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154-452: Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as star (as, for example, in the A* search algorithm or C*-algebra ). An asterisk is usually five- or six-pointed in print and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten, though more complex forms exist. Its most common use is to call out a footnote . It is also often used to censor offensive words. In computer science , the asterisk

308-699: A major league produced the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players , which lasted from 1871 to 1875. The now all-professional Chicago "White Stockings" (today the Chicago Cubs ), financed by businessman William Hulbert , became a charter member of the league along with a new Red Stockings club (now the Atlanta Braves ), formed in Boston with four former Cincinnati players. The Chicagos were close contenders all season, despite

462-585: A discipline, computer science spans a range of topics from theoretical studies of algorithms and the limits of computation to the practical issues of implementing computing systems in hardware and software. CSAB , formerly called Computing Sciences Accreditation Board—which is made up of representatives of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE CS) —identifies four areas that it considers crucial to

616-753: A distinct academic discipline in the 1950s and early 1960s. The world's first computer science degree program, the Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science , began at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory in 1953. The first computer science department in the United States was formed at Purdue University in 1962. Since practical computers became available, many applications of computing have become distinct areas of study in their own rights. Although first proposed in 1956,

770-515: A large asterisk that lines up with the other mathematical operators, sitting on the math centerline rather than on the text baseline. A Star of Life , a six-bar asterisk overlaid with the Rod of Asclepius (the symbol of health), may be used as an alternative to cross or crescent symbols on ambulances. In many scientific publications, the asterisk is employed as a shorthand to denote the statistical significance of results when testing hypotheses . When

924-464: A mathematical discipline argue that computer programs are physical realizations of mathematical entities and programs that can be deductively reasoned through mathematical formal methods . Computer scientists Edsger W. Dijkstra and Tony Hoare regard instructions for computer programs as mathematical sentences and interpret formal semantics for programming languages as mathematical axiomatic systems . A number of computer scientists have argued for

1078-443: A mathematics emphasis and with a numerical orientation consider alignment with computational science . Both types of departments tend to make efforts to bridge the field educationally if not across all research. Despite the word science in its name, there is debate over whether or not computer science is a discipline of science, mathematics, or engineering. Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon argued in 1975, Computer science

1232-463: A network while using concurrency, this is known as a distributed system. Computers within that distributed system have their own private memory, and information can be exchanged to achieve common goals. This branch of computer science aims to manage networks between computers worldwide. Computer security is a branch of computer technology with the objective of protecting information from unauthorized access, disruption, or modification while maintaining

1386-550: A number of terms for the practitioners of the field of computing were suggested in the Communications of the ACM — turingineer , turologist , flow-charts-man , applied meta-mathematician , and applied epistemologist . Three months later in the same journal, comptologist was suggested, followed next year by hypologist . The term computics has also been suggested. In Europe, terms derived from contracted translations of

1540-504: A parenthesis: CSS also uses the slash-star comment format. Each computing language has its own way of handling comments; /* ... */ and similar notations are not universal. The asterisk was a supported symbol on the IBM 026 Keypunch (introduced in 1949 and used to create punch cards with data for early computer systems). It was also included in the FIELDATA character encoding and

1694-495: A particular kind of mathematically based technique for the specification , development and verification of software and hardware systems. The use of formal methods for software and hardware design is motivated by the expectation that, as in other engineering disciplines, performing appropriate mathematical analysis can contribute to the reliability and robustness of a design. They form an important theoretical underpinning for software engineering, especially where safety or security

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1848-519: A plan to maintain their independence. On September 5, 1901, Eastern League president Patrick T. Powers announced the formation of the second National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues , the NABPL (NA). These leagues did not consider themselves "minor"—a term that did not come into vogue until St. Louis Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey pioneered the farm system in the 1930s. Nevertheless, these financially troubled leagues, by beginning

2002-497: A professional category for the 1869 season. Clubs desiring to pay players were now free to declare themselves professional . The Cincinnati Red Stockings were the first to declare themselves openly professional, and were aggressive in recruiting the best available players. Twelve clubs, including most of the strongest clubs in the NABBP, ultimately declared themselves professional for the 1869 season. The first attempt at forming

2156-404: A proper noun. See this example from W. Perrett's 1921 transcription of Gottfried Keller's Das Fähnlein der sieben Aufrechten : This convention is no longer usual. The asterisk has many uses in mathematics . The following list highlights some common uses and is not exhaustive. The asterisk is used in all branches of mathematics to designate a correspondence between two quantities denoted by

2310-471: A rebellion by players against the hated " reserve clause ", which restricted the free movement of players between clubs. Competitive leagues formed regularly, and disbanded just as regularly. The most successful of these was the American Association of 1882–1891, sometimes called the "beer and whiskey league" for its tolerance of the sale of alcoholic beverages to spectators. For several years,

2464-433: A runner out by hitting the runner with the thrown ball, as in the common schoolyard game of kickball . The Knickerbocker Rules required fielders to tag or force the runner. The new rules also introduced base paths, foul lines and foul balls; in "town ball" every batted ball was fair, as in cricket , and the lack of runner's lanes led to wild chases around the infield. Initially, Wheaton and Tucker's innovations did not serve

2618-726: A series of rival leagues were organized but failed (most notably the American Base Ball Association (1882–1891), which spawned the clubs which would ultimately become the Cincinnati Reds , Pittsburgh Pirates , St. Louis Cardinals and Brooklyn Dodgers ), the current American League (AL), evolving from the minor Western League of 1893, was established in 1901. In 1870, a schism developed between professional and amateur ballplayers. The NABBP split into two groups. The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players operated from 1871 through 1875 and

2772-512: A significant amount of computer science does not involve the study of computers themselves. Because of this, several alternative names have been proposed. Certain departments of major universities prefer the term computing science , to emphasize precisely that difference. Danish scientist Peter Naur suggested the term datalogy , to reflect the fact that the scientific discipline revolves around data and data treatment, while not necessarily involving computers. The first scientific institution to use

2926-454: A single asterisk for reconstructed thirteenth century Chinese and a double asterisk for reconstructions of older Ancient Chinese or a double asterisk for proto- Popolocan and a single asterisk for intermediary forms). In other cases, the double asterisk denotes a form that would be expected according to a rule, but is not actually found. That is, it indicates a reconstructed form that is not found or used, and in place of which another form

3080-410: A specific application. Codes are used for data compression , cryptography , error detection and correction , and more recently also for network coding . Codes are studied for the purpose of designing efficient and reliable data transmission methods. Data structures and algorithms are the studies of commonly used computational methods and their computational efficiency. Programming language theory

