CS 110: Elements of Computing. Instructor: Jim Aspnes

Course Information

Meeting times

Lectures are Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2:30pm to 3:45pm in the Yale University Art Gallery Auditorium.

Staff

Instructor

Jim Aspnes. E-mail: aspnes@cs.yale.edu. Phone: 432-1232. Office: AKW 401. Appointments can be made using Schedule-o-Matic, available from the main course web page. The easiest way to reach me is usually by e-mail. For messages related to this course, please put 110 somewhere in your subject line.

Teaching fellows

Name	E-mail	Office Hours	Held in
Guillermo Henrici	`manolo.henrici@yale.edu`	MW 8-10am, F 9am-1pm	Donaldson Commons (SOM cafeteria)
Chandana Praneeth Wanigasekera	`praneeth@yale.edu`	MWF 4-6, Tues 2-6	Trumbull College Library
Aleksandr Yampolskiy	`aleksandr.yampolskiy@yale.edu`	MW 1:30-5:30	AKW 402
Eric Wang Yukai	`yukai.wang@yale.edu`	TR 9-12, WF 9-10	AKW 514

On-line course information

On-line information about the course, including copies of all handouts, can be found using the URL http://zoo.cs.yale.edu/classes/cs110/. This will also be the main location for announcements about the course, lecture schedules, and so forth. Please check it frequently.

Synopsis of Course

An introduction to some of the important ideas of computer science. What the computer is; how it works; what it can do and what it cannot do, now and in the future. Topics include algorithms, elementary programming, computer hardware, language interpretation, software engineering, models of computation, and artificial intelligence.

Prerequisites

None.

Readings

There are two required textbooks for this class:

Brookshear: Computer Science: An Overview, 7th edition, by J. Glenn Brookshear. Addison-Wesley, 2003.
Dewdney: The New Turing Omnibus, by A. K. Dewdney. W. H. Freeman and Company, 1993.

Course requirements

Ten weekly homework assignments, a midterm exam (given Thursday, October 17th, 2002, in class) and a final exam (given Friday, December 20th, 2002, starting at 2:00pm).

Homeworks will be weighted equally in computing the final grade. The midterm exam will count as two homework assignments and the final exam will count as three homework assignments. Only the top eleven assignment grades (including exam grades, with exams counting as multiple assignments) will count towards your final grade.

Use of outside help

Students are free to discuss homework problems and course material with each other, and to consult with the instructor or a TA. Solutions handed in, however, should be the student's own work. If a student benefits substantially from hints or solutions received from fellow students or from outside sources, then the student should hand in their solution but acknowledge the outside sources, and we will apportion credit accordingly. Using outside resources in solving a problem is acceptable but plagiarism is not.

Clarifications for homework assignments

From time to time, ambiguities and errors may creep into homework assignments. Questions about the interpretation of homework assignments should be sent to the instructor at aspnes@cs.yale.edu. Clarifications will appear in the on-line version of the assignment and on the main course web page.

Late assignments

Late assignments will not be accepted under any circumstances. This is necessary both because of the size of the class and to allow posting assignment solutions quickly. It is also the reason for the policy of dropping the lowest four assignment grades.