerich — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 12:46:13 +0000

There is an outstanding 17-minute segment on Radiolab about Turing that really is a must-listen. Highly recommended: http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2012/mar/19/turing-problem/

By: iivo

iivo — Sat, 23 Jun 2012 12:21:28 +0000

thanks for sharing this little tidbit, it made for interesting weekend read.