3234-493: A truly national organization, although most of the strongest clubs remained those based in the country's northeastern part. In its 12-year history as an amateur league, the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn won seven championships, establishing themselves as the first true dynasty in the sport. However, Mutual of New York was widely considered one of the best teams of the era. By the end of 1865 , almost 100 clubs were members of

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3388-400: A unit price which would be equal to $ 110 today. In contrast, modern baseballs purchased in bulk as is the case with professional teams cost about seven dollars each as of 2021 and thus make up a negligible portion of a modern MLB team's operating budget. Due to the much larger relative cost, club owners in the early 20th century were reluctant to spend much money on new balls if not necessary. It

3542-415: Is a branch of computer science that deals with the design, implementation, analysis, characterization, and classification of programming languages and their individual features . It falls within the discipline of computer science, both depending on and affecting mathematics, software engineering, and linguistics . It is an active research area, with numerous dedicated academic journals. Formal methods are

3696-416: Is a common misconception that Jackie Robinson was the first African-American major-league ballplayer; he was actually only the first after a long gap (and the first in the modern era). Moses Fleetwood Walker and his brother Weldy Walker were unceremoniously dropped from major and minor-league rosters in the 1880s, as were other African-Americans in baseball. An unknown number of African-Americans played in

3850-422: Is an empirical discipline. We would have called it an experimental science, but like astronomy, economics, and geology, some of its unique forms of observation and experience do not fit a narrow stereotype of the experimental method. Nonetheless, they are experiments. Each new machine that is built is an experiment. Actually constructing the machine poses a question to nature; and we listen for the answer by observing

4004-484: Is an open problem in the theory of computation. Information theory, closely related to probability and statistics , is related to the quantification of information. This was developed by Claude Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and communicating data. Coding theory is the study of the properties of codes (systems for converting information from one form to another) and their fitness for

4158-479: Is associated in the popular mind with robotic development , but the main field of practical application has been as an embedded component in areas of software development , which require computational understanding. The starting point in the late 1940s was Alan Turing's question " Can computers think? ", and the question remains effectively unanswered, although the Turing test is still used to assess computer output on

4312-490: Is cited as first using the asterisk for linguistic purposes, specifically for unattested forms that are linguistic reconstructions . Using the asterisk for descriptive and not just historical purposes arose in the 20th century. By analogy with its use in historical linguistics, the asterisk was variously prepended to "hypothetical" or "unattested" elements in modern language. Its usage also expanded to include "non-existent" or "impossible" forms. Leonard Bloomfield (1933) uses

4466-416: Is commonly used as a wildcard character , or to denote pointers , repetition, or multiplication . The asterisk was already in use as a symbol in ice age cave paintings . There is also a two-thousand-year-old character used by Aristarchus of Samothrace called the asteriskos , ※ , which he used when proofreading Homeric poetry to mark lines that were duplicated. Origen is known to have also used

4620-548: Is connected to many other fields in computer science, including computer vision , image processing , and computational geometry , and is heavily applied in the fields of special effects and video games . Information can take the form of images, sound, video or other multimedia. Bits of information can be streamed via signals . Its processing is the central notion of informatics, the European view on computing, which studies information processing algorithms independently of

4774-409: Is considered by some to have a much closer relationship with mathematics than many scientific disciplines, with some observers saying that computing is a mathematical science. Early computer science was strongly influenced by the work of mathematicians such as Kurt Gödel , Alan Turing , John von Neumann , Rózsa Péter and Alonzo Church and there continues to be a useful interchange of ideas between

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4928-574: Is considered by some to have been the first major league. Its amateur counterpart disappeared after only a few years. William Hulbert's National League, which was formed after the National Association proved ineffective, put its emphasis on "clubs" rather than "players". Clubs now had the ability to enforce player contracts and prevent players from jumping to higher-paying clubs. Clubs in turn were required to play their full schedule of games, rather than forfeiting scheduled games once out of

5082-450: Is considered the first African American to play at the major league level, in 1884. But soon, and dating through the first half of the 20th century, an unwritten but iron-clad color line fenced African-Americans and other players of color out of the "majors". The Negro leagues were American professional baseball leagues comprising predominantly African-American teams. The term may be used broadly to include professional black teams outside

5236-531: Is considered the last major league season and the last professional club, the Indianapolis Clowns , operated amusingly rather than competitively from the mid-1960s to 1980s. While many of the players that made up the black baseball teams were African Americans, many more were Latin Americans (mostly, but not exclusively, black), from nations that deliver some of the greatest talents that make up

5390-508: Is determining what can and cannot be automated. The Turing Award is generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science. The earliest foundations of what would become computer science predate the invention of the modern digital computer . Machines for calculating fixed numerical tasks such as the abacus have existed since antiquity, aiding in computations such as multiplication and division. Algorithms for performing computations have existed since antiquity, even before

5544-405: Is found in actual usage: In most areas of linguistics, but especially in syntax , an asterisk in front of a word or phrase indicates that the word or phrase is not used because it is ungrammatical . An asterisk before a parenthesis indicates that the lack of the word or phrase inside is ungrammatical, while an asterisk after the opening bracket of the parenthesis indicates that the existence of

5698-454: Is found to the left of the zero). They are used to navigate menus in systems such as voice mail , or in vertical service codes . The Unicode standard has a variety of asterisk-like characters, compared in the table below. (Characters will display differently in different browsers and fonts.) The reason there are so many is chiefly because of the controversial decision to include in Unicode

5852-630: Is generally considered the province of disciplines other than computer science. For example, the study of computer hardware is usually considered part of computer engineering , while the study of commercial computer systems and their deployment is often called information technology or information systems . However, there has been exchange of ideas between the various computer-related disciplines. Computer science research also often intersects other disciplines, such as cognitive science , linguistics , mathematics , physics , biology , Earth science , statistics , philosophy , and logic . Computer science

6006-536: Is higher if put in context with surrounding text. When a document containing classified information is published, the document may be "sanitized" (redacted) by replacing the classified information with asterisks. For example, the Intelligence and Security Committee Russia report. In colloquial usage, an asterisk attached to a sporting record indicates that it is somehow tainted. This is because results that have been considered dubious or set aside are recorded in

6160-584: Is intended to organize, store, and retrieve large amounts of data easily. Digital databases are managed using database management systems to store, create, maintain, and search data, through database models and query languages . Data mining is a process of discovering patterns in large data sets. The philosopher of computing Bill Rapaport noted three Great Insights of Computer Science : Programming languages can be used to accomplish different tasks in different ways. Common programming paradigms include: Many languages offer support for multiple paradigms, making

