astronomy

Peter Buneman

Peter Buneman is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Peter Buneman rather than just read about it. In short: Oscar Peter Buneman (born 1943) is a British computer scientist who works in the areas of database systems and database theory. Education Buneman was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts while studying the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

Key takeaways

Peter Buneman belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Peter Buneman to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Peter Buneman from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Oscar Peter Buneman (born 1943) is a British computer scientist who works in the areas of database systems and database theory.

Education Buneman was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts while studying the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Buneman went on to study at the University of Warwick, where he received his PhD in 1970.

Career Following his PhD, Buneman worked briefly at the University of Edinburgh, followed by a professorship of computer science at the University of Pennsylvania, which he held for several decades. In 2002, he moved to the University of Edinburgh, where he built up the database research group. He is one of the founders and the Associate Director of Research of the UK Digital Curation Centre, which is located in Edinburgh. Buneman is known for his research in database systems and database theory, in particular for establishing connections between databases and programming language theory, such as introducing monad-based query languages for nested relations and complex object databases. He also pioneered research on managing semi-structured data, and, recently, research on data provenance, annotations, and digital curation. In computational biology, he is known for his work on reconstructing phylogenetic trees based on Buneman graphs, which are named in his honour.

Awards and honours Buneman is a Fellow of the Royal Society, fellow of the ACM, a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and has won a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. He has chaired both flagship research conferences in data management, SIGMOD (in 1993) and VLDB (in 2008), as well as the main database theory conference, PODS (in 2001).

Buneman was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to data systems and computing. His nomination for the Royal Society readsPeter Buneman is distinguished for his advances in uniting programming languages and databases. On the theoretical side this has involved new results in types, monads and structural recursion including (with his student Ohori) type inference for record types, and (with Tannen et al) results that demonstrated a tight connection between monad-based languages and those based on the predicate calculus. On the application side, he used these techniques to demonstrate that – contrary to an assertion by the US Department of Energy – queries on existing non-relational genomic databases could be directly evaluated; fruitful collaboration with biologists ensued. This research carries over into his recent study of the principles of semistructured or "web-like" data. He is a leading proponent of this new field, and co-author of the first text book in it. Another recent concern is with the provenance of data on the Web, where data is continually copied and transformed. Already, with Khanna et al. he has built an efficient archiving system for scientific databases; more fundamentally, he seeks a formal basis for tracing provenance.

In addition to his work in databases, Buneman's early work on mathematical phylogeny underlies most modern phylogenetic reconstruction techniques.

Personal life Buneman is the son of physicist Oscar Buneman.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Peter Buneman

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Peter Buneman claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Peter Buneman before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Peter Buneman ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Peter Buneman

In research: Peter Buneman appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Peter Buneman in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Peter Buneman is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1943 births, Academics of the University of Edinburgh, Alumni of the University of Warwick, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Peter Buneman outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Peter Buneman in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Peter Buneman means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Peter Buneman out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Peter Buneman in simple terms?

Oscar Peter Buneman (born 1943) is a British computer scientist who works in the areas of database systems and database theory. Education Buneman was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts while studying the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos from Gonville and C…

Why does Peter Buneman matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Peter Buneman?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Peter Buneman.