Dartmouth Computer Science Technical Reports

Format of the numbers

When we began our technical-report series in 1986, we chose to number them with the format PCS-TRyy-nnn, where yy was the 2-digit year (19yy), and nnn was a sequence number. Needless to say this led to a Y2K problem.

As of the year 2000, when new reports are added, they will be numbered differently: TRyyyy-nnn. The old pre-2000 reports will still be numbered PCS-TRyy-nnn, that is, no old reports will change their numbers. The sequence number nnn will still be consecutive across the change to the new format; thus the last TR of the second millenium is PCS-TR99-261, and the first TR of the third millenium will be number TR2000-362.

For those who like details, in the old format the first three letters could actually be one of three possibilities:

There are only a few DCS or TCS reports (see 1986). I believe the "CS" initials were added because, at the time, we were part of a "Department of Math and Computer Science" and there may have been an intention to have "PMA", "DMA", and "TMA" (Math) technical reports as well.