6314-426: Is involved. Formal methods are a useful adjunct to software testing since they help avoid errors and can also give a framework for testing. For industrial use, tool support is required. However, the high cost of using formal methods means that they are usually only used in the development of high-integrity and life-critical systems , where safety or security is of utmost importance. Formal methods are best described as

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6468-545: Is mathematical and abstract in spirit, but it derives its motivation from practical and everyday computation. It aims to understand the nature of computation and, as a consequence of this understanding, provide more efficient methodologies. According to Peter Denning, the fundamental question underlying computer science is, "What can be automated?" Theory of computation is focused on answering fundamental questions about what can be computed and what amount of resources are required to perform those computations. In an effort to answer

6622-519: Is of high quality, affordable, maintainable, and fast to build. It is a systematic approach to software design, involving the application of engineering practices to software. Software engineering deals with the organizing and analyzing of software—it does not just deal with the creation or manufacture of new software, but its internal arrangement and maintenance. For example software testing , systems engineering , technical debt and software development processes . Artificial intelligence (AI) aims to or

6776-417: Is often credited to Noam Chomsky , but Chomsky in 1968 already describes this usage as "conventional". Linguist Fred Householder claims some credit, but Giorgio Graffi argues that using an asterisk for this purpose predates his works. The meaning of the asterisk usage in specific linguistic works may go unelucidated so can be unclear. Linguistics sometimes uses double asterisks ( ** ), another symbol such as

6930-584: Is required to synthesize goal-orientated processes such as problem-solving, decision-making, environmental adaptation, learning, and communication found in humans and animals. From its origins in cybernetics and in the Dartmouth Conference (1956), artificial intelligence research has been necessarily cross-disciplinary, drawing on areas of expertise such as applied mathematics , symbolic logic, semiotics , electrical engineering , philosophy of mind , neurophysiology , and social intelligence . AI

7084-518: Is that it stems from the 5000-year-old Sumerian character dingir , 𒀭 , though this hypothesis seems to only be based on visual appearance. When toning down expletives, asterisks are often used to replace letters. For example, the word "badword" might become "ba***rd", "b*****d", "b******" or even "*******". Vowels tend to be censored with an asterisk more than consonants, but the intelligibility of censored profanities with multiple syllables such as "b*dw*rd" and "b*****d" or "ba****d", or uncommon ones

7238-432: Is the field of study and research concerned with the design and use of computer systems , mainly based on the analysis of the interaction between humans and computer interfaces . HCI has several subfields that focus on the relationship between emotions , social behavior and brain activity with computers . Software engineering is the study of designing, implementing, and modifying the software in order to ensure it

7392-783: Is the field of study concerned with constructing mathematical models and quantitative analysis techniques and using computers to analyze and solve scientific problems. A major usage of scientific computing is simulation of various processes, including computational fluid dynamics , physical, electrical, and electronic systems and circuits, as well as societies and social situations (notably war games) along with their habitats, among many others. Modern computers enable optimization of such designs as complete aircraft. Notable in electrical and electronic circuit design are SPICE, as well as software for physical realization of new (or modified) designs. The latter includes essential design software for integrated circuits . Human–computer interaction (HCI)

7546-400: Is the quick development of this relatively new field requires rapid review and distribution of results, a task better handled by conferences than by journals. Steroid era The history of baseball in the United States dates to the 19th century, when boys and amateur enthusiasts played a baseball -like game by their own informal rules using homemade equipment. The popularity of

7700-816: The 1901 season was 3,247. However, the first 20 years of the 20th century saw an unprecedented rise in the popularity of baseball. Large stadiums dedicated to the game were built for many of the larger clubs or existing grounds enlarged, including Tiger Stadium in Detroit , Shibe Park in Philadelphia , Ebbets Field in Brooklyn , the Polo Grounds in Manhattan , Boston 's Fenway Park along with Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park in Chicago. Likewise from

7854-602: The ASCII standard. In fluid mechanics an asterisk in superscript is sometimes used to mean a property at sonic speed. In linguistics , an asterisk may be used for a range of purposes depending on what is being discussed. The symbol is used to indicate reconstructed words of proto-languages (for which there are no records). For modern languages, it may be placed before posited problematic word forms, phrases or sentences to flag that they are hypothetical, ungrammatical, unpronounceable, etc. Historical linguist August Schleicher

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8008-685: The Black Sox scandal . After an excellent regular season (88–52, .629 W%), the Chicago White Sox were heavy favorites to win the 1919 World Series. Arguably the best team in baseball, the White Sox had a deep lineup, a strong pitching staff, and a good defense. Even though the National League champion Cincinnati Reds had a superior regular season record (96–44, .689 W%,) no one, including gamblers and bookmakers , anticipated

8162-641: The Eastern League to the small developing leagues in the West, and the rising Negro leagues professional baseball was being played all across the country. Average major league attendances reached a pre-World War I peak of 5,836 in 1909 . Where there weren't professional teams, there were semi-professional teams, traveling teams barnstorming , company clubs and amateur men's leagues that drew small but fervent crowds. The fix of baseball games by gamblers and players working together had been suspected as early as

8316-592: The Massachusetts Game played in New England . In the 1860s, aided by the Civil War, "New York" style baseball expanded into a national game. Baseball began to overtake cricket in popularity, impelled by its much shorter duration relative to the form of cricket played at the time . As its first governing body, the National Association of Base Ball Players was formed. The NABBP soon expanded into

8470-795: The Negro National League in 1920. A second league, the Eastern Colored League , was established in 1923. These became known as the Negro leagues , though these leagues never had any formal overall structure comparable to the Major Leagues. The Negro National League did well until 1930, but folded during the Great Depression . From 1942 to 1948, the Negro World Series was revived. This was

8624-519: The New York Giants and Chicago Cubs played a game in the Polo Grounds . Nineteen-year-old rookie first baseman Fred Merkle , later to become one of the best players at his position in the league, was on first base, with teammate Moose McCormick on third with two outs and the game tied. Giants shortstop Al Bridwell socked a single, scoring McCormick and apparently winning the game. However, Merkle, instead of advancing to second base, ran toward

8778-586: The question mark , or both symbols (e.g. ?* ) to indicate degrees of unacceptability. In historical linguistics , the asterisk marks words or phrases that are not directly recorded in texts or other media, and that are therefore reconstructed on the basis of other linguistic material by the comparative method . In the following example, the Proto-Germanic word * ainlif is a reconstructed form. A double asterisk ( ** ) sometimes indicates an intermediary or proximate reconstructed form (e.g.

