astronomy

Webb Miller

Webb Miller 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 Webb Miller rather than just read about it. In short: Webb Colby Miller (born 1943) is an American bioinformatician who is professor in the Department of Biology and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. Education Miller attended Whitman College, and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Washington in 1969.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Education Miller attended Whitman College, and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Washington in 1969.

Research and career He joined Penn State in September 1985. Prior to that, he had held a position as permanent staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center and served on the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Arizona. He is a fellow of the ISCB (International Society for Computational Biology). Miller has been developing algorithms and software for analyzing DNA sequences and related types of data from molecular genetics. He is one of the authors of BLAST. He also develops methods for aligning long DNA sequences and extracting functional information from them. Webb Miller has made important contributions to the analysis of many vertebrate genomes. He is regarded as one of the pioneers in the field of computational biology. Webb Miller's recent research interests include the bioinformatics of species extinction, collaborating with Stephan Schuster, who is a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State. In November 2008, they published a paper in Nature that described a draft sequence for the woolly mammoth genome.

Awards Miller was awarded the ISCB Senior Scientist Award and elected an ISCB Fellow by the International Society for Computational Biology in 2009. He is also among The 2009 Time 100. Together with Gene Myers, he received the Inaugural IEEE Frances E. Allen Medal "for pioneering contributions to sequence analysis algorithms and their applications to biosequence search, genome sequencing, and comparative genome analyses".

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Webb Miller

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Webb Miller 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 Webb Miller 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 Webb Miller 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 Webb Miller

In research: Webb Miller 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 Webb Miller 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: Webb Miller is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1943 births, American bioinformaticians, Fellows of the International Society for Computational Biology, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Webb Miller 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 Webb Miller in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Webb Miller in simple terms?

Webb Colby Miller (born 1943) is an American bioinformatician who is professor in the Department of Biology and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. Education Miller attended Whitman College, and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the Universi…

Why does Webb Miller 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 Webb Miller?

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 Webb Miller.