CS 2000 - Fall 2025.

Welcome to CS 2000!

Video of the Day

This song opens a Broadway musical based on a play by Shakespeare, with music and lyrics by a Yale graduate. This number captures the feeling of hope, promise, uncertainty, and even trepidation felt by many of us in this room. Welcome back!

Logical problem of the day: 854-917-6320

What unique property does this number possess?

https://pollev.com/slade You may also download the app to your phone. Use the "slade" poll id. Note: you do not need to register. The polleverywhere responses are not graded.

Lecture 0: Introductory Lecture. 8/27

Discussion of Course and Instructor: Stephen Slade

Biography. Hybrid: academia (theory) / industry (practice).
- Yale undergraduate. music major. (studied CS with Alan Perlis)
- Developed computer systems for presidential campaigns and the White House, introducing electronic mail to campaigns and the internet to the White House. (stephen.slade@whitehouse.gov)
- Yale graduate student, M.S., Ph.D., computer science (artificial intelligence)
- Yale Computer Science Department: Assistant Chairman, Assistant Director of the Yale AI Project, Lecturer.
- Connected Yale to the Internet.
- NYU Stern School of Business, Department of Information Systems, Assistant Professor.
- Wrote three books (T/Scheme, LISP, decision making) - dedicated to Yale alumnae.
- Developed investment and risk technology systems for Wall Street. Sell side (Morgan Stanley), Buy side (INVESCO, Bank of America, Commonfund)
Syllabus,
Note: You will be required to learn UNIX, as well as Python. Questions about UNIX will appear on all exams.
Other courses to consider:
- CS 1001. Introduction to Programming.
  Staff
  Time vary by section.
  Development on the computer of programming skills, problem-solving methods, and selected applications.
  No previous experience with computers necessary.
- CS 1100. Python Programming for Humanities and Social Sciences.
  Sohee Park
  MW 11:35am - 12:50pm, plus sections.
  Introduction to computer science and Python programming with domain-specific applications. Students learn how to think algorithmically and solve problems efficiently. Topics include abstraction, algorithms, data structures, web development, and statistical tools. Students learn to apply computing techniques in the fields of social sciences & humanities by analyzing data. No previous programming experience is required. This course is intended for students of social sciences & humanities majors.
- CS 1230. YData: An Introduction to Data Science.
  Ethan Meyers
  TTh 2:30pm - 3:45pm
  Computational, programming, and statistical skills are no longer optional in our increasingly data-driven world; these skills are essential for opening doors to manifold research and career opportunities. This course aims to dramatically enhance knowledge and capabilities in fundamental ideas and skills in data science, especially computational and programming skills along with inferential thinking. YData is an introduction to Data Science that emphasizes the development of these skills while providing opportunities for hands-on experience and practice. YData is accessible to students with little or no background in computing, programming, or statistics, but is also engaging for more technically oriented students through extensive use of examples and hands-on data analysis. Python 3, a popular and widely used computing language, is the language used in this course. The computing materials will be hosted on a special purpose web server.
- CS 2010. Introduction to Computer Science.
  Stephen Slade
  MWF 10:30-11:20am.
  Introduction to the concepts, techniques, and applications of computer science. Topics include computer systems (the design of computers and their languages); theoretical foundations of computing (computability, complexity, algorithm design); and artificial intelligence (the organization of knowledge and its representation for efficient search). Examples stress the importance of different problem-solving methods.
  Note: CS 2010 satisfies the prerequisite for CS 2230 as well as the Computer Science major. However, if you do not intend to major in Computer Science, you may consider enrolling in CS 2000.

If you're thinking of taking CPSC 2000, please do the following.

Complete this online Student Information form.

Get a course account for CPSC 2000 on the Zoo. When you register for this class, your course account should be created within one hour or so of signing up.

Start the reading assignment: [Assignments].

Familiarize yourself with the Zoo computers with classmates or on your own using the Zoo tutorial, Spring 2014 edition.

(Optional.) Download and install Python on your computer (Python) and familiarize yourself with it. If you don't want to install and run Python on your machine, you may run it in person or remotely using your Zoo account.

Note that there are two current versions of Python: 2 and 3, which are not quite compatible. We suggest that you opt for version 3.

Perlis epigram #19: A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.

The language we'll use this semester, Python, is widely used for production systems, including web programming and data science.

We conclude with a gentle demonstration of Python in action: f0827.py in which we do the following:

define a list comprising 10 digits
define a function, num_to_word, which takes a single digit, num, and returns the corresponding English word, e.g.,
num_to_word(9) ==> 'nine'
define a function, word_to_num, which is the inverse of num_to_word. Note that we define a sub-function within the function itself. The sub-function, find_index, is recursive.
We then try out the functions.
Here is a transcript of today's class.
Here is jupyter notebook version of today's class.

Getting to know Python

Introduction.html (jupyter) Python

Getting to know UNIX

UNIX Introduction

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