8932-404: The source code (for information to people, ignored by the compiler ) are marked by an asterisk combined with the slash: Some Pascal -like programming languages, for example, Object Pascal , Modula-2 , Modula-3 , and Oberon , as well as several other languages including ML , Wolfram Language ( Mathematica ), AppleScript , OCaml , Standard ML , and Maple , use an asterisk combined with

9086-589: The "New York Game" (as opposed to the less rule-bound "Massachusetts Game," played by clubs in New England, and "Philadelphia Town-ball"). In spite of its rapid growth in popularity, baseball had yet to overtake the British import, cricket . As late as 1855, the New York press was still devoting more space to coverage of cricket than to baseball. At a 1857 convention of sixteen New York area clubs, including

9240-484: The "contract jumping" as well as the overall disorganization of the N.A. (for example, weaker teams with losing records or inadequate gate receipts would simply decline to play out the season), and thus spearheaded the movement to form a stronger organization. The result of his efforts was the formation of a much more "ethical" league, which was named the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (NL). After

9394-405: The "record books". The asterisk as such a mark was suggested at that time by New York Daily News sportswriter Dick Young , not Frick. The reality, however, was that MLB actually had no direct control over any record books until many years later, and it all was merely a suggestion on Frick's part. Within a few years the controversy died down and all prominent baseball record keepers listed Maris as

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9548-475: The "technocratic paradigm" (which might be found in engineering approaches, most prominently in software engineering), and the "scientific paradigm" (which approaches computer-related artifacts from the empirical perspective of natural sciences , identifiable in some branches of artificial intelligence ). Computer science focuses on methods involved in design, specification, programming, verification, implementation and testing of human-made computing systems. As

9702-688: The $ 100,000 that Gandil had requested through his lieutenant Abe Attell , a former featherweight boxing champion. After the 1919 series, and through the beginning of the 1920 baseball season , rumors swirled that some of the players had conspired to purposefully lose. At last, in 1920, a grand jury was convened to investigate these and other allegations of fixed baseball games. Eight players ( Charles "Swede" Risberg , Arnold "Chick" Gandil , "Shoeless" Joe Jackson , Oscar "Happy" Felsch , Eddie Cicotte , George "Buck" Weaver , Fred McMullin , and Claude "Lefty" Williams ) were indicted and tried for conspiracy. The players were ultimately acquitted. However,

9856-570: The 100th anniversary of the invention of the arithmometer, Torres presented in Paris the Electromechanical Arithmometer , a prototype that demonstrated the feasibility of an electromechanical analytical engine, on which commands could be typed and the results printed automatically. In 1937, one hundred years after Babbage's impossible dream, Howard Aiken convinced IBM, which was making all kinds of punched card equipment and

10010-432: The 1850s. Hal Chase was particularly notorious for throwing games, but played for a decade after gaining this reputation; he even managed to parlay these accusations into a promotion to manager. Even baseball stars such as Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker have been credibly alleged to have fixed game outcomes. When MLB's complacency during this "Golden Age" was eventually exposed after the 1919 World Series , it became known as

10164-615: The 1900 season, the league changed its name to the American League and moved several franchises to larger, strategic locations. In 1901 the American League declared its intent to operate as a major league. The resulting bidding war for players led to widespread contract-breaking and legal disputes. One of the most famous involved star second baseman Napoleon Lajoie , who in 1901 went across town in Philadelphia from

10318-457: The 1908 season, the identical situation had been brought to the umpires' attention by Evers; the umpire that day was the same Hank O'Day. While the winning run was allowed to stand on that occasion, the dispute raised O'Day's awareness of the rule, and directly set up the Merkle controversy. Turn-of-the-century baseball attendances were modest by later standards. The average for the 1,110 games in

10472-580: The 21st century, the term asterisk to denote a tainted accomplishment caught on in other sports first in North America and then, due in part to North American sports' widespread media exposure, around the world. Many programming languages and calculators use the asterisk as a symbol for multiplication . It also has a number of special meanings in specific languages, for instance: In the B programming language and languages that borrow syntax from it, such as C , PHP , Java , or C# , comments in

10626-456: The 2nd of the only two designs for mechanical analytical engines in history. In 1914, the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo published his Essays on Automatics , and designed, inspired by Babbage, a theoretical electromechanical calculating machine which was to be controlled by a read-only program. The paper also introduced the idea of floating-point arithmetic . In 1920, to celebrate

10780-433: The American League's newly expanded 162-game season. Baseball Commissioner Ford C. Frick , a friend of Ruth's during the legendary slugger's lifetime, held a press conference to announce his "ruling" that should Maris take longer than 154 games both records would be acknowledged by Major League Baseball, but that some "distinctive mark" [his term] be placed next to Maris', which should be listed alongside Ruth's achievement in

10934-631: The Analytical Engine, Ada Lovelace wrote, in one of the many notes she included, an algorithm to compute the Bernoulli numbers , which is considered to be the first published algorithm ever specifically tailored for implementation on a computer. Around 1885, Herman Hollerith invented the tabulator , which used punched cards to process statistical information; eventually his company became part of IBM . Following Babbage, although unaware of his earlier work, Percy Ludgate in 1909 published

11088-512: The DH rule was not adopted until March 2022. The rule had been applied in a variety of ways during the World Series; until the adoption of the DH by the National League, the DH rule applied when Series games were played in an American League stadium, and pitchers would bat during Series games played in National League stadiums. There had been continued disagreement about the future of the DH rule in

11242-659: The Knickerbockers well. In the first known competitive game between two clubs under the new rules, played at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey , on June 19, 1846, the "New York nine" (almost certainly the Gotham Club) humbled the Knickerbockers by a score of 23 to 1. Nevertheless, the Knickerbocker Rules were rapidly adopted by teams in the New York area and their version of baseball became known as

11396-496: The Knickerbockers, the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) was formed. It was the first official organization to govern the sport and the first to establish a championship. The convention also formalized three key features of the game: 90 feet distance between the bases, 9-man teams, and 9-inning games (under the Knickerbocker Rules, games were played to 21 runs). During the Civil War , soldiers from different parts of

11550-510: The Machine Organization department in IBM's main research center in 1959. Concurrency is a property of systems in which several computations are executing simultaneously, and potentially interacting with each other. A number of mathematical models have been developed for general concurrent computation including Petri nets , process calculi and the parallel random access machine model. When multiple computers are connected in

11704-470: The NA great power. Many independents walked away from the 1901 meeting. The deal with the NA punished those other indies who had not joined the NA and submitted to the will of the majors. The NA also agreed to the deal so as to prevent more pilfering of players with little or no compensation for the players' development. Several leagues, seeing the writing on the wall, eventually joined the NA, which grew in size over

