CS 1060: Explorations in Computer Science — Spring 2012

• Class Meetings:   Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 10:45-11:35a in 1230 WEB
• Instructor:   David Johnson
  Office: 2875 WEB
  Email: dejohnso AT cs.utah.edu
• Course Text:   Nine Algorithms That Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today's Computers, by John MacCormick.
  This book can be ordered from Amazon for $18 and is available at other resellers as well. It is still in a pre-order status, although the publisher says it will be available Jan. 6th rather than the later date Amazon shows. We will not make use of it until it is generally available.
• Course Description:   Applications of modern computing have transformed the ways that people communicate, govern, learn, play, shop, socialize, and work. The rapid pace at which computational innovations appear, combined with the surface complexity of the digital world, lead most people to despair of ever learning how it all works. The good news, however, is that mastering a small number of scientific principles and engineering strategies leads directly to a high-level understanding of the vast field of computing. The scientific principles—representation, abstraction, and algorithm—date back many hundreds of years and are the intellectual basis of computing. The engineering strategies—digital circuits, stored programs, programming languages, and networks—date back roughly sixty years and are the practical basis of computing. This course introduces these seven principles and shows how they make possible such disparate technologies as web search engines, computer-animated movies, computer games, digital music, and articial intelligence.

• Course Pre-requisites. There are no pre- or co-requisites for this course. The course assumes no background in computing beyond the ability to use a computer to send email, browse the web, and write papers. The course is appropriate for students seeking an understanding of computational principles that will complement their major field of study. However, this is a technical class and there will be a certain precision in thinking and problem solving you will be expected to practice. There is some math, but if you can multiply and understand place value in numbers, you should be fine.

  This course satisfies the Applied Science (AS) Intellectual Explorations requirement.

  This is not a computer literacy course.

  Instead, some things you will do in this course are:
  • Program a simple game using a friendly programming language designed for elementary school students.
  • Run a simulated computer processor, feeding it the numeric codes that exist in all computer systems.
  • Search a small database for information.
  • Try out the security mechanisms that allow safe commerce online.
  • Learn about the binary number system that allows computers to represent all types of information, from images to songs to the words on a page.

  Here is the course syllabus, which includes information on getting to the class website - Syllabus.