computer science

The Turing Guide

The Turing Guide is a computer science 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 The Turing Guide rather than just read about it. In short: The Turing Guide, written by Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak, Robin Wilson, and others and published in 2017, is a book about the work and life of the British mathematician, philosopher, and early computer scientist, Alan Turing (1912–1954). Overview The book includes 42 contributed chapters by a variety of authors, including some contemporaries of Alan Turing.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

The Turing Guide, written by Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak, Robin Wilson, and others and published in 2017, is a book about the work and life of the British mathematician, philosopher, and early computer scientist, Alan Turing (1912–1954).

Overview The book includes 42 contributed chapters by a variety of authors, including some contemporaries of Alan Turing. The book was published in January 2017 by Oxford University Press, in hardcover, paperback, and e-book formats.

Contents The Turing Guide is divided into eight main parts, covering various aspects of Alan Turing's life and work:

Biography: Biographical aspects of Alan Turing. The Universal Machine and Beyond: Turing's universal machine (now known as a Turing machine), developed while at King's College, Cambridge, which provides a theoretical framework for reasoning about computation, a starting point for the field of theoretical computer science. Codebreaker: Turing's work on codebreaking during World War II at Bletchley Park, especially the Bombe for decrypting the German Enigma machine. Computers after the War: Turing's post-War work on computing, at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and at the University of Manchester. He made contributions to both hardware design, through the ACE computer (later implemented as the Pilot ACE) at the NPL, and software, especially at Manchester using the Manchester Baby computer, later the Manchester Mark 1 and Ferranti Mark 1. Artificial Intelligence and the Mind: Turing's pioneering and philosophical contribution to machine intelligence (now known as Artificial Intelligence or AI), including the Turing test. Biological Growth: Morphogenesis, Turing's last major scientific contribution, on the generation of complex patterns through chemical processes in biology and on the mathematics behind them, foundational in mathematical biology. Mathematics: Some of Turing's mathematical achievements, including one of his most significant influences, Max Newman. Finale: Turing in a wider subsequent context, including his influence and legacy to science and in the public consciousness. The book includes a foreword by Andrew Hodges, a preface, notes on the contributors, endnotes, and an index.

Contributors The following 33 authors contributed to chapters in the book:

Reviews The book has been reviewed by a number of journals, magazines, and professional organizations, including:

Engineering & Technology. European Mathematical Society. Formal Aspects of Computing. Mathematical Association of America. New Scientist. Notices of the American Mathematical Society. Nuncius. Physics World. Resurrection. SIAM News. The book has also been featured online internationally, including in China.

Cover This artwork for the book's cover came about after a mock-up digital artwork in the style of the multiple images of Andy Warhol was produced. Jack Copeland then organized a more professional artwork, which became the basis for the eventual book cover. In 2023, the artwork was displayed as part of a digital art exhibition organized by the Computer Arts Society at the BCS in London.

Other languages A Chinese edition of the book was published in 2023 by Tsinghua University Press.

See also Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma (1983). Charles Petzold, The Annotated Turing (2008). Dermot Turing, Prof: Alan Turing Decoded (2015).

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Turing Guide

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Turing Guide claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, 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 The Turing Guide 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 The Turing Guide 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 The Turing Guide

In research: The Turing Guide appears in computer science 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 The Turing Guide 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: The Turing Guide is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2017 non-fiction books, 21st-century history books, Books about Alan Turing, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Turing Guide 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 The Turing Guide in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is The Turing Guide in simple terms?

Why does The Turing Guide matter?

Because it connects several computer science 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 The Turing Guide?

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 The Turing Guide.