11858-840: The NABBP era was the Cincinnati Red Stockings in Ohio, which went undefeated in 1869 and half of 1870. After the Cincy club broke up at the end of that season, four key members including player/manager Harry Wright moved to Boston under owner and businessman Ivers Whitney Adams and became the "Boston Red Stockings" and the Boston Base Ball Club . In 1858, at the Fashion Race Course in the Corona neighborhood of Queens (now part of New York City ),

12012-411: The NABBP. By 1867, it ballooned to over 400 members, including some clubs from as far away as California. One of these western clubs, Chicago (dubbed the "White Stockings" by the press for their uniform hosiery), won the championship in 1870. Because of this growth, regional and state organizations began to assume a more prominent role in the governance of the amateur sport at the expense of the NABBP. At

12166-444: The NABPL signed a new National Agreement which achieved three things: The new agreement tied independent contracts to the reserve-clause national league contracts. Baseball players were a commodity, like cars. A player's skill set had a price of $ 5,000. It set up a rough classification system for independent leagues that regulated the dollar value of contracts, the forerunner of the system refined by Rickey and used today. It also gave

12320-669: The National League Phillies to the American League Athletics. Barred by a court injunction from playing baseball in the state of Pennsylvania the next year, Lajoie was traded to the Cleveland team, where he played and managed for many years. The war between the American and National leagues caused shock waves across the baseball world. At a meeting in 1901, the other baseball leagues negotiated

12474-500: The National League and American Association champions met in a postseason World's Championship Series —the first attempt at a World Series . The Union Association survived for only one season (1884), as did the Players' League (1890), which was an attempt to return to the National Association structure of a league controlled by the players themselves. Both leagues are considered major leagues by many baseball researchers because of

12628-483: The Reds having a chance. When the Reds triumphed 5–3, many pundits cried foul. At the time of the scandal, the White Sox were arguably the most successful franchise in baseball, with excellent gate receipts and record attendance. At the time, most baseball players were not paid especially well and had to work other jobs during the winter to survive. Some elite players on the big-city clubs made very good salaries, but Chicago

12782-467: The Sox had sown deep bitterness among the players, and White Sox first baseman Arnold "Chick" Gandil decided to conspire to throw the 1919 World Series. He persuaded gambler Joseph "Sport" Sullivan , with whom he had had previous dealings, that the fix could be pulled off for $ 100,000 total (which would be equal to $ 1,757,390 today), paid to the players involved. New York gangster Arnold Rothstein supplied

12936-553: The UK (as in the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh ). "In the U.S., however, informatics is linked with applied computing, or computing in the context of another domain." A folkloric quotation, often attributed to—but almost certainly not first formulated by— Edsger Dijkstra , states that "computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." The design and deployment of computers and computer systems

13090-429: The United States played baseball together, leading to a more unified national version of the sport. Membership in the NABBP grew to almost 100 clubs by 1865 and to over 400 by 1867, including clubs from as far away as California . Beginning in 1869, the league permitted professional play, addressing a growing practice that had not been previously permitted under its rules. The first and most prominent professional club of

13244-502: The World Series until league-wide adoption of the DH rule. During the late 1960s, the Baseball Players Union became much stronger and conflicts between owners and the players' union led to major work stoppages in 1972, 1981, and 1994. The 1994 baseball strike led to the cancellation of the World Series, and was not settled until the spring of 1995. In the late 1990s, functions that had been administered separately by

13398-410: The World Series. Until July 5, 1947, baseball had two histories. One fills libraries, while baseball historians are only just beginning to chronicle the other fully: African Americans have played baseball as long as white Americans. Players of color, both African-American and Hispanic , played for white baseball clubs throughout the very early days of the growing amateur sport. Moses Fleetwood Walker

13552-516: The accessibility and usability of the system for its intended users. Historical cryptography is the art of writing and deciphering secret messages. Modern cryptography is the scientific study of problems relating to distributed computations that can be attacked. Technologies studied in modern cryptography include symmetric and asymmetric encryption , digital signatures , cryptographic hash functions , key-agreement protocols , blockchain , zero-knowledge proofs , and garbled circuits . A database

13706-439: The annoyance of many fans and sportswriters. Three years later self-confessed steroid-user Barry Bonds pushed that record out to 73, and fans once again began to call for an asterisk in the sport's record books. Fans were especially critical and clamored louder for baseball to act during the 2007 season, as Bonds approached and later broke Hank Aaron 's career home run record of 755. The Houston Astros ' 2017 World Series win

13860-433: The application of a fairly broad variety of theoretical computer science fundamentals, in particular logic calculi, formal languages , automata theory , and program semantics , but also type systems and algebraic data types to problems in software and hardware specification and verification. Computer graphics is the study of digital visual contents and involves the synthesis and manipulation of image data. The study

14014-488: The asterisk (or another symbol, possibly to differentiate between even more cases) at the end. In optimality theory , asterisks are used as "violation marks" in tableau cells to denote a violation of a constraint by an output form. In phonetic transcription using the International Phonetic Alphabet and similar systems, an asterisk was historically used to denote that the word it preceded was

14168-521: The asterisk with forms such as *cran, impossible to occur in isolation: cran- only occurs within the compound cranberry . Such usage for a "non-existent form" was also found in French, German and Italian works in the middle of the 20th century. Asterisk usage in linguistics later came to include not just impossible forms, but " ungrammatical sentences", those that are "ill formed for the native speaker". The expansion of asterisk usage to entire sentences

14322-407: The asterisk, question mark, and degree symbol ° ) to indicate gradations or a continuum of acceptability. Since a word marked with an asterisk could mean either "unattested" or "impossible", it is important in some contexts to distinguish these meanings. In general, authors retain asterisks for "unattested", and prefix , ** , † , or ? for the latter meaning. An alternative is to append

14476-462: The asteriskos to mark missing Hebrew lines from his Hexapla . The asterisk evolved in shape over time, but its meaning as a symbol used to correct defects remained. In the Middle Ages, the asterisk was used to emphasize a particular part of text, often linking those parts of the text to a marginal comment. However, an asterisk was not always used. One hypothesis to the origin of the asterisk

14630-410: The binary number system. In 1820, Thomas de Colmar launched the mechanical calculator industry when he invented his simplified arithmometer , the first calculating machine strong enough and reliable enough to be used daily in an office environment. Charles Babbage started the design of the first automatic mechanical calculator , his Difference Engine , in 1822, which eventually gave him the idea of

14784-404: The club or the players. In many cases players, quite openly, received a cut of the gate receipts. Clubs playing challenge series were even accused of agreeing beforehand to split the earlier games to guarantee a decisive (and thus more certain to draw a crowd) "rubber match". To address this growing practice, and to restore integrity to the game, at its December 1868 meeting the NABBP established

