Exploring the Byzantine Generals Proble m With Beginning Computer Science Student s William S . Lloyd Dept . of Mathematics & Computer Scienc e West Georgia Colleg e Carrollton, Ga . 3011 8 wlloyd@sun .cc .westga .edu I. Introductio n Beginning computer scienc e students readily understand th e basics of concurrent processing , one of the central themes i n computing . Their lack of back ground knowledge and mathematica l sophistication makes it difficult, though, to find exercise s that strengthen their proble m solving skills without overwhelming them . An effective introduction t o computer science cannot, however , be merely a survey of topics, n o matter how important they are . I t must also encourage students t o begin to think like compute r scientists . I use a classic conundrum, th e Byzantine generals problem [LSP82 , PSL80], to introduce concurren t processing . It engages my student s in problem solving like tha t required in the design of paralle l and distributed systems . Analysis of this proble m requires no computing resources , only chalk and blackboard . Stu dents work together to develo p solutions by acting
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