Course syllabus

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Description

This is a seminar format course intended for freshman and other beginning students. The topics are chosen to encourage critical discussion of fundamental ideas. The course is intended to provide a survey of selected topics in computer science. Possible topics are computability, complexity, geometry, vision, AI, pattern recognition, machine models, cryptography and security and social implications of computing.

We will also explore concrete questions such as: What are the origins of computation? Are there things that computers cannot do? How do we build internet search engines? How do you teach a robot to walk and talk? How can we safely communicate confidential information? How can computers help cure cancer?

The course is appropriate for both novice and experienced computer users. It is intended for any student with high-school-level math and science background who has a keen interest in learning how the science of computation is impacting the world in which we live.

Tentative Course Outline (subject to change)

• Introduction to Computer Science. (1 week).
  • A brief history of computation.
• Algorithms. (2 weeks).
  • Telling a computer what to do (pseudo-code).
  • How to search, sort, and calculate using a computer.
  • The science behind a good internet search engine.
• Simulation of biological, physical, and social systems. (2 weeks).
  • The Game of Life.
  • Small-world networks.
• Computational biology, bioinformatics and automated treatment design. (1 week).
  • DNA sequencing techniques.
  • Brain imaging. Decoding mental states from images of the brain.
• Computability. (1 week)
  • Defining what is computation (from program to data).
  • Understanding which problems computers can and cannot solve.
  • How long will it take, and how much will it cost you?
• Cryptography. The science of communicating confidential information. (1 week).
  • Data security. Encryption schemes.
• Robotics. (1 week)
  • Simple robots that can see and move.
  • Larger robots that can drive and navigate.
  • Designing robots that can think and care.
• Artificial intelligence. (2 weeks).
  • Computers that play games. (Stories from Deep Blue: a world-class computer chess player)
  • Building computers that learn. (Machine learning)
  • Achieving human-level intelligence. (The Turing test, Searle's objection)
• Music, images and graphics. (1 week)
  • Representing sound and music. Automatically classifying and generating music.
  • Analyzing images. From automatic face recognition to automated highway driving.
  • Computer animation. Generating images that can dance, swim and fly.
• Wrap-up. (1 week).
  • Presentation of student projects.

Restrictions: Open only to newly admitted students in U0 or U1, who may take only one FYS. Students who register for more than one will be obliged to withdraw from all but one of them.

Maximum class size: 25.