14938-421: The clubhouse to avoid the spectators mobbing the field, which at that time was a common, acceptable practice. The Cubs' second baseman, Johnny Evers , noticed this. In the confusion that followed, Evers claimed to have retrieved the ball and touched second base, forcing Merkle out and nullifying the run scored. Evers brought this to the attention of the umpire that day, Hank O'Day, who after some deliberation called

15092-404: The controversy. Uproar over the integrity of baseball records and whether or not qualifications should be added to them arose again in the late 1990s, when a steroid-fueled power explosion led to the shattering of Maris' record. Even though it was obvious - and later admitted - by Mark McGwire that he was heavily on steroids when he hit 70 home runs in 1998, ruling authorities did nothing - to

15246-401: The crowd and lost, and many clubs employed security guards expressly for the purpose of retrieving balls hit into the stands — a practice unthinkable today. As a consequence, home runs were rare, and the "inside game" dominated—singles, bunts , stolen bases , the hit-and-run play, and other tactics dominated the strategies of the time. Despite this, there were also several superstar hitters,

15400-452: The damage to the reputation of the sport of baseball led the team owners to appoint Federal judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis to be the first Commissioner of Baseball . His first act as commissioner was to ban the "Black Sox" from professional baseball for life. The White Sox, meanwhile, would not return to the World Series until 1959, and it was not until their next appearance in 2005 they won

15554-750: The design and principles behind developing software. Areas such as operating systems , networks and embedded systems investigate the principles and design behind complex systems . Computer architecture describes the construction of computer components and computer-operated equipment. Artificial intelligence and machine learning aim to synthesize goal-orientated processes such as problem-solving, decision-making, environmental adaptation, planning and learning found in humans and animals. Within artificial intelligence, computer vision aims to understand and process image and video data, while natural language processing aims to understand and process textual and linguistic data. The fundamental concern of computer science

15708-475: The development of sophisticated computing equipment. Wilhelm Schickard designed and constructed the first working mechanical calculator in 1623. In 1673, Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated a digital mechanical calculator, called the Stepped Reckoner . Leibniz may be considered the first computer scientist and information theorist, because of various reasons, including the fact that he documented

15862-583: The discipline of computer science: theory of computation , algorithms and data structures , programming methodology and languages , and computer elements and architecture . In addition to these four areas, CSAB also identifies fields such as software engineering, artificial intelligence, computer networking and communication, database systems, parallel computation, distributed computation, human–computer interaction, computer graphics, operating systems, and numerical and symbolic computation as being important areas of computer science. Theoretical computer science

16016-424: The distinction more a matter of style than of technical capabilities. Conferences are important events for computer science research. During these conferences, researchers from the public and private sectors present their recent work and meet. Unlike in most other academic fields, in computer science, the prestige of conference papers is greater than that of journal publications. One proposed explanation for this

16170-459: The distinction of three separate paradigms in computer science. Peter Wegner argued that those paradigms are science, technology, and mathematics. Peter Denning 's working group argued that they are theory, abstraction (modeling), and design. Amnon H. Eden described them as the "rationalist paradigm" (which treats computer science as a branch of mathematics, which is prevalent in theoretical computer science, and mainly employs deductive reasoning),

16324-656: The entire Zapf Dingbats symbol font. Computer scientists Computer science is the study of computation , information , and automation . Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms , theory of computation , and information theory ) to applied disciplines (including the design and implementation of hardware and software ). Algorithms and data structures are central to computer science. The theory of computation concerns abstract models of computation and general classes of problems that can be solved using them. The fields of cryptography and computer security involve studying

16478-520: The expression "automatic information" (e.g. "informazione automatica" in Italian) or "information and mathematics" are often used, e.g. informatique (French), Informatik (German), informatica (Italian, Dutch), informática (Spanish, Portuguese), informatika ( Slavic languages and Hungarian ) or pliroforiki ( πληροφορική , which means informatics) in Greek . Similar words have also been adopted in

16632-702: The fact that the Great Chicago Fire had destroyed the team's home field and most of their equipment. Chicago finished the season in second place, but were ultimately forced to drop out of the league during the city's recovery period, finally returning to National Association play in 1874. Over the next couple of seasons, the Boston club dominated the league and hoarded many of the game's best players, even those who were under contract with other teams. After Davy Force signed with Chicago, and then breached his contract to play in Boston, Hulbert became discouraged by

16786-462: The first programmable mechanical calculator , his Analytical Engine . He started developing this machine in 1834, and "in less than two years, he had sketched out many of the salient features of the modern computer". "A crucial step was the adoption of a punched card system derived from the Jacquard loom " making it infinitely programmable. In 1843, during the translation of a French article on

16940-700: The first games of baseball to charge admission were played. The All Stars of Brooklyn , including players from the Atlantic , Excelsior , Putnam and Eckford clubs, took on the All Stars of New York ( Manhattan ), including players from the Knickerbocker , Gotham, Eagle and Empire clubs. These are commonly believed to the first all-star baseball games. Before the Civil War , baseball competed for public interest with cricket and regional variants of baseball, notably town ball played in Philadelphia and

17094-488: The first question, computability theory examines which computational problems are solvable on various theoretical models of computation . The second question is addressed by computational complexity theory , which studies the time and space costs associated with different approaches to solving a multitude of computational problems. The famous P = NP? problem, one of the Millennium Prize Problems ,

17248-551: The golden era of Negro league baseball, a time when it produced some of its greatest stars. In 1947 , Jackie Robinson signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers , breaking the color barrier that had prevented talented African-American players from entering the white-only major leagues. Although the transformation was not instantaneous, baseball has since become fully integrated . While the Dodgers' signing of Robinson

17402-420: The late 19th century. What made the National League "major" was its dominant position in the major cities, particularly the edgy, emotional nerve center of baseball that was New York City. Large, concentrated populations offered baseball teams national media distribution systems and fan bases that could generate sufficient revenues to afford the best players in the country. A number of the other leagues, including

17556-572: The leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro major leagues". The first professional team, established in 1885 , achieved great and lasting success as the Cuban Giants , while the first league, the National Colored Base Ball League , failed in 1887 after only two weeks due to low attendance. The Negro American League of 1951

17710-469: The likelihood that a result occurred by chance alone is below a certain level, one or more asterisks are displayed. Popular significance levels are <0.05 (*), <0.01 (**), and <0.001 (***). On a tone dialling telephone keypad, the asterisk (called star ) is one of the two special keys (the other is the 'square key – almost invariably replaced by the number sign # (called 'pound sign' (US), 'hash' (other countries), or 'hex'), and

