CS-105: Great Insights in Computer Science

• Sergiu Goschin (sgoschin@cs.rutgers.edu). Office hours [Hill 206] Tuesday 10:30-11:45am, Thursday 12:00-1:15pm.
• Bethany Leffler (bleffler@cs.rutgers.edu). Virtual office hours [sakai chat] Tuesday 5-7pm.
• Brian Schubert (schubert@rutgers.edu). Office hours [Hill 414] Friday 12:00pm-2:00pm.

Code: 01-198-105-01

DESCRIPTION: The course is designed to introduce non-majors to the fundamental concepts of computer science. Students will be given the background to appreciate the exciting and influential ideas that have shaped this fast-moving discipline. Although it will provide a broad context, the course will focus on specific examples of great ideas and how they work. Students will learn about and solve example problems drawn from major areas within computer science. Although students will learn to read and understand short programs, the course will not teach or require programming skills and cannot be taken for credit for the CS major.

PRE-REQs: None. (Mastery of high-school-level algebra will be assumed.)

CREDITS: 3

Clicker: iClicker. (Should be available at bookstore.)

Website support: Sakai. (All course administration will be done there.)

Lecture notes

• 09/03/08 Preface (Barcodes). Marlon Brando returns, my UPC demo, Nicer UPC demo
• 09/08/08 Preface (The Title). Chapter 1 (Bits, Boolean Algebra). On-off switch, two switches in series, switches in parallel
• 09/10/08 Chapter 1 (Circuits, Relays). Nim 5 demo, entrance survey, Relay (not), Relay (and).
• 09/15/08 Chapter 1 (Logic Gates), Chapter 2 (Logic Blocks, Truth Tables). Domino/Lego Logic, 4 Million Dominoes. (Chris Mansley, guest lecturer.)
• 09/17/08 Chapter 2 (More Logic Blocks, Binary). Number trick, counting with our sound effects, Octopus's Counting
• 09/22/08 Chapter 2 (Binary Arithmetic). Note: Due to a glitch, the audio of the lecture was split in two. Here's the second part: Part II.
• 09/24/08 Chapter 2 (Binary Arithmetic, State Machines). Guess Who Hider, Guess Who Guesser. Note: Due to a glitch, the audio of the lecture was split in two. Here's the second part: Part II.
• 09/29/08 Chapter 3 (Scratch programming). Note: Due to a glitch, the audio of the lecture was split in two. Here's the second part: Part II.
• 10/01/08 Chapter 3 (Scratch programming, CPU)
• 10/06/08 Chapter 3 (Machine Language, Evaluation Trees)
• 10/08/08 Chapter 3 (Subroutines, Recursion). Note: Due to a glitch, the audio of the lecture was split in two. Here's the second part: Part II. Gilligan/Clementine, Old McDonald, Mystery Tour/Bottle/Recursive Song, Song That Doesn't End, Computer in a game on a computer.
• 10/13/08 Chapter 3 (Recursion), Chapter 4 (Philosophy, Randomness): Teddybearian Recursion, Paintcan video
• 10/15/08 Chapter 4 (Randomness, Self-contradiction), Recursive Colbert
• 10/20/08 Chapter 4 (Self-contradiction, Halting). Answer Man video
• 10/22/08 Chapter 4 (Halting Problems).
• 10/27/08 Midterm Review: sample midterm.
• 10/29/08 Midterm
• 11/03/08 Chapter 5 (Sock Sorting, Algorithms, Decision Problems on Lists)
• 11/05/08 Chapter 5 (Decision Problems on Lists). Note: Due to a glitch, the audio of the lecture was split in two. Here's the second part: Part II.
• 11/10/08 Chapter 5 (Song Growth Rates, Exponentially, Analysis). Note: Due to a glitch, the audio of the lecture was split in two. Here's the second part: Part II.
• 11/12/08 Chapter 5 (NP)
• 11/17/08 Chapter 5 (Graphs, Reachability). Note: Due to a glitch, the audio of the lecture was split into three parts. Here's the other parts: Part II, Part III.
• 11/19/08 Chapter 5 (Selection Sort, Binary Search, Quicksort). Scratch Sorts.
• 11/24/08 Chapter 5 (Quicksort, Heuristics), Chapter 6 (Compression, Huffman Codes). Note: Due to a glitch, the audio of the lecture was split into four parts. Here's the other parts: Part II, Part III, Part IV.
• 11/26/08 FRIDAY SCHEDULE, no class
• 12/01/08 Chapter 6 (Huffman Codes), Chapter 7 (Parallelism).
• 12/03/08 Chapter 7 (Images), Chapter 8 (Learning). Note: Due to a glitch, the audio of the lecture was split into three parts. Here's the other parts: Part II.
• 12/08/08 Chapter 8 (Robots, Reinforcement Learning), Chapter 9 (Genetic Algorithms). GA Demo
• 12/10/08 (last class) Review: Sample final
• 12/19/08 Friday noon-3pm (Final, in lecture hall)

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