Schedule of Topics

A tour is supposed to be full of excursions and digressions along the way! This course will be taught in the same spirit, and depending on the level of interest, the following tentative schedule of topics may change a fair bit as the course progresses. Weeks 7 and 14 will only have one lecture class (the other class will be devoted to a midterm exam).

Week 1:

Introductory, get-acquainted stuff and a breezy trip through the history of computing; Reading: Chapter 1 and the Computer History Museum website.

Week 2:

Representing information on a computer; Reading: Chapters 2 and 3.

Week 3:

Nuts and bolts: digital hardware basics; Reading: Chapters 4 and 5

Week 4:

Recipes for problem-solving: a prelude to programming; Reading: Chapter 6

Week 5:

Computer programs and languages; Reading: Chapter 7 and 8

Week 6:

A bit of programming in Python; Reading: Ch. 9 and an online Python tutorial. Don't be overwhelmed by the amount of material on this website - you are not expected to learn the language but to have fun with some simple features of Python.

Week 7:

Limits of computing; Reading: Ch. 17

Week 8:

Diversions: parts of the documentaries Triumph of the Nerds: An Irreverent History of the PC Industry and Revolution OS

Week 9:

Bread and butter functions of an operating system; Reading: Chapter 10

Week 10:

Storing and harvesting information: a week spent among databases and spreadsheets; Reading: Chapter 12

Week 11:

Artificial Intelligence; Reading: Chapter 13

Week 12:

Internet time; Reading: Chapter 15

Week 13:

A mini-tour through the World Wide Web; Reading: Chapter 16

Week 14:

The Google phenomenon - search engines; Reading: To be assigned.