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C00002 00002	Professor Lynn Arthur Steen
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Professor Lynn Arthur Steen
Department of Mathematics
St. Olaf College,
Northfield, Minnesota 55057

Dear Professor Steen:

	This concerns your ``Renewing Undergraduate Mathematics'' in the
August {\it Notices of the American Mathematical Society}.

	I was struck by your classifying computer scientists with
statisticians, school teachers, physicians, economists and business
executives rather than with engineers, physicists and mathematicians.
In my opinion, the fraction of mathematics needed in the undergraduate
education of a computer scientist is at least comparable to that
required by an engineer or physicist.  Moreover, I expect this requirement
to increase as computer science becomes more mathematical, i.e. as
more computer science problems develop  important relevant mathematics.
My own field, artificial intelligence, is developing more and more
dependence on advanced mathematical logic.  Indeed it is pushing
logicians into the new domain of formalized non-monotonic reasoning,
which originated in AI but which depends on model theory for its
further development.

	The undergraduate education of a computer scientist should
include mathematical logic (predicate calculus, elementary model
theory, elementary recursion theory, axiomatic set theory) and also
some abstract algebra (groups, rings, fields and linear algebra).
Calculus is also required, but the emphasis on analysis required
by engineers and physicists would be misplaced for most computer
scientists.  I hope that when mathematicians consider undergraduate
education they will consider computer science as one of their
major educational clients.

Sincerely,