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Mike Petersen

Mike Petersen

Lasting impact

"Computer science can be a difficult course of study but it pays off financially and in career opportunities. Computer science is like mathematics - the only difference between a hard problem and an easy problem is in knowing what to do."

"In 1967, Purdue installed the CDC 6500 which was the most powerful university computer in the world. It had effectively about 980K of memory (10 bytes per word). At that time I could not comprehend that anyone would need more than 1 megabyte of memory. My AI project (for CS 548 as I recall) was a learning program that learned how to play the Milton Bradley game, Stratego. It got better and better as it gained experience. A fellow graduate student and Stratego expert played my learning program. Over 40 years later he told me that the way it played was  "spooky." I put in 240 hours over a six-week period on that project. It was written in FORTRAN (without the handy "If-Then-Else" construct). The Assistant Department Head, Dr. Frederick, and I co-authored a paper about my project. This was the highlight of my computer science studies."

- Mike Petersen, MS in Computer Science '74, BS in Computer Science '72
  2014 Outstanding Computer Science Alumnus award, 2019 Philanthropy Award from the College of  Science

 

Last Updated: Oct 12, 2023 10:19 AM

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