![[IMAGE (:-) ]](me.jpg)
Mackinac Hall, room 2239
School
of Computing & Information Systems
(C.I.S.)
Grand Valley State University
(G.V.S.U.)
Allendale, MI 49401-9403
(616) 331-2915
Previously, Hugh McGuire was a Lecturer, i.e. an instructor, in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California at Santa Barbara (U.C.S.B.). For a couple of years, in connection with this position of Lecturer, Hugh McGuire served as Undergraduate Academic Advisor.
Prior to that, Hugh McGuire was a Postgraduate Researcher for Professor Laura Dillon at U.C.S.B., researching specification and validation of concurrent software-systems, using graphical interval temporal logic.
In June, 1995, Hugh McGuire completed his doctoral studies in Computer Science at Stanford University, earning a Ph.D. with Distinction in Teaching. He taught several courses, including "Concurrent Programming" and "Unix Systems-Programming and C", and he also worked as a teaching-assistant for many courses. The subject of his dissertation was Temporal Logic, applicable to verification of concurrent systems, but Cognitive Science (involving 'Artificial Intelligence') also interests him. In 1985 he earned his A.B. cum laude from Harvard College, where he concentrated in Mathematics. In 1982, he transferred to Harvard from Deep Springs College. (Deep Springs is a two-dozen-student two-year liberal arts college whose campus is also a ranch. Students participate in the ranch-work and college-administration — e.g. one student is a member of the board of trustees — while they do normal college courses. Click here for more material such as pictures of Deep Springs.)
Hugh has been a member of The Mathematical Association of America since he was 17, and he is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (with specialized membership in SIGCSE, the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education).
Hugh spent one year during high school as an exchange-student in France, where he became fluent in French.
For a curriculum vitae more formal than the preceding biographical sketch, click here.
Interests
(pursued/indulged depending on the season and how much
time I have free):
Games such as
Pictionary, Taboo,
social bridge, and chess;
science-fiction;
comic-books (most recently, French ones such as "Astérix" and "Tintin");
"ultimate" frisbee
(click here for general material);
recreational mathematics
(I've been doing this since the beginning of high school;
the last few
Mathematics
Magazine problems solved by me
include #1438, #1454, and #1456);
and
week-long backpacking-trips in
places like
California's High Sierra Nevada mountains —
click here for a few pictures.
(Click here for an article re not watching television
much. Not that I'm really against watching television;
but it is true that I don't watch it much.)
I lean toward living healthily, preserving the environment, community-participation including voting, and such.
Click here to see about my family's pets.
The Greeks knew little archaeology.: commentary in Plato: The Republic, translated by Desmond Lee.
Locke established the point very firmly, by articulating his notion [...] with forthright bluntness, by working the concept into a comprehensive 'philosophy', and by getting his work so widely read.
: "The Emergence of Representation", in Thinking Machines -- The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence, by Vernon Pratt.
Why people should be generally interested in games like chess remains, as I say, though much speculated upon, unsettled.
: "The Advent of Artificial Intelligence", in Thinking Machines -- The Evolution of Artificial Intelligence, by Vernon Pratt.
I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good.
: "Higher Laws", in Walden, by Henry David Thoreau.
Hilbert "once had a student in mathematics who stopped coming to his lectures, and was finally told that the young man had gone off to become a poet. Hilbert is reported to have remarked, 'I never thought he had enough imagination to be a mathematician.'"
: Polya Picture Album, by George Polya, according to the Stanford University Archives.
This is the point of Russell's epigram: pure mathematics is the subject in which we do not know what we are talking about, or whether what we are saying is true.
: "The Problem of Consistency", in Godel's Proof, by Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman.
[Consider] omega, and omega+, and (omega+)+, and so on ad infinitum...
: Naive Set Theory, by Paul Halmos.
The ultimate purpose of life is to keep alive. But only madmen ask why.
: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance -- An Inquiry into Values, by Robert M. Pirsig.
That was Bach -- of course.: a disc-jockey for radio-station KKHI (which played classical music), 1989.
That's what philosophy and logic teach you: if you think too long about anything you get confused.
: lecture by John Mitchell, 1990.
The saying that "for every epsilon there is a delta" [...] is really rather romantic, when you think about it.
: "Epsilon Sandwiches", by Herbert Wilf, 1996.
" "
: Marcel Marceau
I use 'Post-It'(® 3M?) Notes. Click here for some material re them.
During the winter, eastern bluebirds perch on the 'ornamental' cherry tree a few feet away from my house's dining room window to eat the fruits. Click here to listen to the song of this species of bird.
"The Tragedy of the Commons"
by Garrett Hardin.
Abstract:
The population problem has no technical solution; it requires a fundamental
extension in morality.
The author was professor of biology, University of California, Santa
Barbara. This article is based on a presidential address presented before
the meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science at Utah State University, Logan, 25 June 1968.
Extensions of "The Tragedy of the Commons" by Garrett Hardin.
"The trouble with em 'n en"
by Peter K. Sheerin about
hyphens, dashes, spaces and other punctuation.
Published by
A List Apart,
for people who make websites
.
Occasionally people ask me about differences between where I am now and famous places I've been such as Harvard and Stanford. Click here for a Newsweek article involving such matters.
A couple of things I might change in the C family of languages
(including ANSI C, C++, Java, whatever) are:
[1] I'd have the assignment-operator be ":=",
not "=",
and
[2] I'd switch the precedences of the comparison-operators
("==" etc.) and the bitwise operators
so that code such as
"if( val & MASK == BIT_PATTERN )" would
do what makes more sense.
"Some of the operators have the wrong precedence."
--
The C Programming Language,
by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie,
i.e. the source(s) of C/C++/Java.
Top Ten Ways to Tell if You
Have a Sucky Home Page
Other elements of Web-design that I dislike are as follows:
One of my wife's cousins was
a young woman,
20 years old,
healthy,
beautiful with long blond hair,
working and also attending college,
friendly,
close to her family,
and
with a boyfriend.
But she died because a drunk driver hit her.
The drunk driver had only some minor cuts and bruises and was charged with
manslaughter, for which the penalty was nominally ten years in prison.
Regardless, that cousin of my wife is gone.
Drinking alcohol is not necessarily bad, nor is driving.
But clearly it is bad to
make oneself incapable of properly
controlling what may be construed as a mobile weapon,
and then start using it.
