COMP-102: Computers and Computing

COMP-102: Computers and Computing (Winter 2012)

INSTRUCTOR: Kaleem Siddiqi (Office Hours: Wednesdays 13:30-14:30pm, MC420)
Teaching Assistants:

Marie Bieth
Email: marie.bieth@mail.mcgill.ca
Office Hours: Thursdays 10:15-12:15, Trottier 3060

CLASS DAY/TIME: Mon/Wed 8:30-10:00am
WHERE: Trottier 1090

Course calendar

Course syllabus

News

Welcome to COMP 102 for the winter 2012. Check for news items here on a regular basis.

The logism example explaining DeMorgan's laws is downloadable by right clicking here. (On a Mac use Ctrl-click and then "save link as", which will save the file in your "Downloads" directory.)

Here is another logism example of a Full Adder. This circuit considers the binary addition of 3 digits (A, B, Cin) and generates a sum (S) and a carry out (Cout). It is downloadable by right clicking here. (On a Mac use Ctrl-click and then "save link as", which will save the file in your "Downloads" directory.)

Assignment 1 is now posted and can be downloaded from the Course calendar. It is due on Jan 30th before midnight. It will also be made available via the "assignments" panel in webct, which is the means you should use to turn in your solution.

There will be no class on Monday Feb 27th. As questions arise concerning the mid-term please post them to the webct discussion board. I will be responding to these questions on Monday Feb 27th onwards (and prior to then Marie or I will try to respond as well).

Please download the latest version of the lecture on graphs (the version previously posted was modified).

Midterm 2 marks are now posted on webct. Overall the class did very well. I had forgotten that I have to give a talk at Dawson College tomorrow (Wednesday April 18th) right during my regular office hrs. Therefore, if you wish to go over your midterm marks please stop by on Thursday morning instead.

Description

A course for students with no previous knowledge of computer science. The course is intended to provide a survey of selected topics in computer science starting from how computers store data (text, numbers, images, sound, etc.), to the inner workings of computers (hardware) and moving on to more advanced topics that involve computation including computability, complexity, AI, computer vision, robotics, and graphics.
(3 credits; 3 hours per week)

We will also explore concrete questions such as: What are the origins of computation? Are there things that computers cannot do? How are computers designed? How do you teach a robot to recognize what it sees? How is it possible to render realistic scenes by a computer?

Prerequisite: The course is appropriate for both novice and experienced computer users. It is intended for any student with a 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.

Restrictions: Credit will not be given for COMP-102 if it is taken concurrently with, or after, any of COMP-202, COMP-203, COMP-208, or COMP-250. Management students cannot receive credit for COMP-102.

Course Outline

Introduction to Computer Science. A brief history of computing. (1 week)
How is information represented in a computer? Bits and bytes, boolean logic, arithmetic circuits, finite state machines. (2 weeks)
How do we tell computers what to do? Basic ideas in algorithms, scripting, sorting and searching. (2 weeks)
Computer systems. (2 weeks)
Data compression (text, sound, images, video) (1 week)
Computability and complexity. (1 week)
Special topics: Artificial intelligence, Computer Vision, Computer Graphics, Robotics (4 weeks)

Prerequisite: High school mathematics.