These two volumes are the Proceedings of the first special interest meeting instigated and organized by the joint Technical Section and College in Applied Probability of ORSA and THlS. This meeting, which took place January 5-7, 1981 at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida, had the same name as these Proceedings: Applied Probability-Computer Science, the Interface. The goal of that conference was to achieve a meeting of, and a cross fertilization between, two groups of researchers who, from different starting points, had come to work on similar problems, often developing similar...

I wonder whether Karel Capek imagined in 1923 that by his use of the Czech word for forced labor, rohota, to name the android creations of Mr. Rossum he was naming an important technology of his future. Perhaps it wasn't Capek's work directly, but rather its influence on Lang's movie Metropolis in 1926 that introduced the term to the popular consciousness. In the public mind ever since a robot has been a me- chanical humanoid, tireless and somewhat sinister. In the research community the field of robotics has recently reached large size and respectability, but without answering the question,...

Perspicuity is part of proof. If the process by means of which I get a result were not surveyable, I might indeed make a note that this number is what comes out - but what fact is this supposed to confirm for me? I don't know 'what is supposed to come out' . . . . 1 -L. Wittgenstein A feasible computation uses small resources on an abstract computa- tion device, such as a 'lUring machine or boolean circuit. Feasible math- ematics concerns the study of feasible computations, using combinatorics and logic, as well as the study of feasibly presented mathematical structures such as groups,...

The field of computational learning theory arose out of the desire to for mally understand the process of learning. As potential applications to artificial intelligence became apparent, the new field grew rapidly. The learning of geo metric objects became a natural area of study. The possibility of using learning techniques to compensate for unsolvability provided an attraction for individ uals with an immediate need to solve such difficult problems. Researchers at the Center for Night Vision were interested in solving the problem of interpreting data produced by a variety of sensors. Current...