Introduction: What is Experimental Computer Science?

• "Many widely known computer enhancements trace their origins to ECSE research": RISC, window systems, relational databases

• "ECSE ... studies phenomena that are entirely the product of human creation. Many interesting computational phenomena -- processes, algorithms, or mechanisms that manipulate or transform information -- are too complex to understand on the basis of direct analysis from first principles.

  For example, an algorithm may have many complicated states, or a process may involve time-dependent interactions of many subprocesses. For all practical purposes, such complex phenomena can be understood only on the basis of empirical observation.

  Thus ECSE refers to the creation of, or the experimentation with or on, computational artifacts, such as hardware, software (e.g., text editors), graphic images, animation, robots, or benchmark suites."

• Role of artifacts in ECSE:

  1. proof of performance
  2. proof of concept
  3. proof of existence (demonstrate new phenomena)

• "...an experiment in ECSE generally does not verify a prediction from experimental CS"