Teaching formal methods at undergraduate/graduate level: The three perspectives

Abstract

Formai methods provide easy way of validating properties about systems. These methods are in existence since the last 50 years but have not been used fully by the industry as an engineering tool. One of the challenges of acceptance is education. Educating engineering students to take up formal methods is a challenge. This paper looks at these aspects of formal methods by providing demonstration of its usefulness on a recent failure. A few challenges of teaching formal method are described and three perspectives of formal methods are explained. The viewpoints are from a student who has worked on this, a teacher who teaches this and an industry practitioner of formal methods. We advocate an industry academia partnership to overcome some of these challenges of teaching formal methods to students.