COSC 235: Programming and Problem Solving

Instructor: Dr. Xenia Mountrouidou

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Who am I?• Dr. X – Computer Scientist• PhD at North Carolina State University – Optical

networks performance • Worked at IBM – Software Performance Engineer• Post doc at College of William and Mary – research on

performance and power savings for hard disk drives• Assistant professor at Jacksonville University• Assistant professor at Wofford College!• Scuba diver, manga comics collector, science fiction

reader

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Who am I?

Topics

• Who are you and what are you looking from this course?

• Syllabus and Policies• Group activities on Syllabus• What is Computer Science?• What do Computer Scientists study?

What do they actually do?

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What is computer science?

• “Computers are to computer science what telescopes are to astronomy.” –E. Dijkstra

• The study of what can be computed• Computer scientists… (what do they do, what

do they look like?)

http://services.allegany.edu/acmlife/?page_id=2065

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Algorithms

• What is an algorithm?• How does algorithmic thinking help in

problem solving?• How did you apply algorithmic thinking this

weekend?

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The Universal Machine

• “a machine that stores and manipulates information under the control of a changeable program.”

• Two key elements:– Manipulating information… data!– Changeable program

The Universal Machine

• What is a computer program?

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Program Power

http://www.theworkprint.com/

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Why do you want to learn how to code?

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References

• “Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science”, 2nd ed., John M. Zelle

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