17864-502: The machine in operation and analyzing it by all analytical and measurement means available. It has since been argued that computer science can be classified as an empirical science since it makes use of empirical testing to evaluate the correctness of programs , but a problem remains in defining the laws and theorems of computer science (if any exist) and defining the nature of experiments in computer science. Proponents of classifying computer science as an engineering discipline argue that

18018-578: The major leagues by representing themselves as Indians, or South or Central Americans, and a still larger number played in the minor leagues and on amateur teams. In the majors, however, it was not until the signing of Robinson (in the National League) and Larry Doby (in the American League) that baseball began to relax its ban on African-Americans. The early years of the National League were tumultuous, with threats from rival leagues and

18172-461: The means for secure communication and preventing security vulnerabilities . Computer graphics and computational geometry address the generation of images. Programming language theory considers different ways to describe computational processes, and database theory concerns the management of repositories of data. Human–computer interaction investigates the interfaces through which humans and computers interact, and software engineering focuses on

18326-471: The most famous being Honus Wagner , held to be one of the greatest shortstops to ever play the game, and Detroit's Ty Cobb , the "Georgia Peach." His career batting average of .366 has yet to be bested. The 1908 pennant races in both the AL and NL were among the most exciting ever witnessed. The conclusion of the National League season, in particular, involved a bizarre chain of events. On September 23, 1908,

18480-534: The myth was born and persists to this day. Which does not mean that the Doubleday myth does not continue to be disputed; in fact, it is likely that the parentage of the modern game of baseball will be in some dispute until long after such future time when the game is no longer played. The first team to play baseball under modern rules is believed to be the New York Knickerbockers . The club

18634-408: The national pastime. Doubleday "...never knew that he had invented baseball. But 15 years after his death, he was anointed as the father of the game," writes baseball historian John Thorn. The myth about Doubleday inventing the game of baseball actually came from a Colorado mining engineer who claimed to have been present at the moment of creation. The miner's tale was never corroborated, nonetheless

18788-406: The next several years. In the very early part of the 20th century, known as the " dead-ball era ", baseball rules and equipment favored the "inside game" and the game was played more violently and aggressively than it is today. This period ended in the 1920s with several changes that gave advantages to hitters. In the largest parks, the outfield fences were brought closer to the infield. In addition,

18942-574: The perceived high caliber of play and the number of star players featured. However, some researchers have disputed the major league status of the Union Association, pointing out that franchises came and went and contending that the St. Louis club, which was deliberately "stacked" by the league's president (who owned that club), was the only club that was anywhere close to major-league caliber. In fact, there were dozens of leagues, large and small, in

19096-508: The playing of baseball within 80 yards (73 m) of the town meeting house and its glass windows. Another early reference reports that base ball was regularly played on Saturdays in 1823 on the outskirts of New York City in an area that today is Greenwich Village . The Olympic Base Ball Club of Philadelphia was organized in 1833. In 1903, the British-born sportswriter Henry Chadwick published an article speculating that baseball

19250-420: The practice of selling players to the more affluent National and American leagues, embarked on a path that eventually led to the loss of their independent status. Ban Johnson had other designs for the NA. While the NA continues to this day, he saw it as a tool to end threats from smaller rivals who might some day want to expand in other territories and threaten his league's dominance. After 1902 both leagues and

19404-478: The principal focus of computer science is studying the properties of computation in general, while the principal focus of software engineering is the design of specific computations to achieve practical goals, making the two separate but complementary disciplines. The academic, political, and funding aspects of computer science tend to depend on whether a department is formed with a mathematical emphasis or with an engineering emphasis. Computer science departments with

19558-480: The record books with an asterisk rendering to a footnote explaining the reason or reasons for concern. The usage of the term in sports arose during the 1961 baseball season in which Roger Maris of the New York Yankees was threatening to break Babe Ruth 's 34-year-old single-season home run record. Ruth had amassed 60 home runs in a season with only 154 games, but Maris was playing the first season in

19712-484: The reliability of computational systems is investigated in the same way as bridges in civil engineering and airplanes in aerospace engineering . They also argue that while empirical sciences observe what presently exists, computer science observes what is possible to exist and while scientists discover laws from observation, no proper laws have been found in computer science and it is instead concerned with creating phenomena. Proponents of classifying computer science as

19866-639: The runner out. Because of the state of the field O'Day thereby called the game. Despite the arguments by the Giants, the league upheld O'Day's decision and ordered the game replayed at the end of the season, if necessary. It turned out that the Cubs and Giants ended the season tied for first place, so the game was indeed replayed, and the Cubs won the game, the pennant, and subsequently the World Series (the last Cubs Series victory until 2016). For his part, Merkle

20020-422: The running for the league championship, a practice that had been common under the National Association. A concerted effort was also made to reduce the amount of gambling on games which was leaving the validity of results in doubt. Around this time, a gentlemen's agreement was struck between the clubs to exclude non-white players from professional baseball, a de facto ban that remained in effect until 1947. It

20174-715: The same letter – one with the asterisk and one without. In fine mathematical typography, the Unicode character U+2217 ∗ ASTERISK OPERATOR (in HTML, &lowast;; not to be confused with U+204E ⁎ LOW ASTERISK ) is available. This character also appeared in the position of the regular asterisk in the PostScript symbol character set in the Symbol font included with Windows and Macintosh operating systems and with many printers. It should be used for

20328-516: The same time, the professionals soon sought a new governing body. The NABBP of America was initially established upon principles of amateurism . However, even early in the Association's history, some star players such as James Creighton of Excelsior received compensation covertly or indirectly. In 1866 , the NABBP investigated Athletic of Philadelphia for paying three players including Lip Pike , but ultimately took no action against either

20482-409: The scale of human intelligence. But the automation of evaluative and predictive tasks has been increasingly successful as a substitute for human monitoring and intervention in domains of computer application involving complex real-world data. Computer architecture, or digital computer organization, is the conceptual design and fundamental operational structure of a computer system. It focuses largely on

20636-443: The single-season record holder for as long as he held the record. Nevertheless, the stigma of holding a tainted record remained with Maris for many years, and the concept of a real or figurative asterisk denoting less-than-accepted "official" records has become widely used in sports and other competitive endeavors. A 2001 TV movie about Maris's record-breaking season was called 61* (pronounced sixty-one asterisk ) in reference to

20790-476: The sport grew and amateur men's ball clubs were formed in the 1830–50s. Semi-professional baseball clubs followed in the 1860s, and the first professional leagues arrived in the post- American Civil War 1870s. The earliest known mention of baseball in the US is either a 1786 diary entry by a Princeton University student who describes playing "baste ball," or a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts , ordinance that barred

