astronomy

Peter Chen

Peter Chen 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 Chen rather than just read about it. In short: Chen Pin-Shan (Chinese: 陳品山; pinyin: Chén Pǐnshān; born 3 January 1947), also known by his English name Peter Chen, is a Taiwanese-American computer scientist and applied mathematician. He is a retired distinguished career scientist and faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University and Distinguished Chair Professor Emeritus at Louisiana State University.

Key takeaways

Peter Chen 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 Chen to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Peter Chen from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Chen Pin-Shan (Chinese: 陳品山; pinyin: Chén Pǐnshān; born 3 January 1947), also known by his English name Peter Chen, is a Taiwanese-American computer scientist and applied mathematician. He is a retired distinguished career scientist and faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University and Distinguished Chair Professor Emeritus at Louisiana State University. He is known for the development of the entity–relationship model in 1976.

Early life and education Chen was born in Taichung, Taiwan. After graduating from Taichung Municipal First Senior High School, he studied electrical engineering at National Taiwan University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1968. Inspired by An Wang, Chen then pursued doctoral studies in the United States at Harvard University. He earned a Master of Arts (M.A.) and his Ph.D. from Harvard in computer science and applied mathematics in 1973 under professors Ugo Gagliardi, Jeffrey P. Buzen, and George H. Mealy. His doctoral dissertation was titled, "Optimal File Allocation".

Career After graduating from Harvard, Chen spent one year at Honeywell and a summer at Digital Equipment Corporation. From 1974 to 1978 Chen was an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. From 1978 to 1983 he was an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA Management School). From 1983 to 2011 Chen held the position of M. J. Foster Distinguished Chair Professor of Computer Science at Louisiana State University and, for several years, adjunct professor in its Business School and Medical School (Shreveport). During this period, he was a visiting professor once at Harvard in '89-'90 and three times at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (EECS Dept. in '86-'87, Sloan School in '90-'91, and Division of Engineering Systems in 06-'07). From 2010 to 2020, Chen was a Distinguished Career Scientist and faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A. Besides lecturing around the world, he has also served as an (honorary) professor outside of the U.S. In 1984, under the sponsorship of the United Nations, he taught a one-month short course on databases at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and was awarded as Honorary Professor there. Then, he went to Beijing as a member of the IEEE delegation of the First International Conference on Computers and Applications (the first major IEEE computer conference held in China). From 2008 to 2014, he was an Honorary Chair Professor at the Institute of Service Science at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. Starting in 2016, he is an Honorary Chair Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Bioinformatics, Asia University (Taiwan). Chen has served as an advisor for government agencies and corporations. He is a member of the advisory board of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate of National Science Foundation (2004-2006) and the United States Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (2005-2009).

Awards and honors Chen's original paper is one of the most influential papers in the computer software field based on a survey of more than 1,000 computer science professors documented in a book on "Great Papers in Computer Science". Chen's work is also cited in the book Software Challenges published by Time-Life Books in 1993 in the series on "Understanding Computers." Chen is recognized as one of the pioneers in a book on "Software Pioneers". He is listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World. Chen has received many awards in the fields of Information Technology. He received the Data Resource Management Technology Award from the Data Administration Management Association (DAMA International) in New York City in 1990. He was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), IEEE, and ER. He won the Achievement Award in Information Management in 2000 from DAMA International. He was an inductee into the Data Management Hall of Fame in 2000. He received the Stevens Award in Software Method Innovation in 2001. In 2003, Chen received the IEEE Harry H. Goode Memorial Award at the IEEE-CS Board of Governors meeting in San Diego. He was presented with the ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award at the ACM Banquet in San Diego in June 2003 and International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Acapulco in August 2003. Chen is also the recipient of the Pan Wen-Yuan Outstanding Research Award in 2004. In June 2011 in Jeju Island, Korea, Chen received the Transformative Achievement Medal from the Software Engineering Society and the Society for Design and Process Science. In 2021, he received the Leadership Award from the IEEE Technical Committee of Service Computing (TCSVC). His innovative work initiated/accelerated a new field of research and practice called "Conceptual Modeling" based on conceptual model (computer science) or entity–relationship model. In 1979, he founded an annual international professional meeting, the International Conference on Conceptual Modeling, which has been held in different countries. He also founded the Data & Knowledge Engineering journal for publishing and disseminating scholarly research results.

Peter P. Chen Award

To recognize Chen's pioneering leadership role, the "Peter P. Chen Award" was established in 2008, to honor excellent researchers/educators for outstanding contributions to the field of conceptual modeling each year. The recipients of the Peter P. Chen Award are:

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Peter Chen

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Peter Chen 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 Chen 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 Chen 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 Chen

In research: Peter Chen 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 Chen 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 Chen is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1947 births, 20th-century Taiwanese educators, 21st-century Taiwanese educators, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Peter Chen 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 Chen in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Peter Chen 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 Chen out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Peter Chen in simple terms?

Why does Peter Chen 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 Chen?

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 Chen.