20944-469: The strict enforcement of new rules governing the construction and regular replacement of the ball caused it to be easier to hit, and be hit harder. The first professional black baseball club, the Cuban Giants, was organized in 1885. Subsequent professional black baseball clubs played each other independently, without an official league to organize the sport. Rube Foster , a former ballplayer, founded

21098-581: The term computer came to refer to the machines rather than their human predecessors. As it became clear that computers could be used for more than just mathematical calculations, the field of computer science broadened to study computation in general. In 1945, IBM founded the Watson Scientific Computing Laboratory at Columbia University in New York City . The renovated fraternity house on Manhattan's West Side

21252-758: The term "computer science" appears in a 1959 article in Communications of the ACM , in which Louis Fein argues for the creation of a Graduate School in Computer Sciences analogous to the creation of Harvard Business School in 1921. Louis justifies the name by arguing that, like management science , the subject is applied and interdisciplinary in nature, while having the characteristics typical of an academic discipline. His efforts, and those of others such as numerical analyst George Forsythe , were rewarded: universities went on to create such departments, starting with Purdue in 1962. Despite its name,

21406-579: The term was the Department of Datalogy at the University of Copenhagen, founded in 1969, with Peter Naur being the first professor in datalogy. The term is used mainly in the Scandinavian countries. An alternative term, also proposed by Naur, is data science ; this is now used for a multi-disciplinary field of data analysis, including statistics and databases. In the early days of computing,

21560-443: The two fields in areas such as mathematical logic , category theory , domain theory , and algebra . The relationship between computer science and software engineering is a contentious issue, which is further muddied by disputes over what the term "software engineering" means, and how computer science is defined. David Parnas , taking a cue from the relationship between other engineering and science disciplines, has claimed that

21714-418: The two major leagues' administrations were united under the rubric of Major League Baseball (MLB). The period 1901–1919 is commonly called the "Dead-ball era", with low-scoring games dominated by pitchers such as Walter Johnson , Cy Young , Christy Mathewson , and Grover Cleveland Alexander . The term also accurately describes the condition of the baseball itself. Baseballs cost three dollars each in 1901,

21868-481: The type of information carrier – whether it is electrical, mechanical or biological. This field plays important role in information theory , telecommunications , information engineering and has applications in medical image computing and speech synthesis , among others. What is the lower bound on the complexity of fast Fourier transform algorithms? is one of the unsolved problems in theoretical computer science . Scientific computing (or computational science)

22022-737: The venerable Eastern League, threatened the dominance of the National League. The Western League, founded in 1893, became particularly aggressive. Its fiery leader Ban Johnson railed against the National League and promised to grab the best players and field the best teams. The Western League began play in April 1894 with teams in Detroit (now the American League Detroit Tigers , the only league team that has not moved since), Grand Rapids , Indianapolis , Kansas City , Milwaukee , Minneapolis , Sioux City and Toledo . Prior to

22176-438: The way by which the central processing unit performs internally and accesses addresses in memory. Computer engineers study computational logic and design of computer hardware, from individual processor components, microcontrollers , personal computers to supercomputers and embedded systems . The term "architecture" in computer literature can be traced to the work of Lyle R. Johnson and Frederick P. Brooks Jr. , members of

22330-432: The word or phrase inside is ungrammatical—e.g., the following indicates "go the station" would be ungrammatical: Use of an asterisk to denote forms or sentences that are ungrammatical is often complemented by the use of the question mark ( ? ) to indicate a word, phrase or sentence that is avoided, questionable or strange, but not necessarily outright ungrammatical. Other sources go further and use several symbols (e.g.

22484-440: Was IBM's first laboratory devoted to pure science. The lab is the forerunner of IBM's Research Division, which today operates research facilities around the world. Ultimately, the close relationship between IBM and Columbia University was instrumental in the emergence of a new scientific discipline, with Columbia offering one of the first academic-credit courses in computer science in 1946. Computer science began to be established as

22638-462: Was a key moment in baseball and civil rights history, it prompted the decline of the Negro leagues. The best black players were now recruited for the Major Leagues, and black fans followed. The last Negro league teams folded in the 1960s. Pitchers dominated the game in the 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973 , the designated hitter (DH) rule was adopted by the American League, while in the National League,

22792-466: Was a notable exception. For many years, the White Sox were owned and operated by Charles Comiskey , who paid the lowest player salaries, on average, in the American League. The White Sox players all intensely disliked Comiskey and his penurious ways, but were powerless to do anything, thanks to baseball's so-called "reserve clause" that prevented players from switching teams without their team owner's consent. By late 1919, Comiskey's tyrannical reign over

22946-544: Was also in the calculator business to develop his giant programmable calculator, the ASCC/Harvard Mark I , based on Babbage's Analytical Engine, which itself used cards and a central computing unit. When the machine was finished, some hailed it as "Babbage's dream come true". During the 1940s, with the development of new and more powerful computing machines such as the Atanasoff–Berry computer and ENIAC ,

23100-593: Was derived from an English game called rounders , which Chadwick had played as a boy in England. Baseball executive Albert Spalding disagreed, asserting that the game was fundamentally American and had hatched on American soil. To settle the matter, the two men appointed a commission, headed by Abraham Mills , the fourth president of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs . The commission, which also included six other sports executives, labored for three years, finally declaring that Abner Doubleday had invented

23254-414: Was doomed to endless ridicule throughout his career (and to a lesser extent for the rest of his life) for this lapse, which went down in history as " Merkle's Boner ". In his defense, some baseball historians have suggested that it was not customary for game-ending hits to be fully "run out", it was only Evers's insistence on following the rules strictly that resulted in this unusual play. In fact, earlier in

23408-474: Was founded on September 23, 1845, as a breakaway from the earlier Gotham Club. The new club's by-laws committee, William R. Wheaton and William H. Tucker , formulated the Knickerbocker Rules , which, in large part, dealt with organizational matters but which also laid out some new rules of play. One of these prohibited soaking or plugging the runner; under older rules, a fielder could put

23562-454: Was marred after an investigation by MLB revealed the team's involvement in a sign-stealing scheme during that season. Fans, appalled by what they perceived to be overly lenient discipline against the Astros players, nicknamed the team the "Houston Asterisks". In recent years, the asterisk has come into use on baseball scorecards to denote a "great defensive play." During the first decades of

23716-436: Was not unusual for a single baseball to last an entire game, nor for a baseball to be reused for the next game especially if it was still in relatively good condition as would likely be the case for a ball introduced late in the game. By the end of the game, the ball would usually be dark with grass, mud, and tobacco juice, and it would be misshapen and lumpy from contact with the bat. Balls were replaced only if they were hit into

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