CSIT 120: Computer Science Overview
Fall 2008
Phone: X3869
Note:
it is recommended that you NOT leave me voice mail at the above number. The Fredonia phone system has no mechanism
for automatically informing me when there is voice mail in my voice
mailbox. As a result, you can contact me
much more quickly via email than via voicemail.
This course is an
introduction to the field of Computer Science.
We will explore a wide range of topics within this field including how
computers work, the history of computing, the wide range of applications of microprocessors
in diverse technologies and the economic impact of the technological revolution
that we are currently experiencing.
It may surprise you to find that one topic that this
course will spend very little time on is computer programming. Anytime computer programming is introduced
into a course it tends to “take it over.” The Computer Science department
offers a wide range of courses in computer programming and we have
intentionally made this course a non-programming course to give you a better
understanding of the breadth of the field.
Another area that this course will avoid is computer applications. If you are interested in learning the finer
points of Excel spreadsheets, or webpage development, courses are available to
teach you these things, but they are not included in this course.
Instead, we will spend a fair amount
of time exploring how computers store and manipulate data. You will gain some understanding of how the
underlying circuits work that are contained within
computers. The course will provide an introduction
to technologies that we use everyday… we’ll learn how CD players work, how
cellular telephones work, how wireless networking works, how the Internet
works, how digital cameras work and how they store pictures on small compact
flash, smart media, or secure digital cards.
And we will gain some understanding of the impacts of all of these
technologies on our economy.
If you looked at a list of topics
contained in this course, you might become concerned that you were being asked
to master mathematics, electrical engineering, economics, history and
sociology, all in one course. You should
not be overly concerned about this, however, since none of these topics will be
covered in great depth. Some
understanding of parts of high school mathematics (logic and numbers in bases
other than 10, for example) will be necessary, but we won’t even touch on
topics that require advanced mathematical concepts such as calculus or linear
algebra. You’ll find as we go along that
you will review electricity concepts that you probably covered in your middle
school science courses… topics like circuits, switches and conductors and
insulators. You’ll learn how transistors
work and how they form the basis for the chips that power modern computers, but
we won’t be covering anything that looks like advanced electronics.
This course satisfies a portion of the Core
College Curriculum, Part 7.
The following book is required for
this course:
Petzold, Charles, Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
(
In addition, there will be a substantial number of
on line readings that will be required.
I used to require a couple of other textbooks for this course, but I’ve
decided this semester to try to accomplish the same thing with on line
readings. There are problems associated
with this approach. It is difficult to
sit in front of a computer screen and read a substantial amount of text. It’s not particularly comfortable and can
become quite boring. However, it may be
better than spending a substantial amount of time in the library reading
reserve books that are out of print.
I’ll be looking forward to your evaluations later in the course as to
whether this method was worked out well or not.
The Petzold
book is the closest thing you will find to a textbook in this course. It explains, on a highly detailed level, how
microcomputers work. Almost everything
in this book was known to science in 1975.
In fact, much of the fundamental knowledge in this book was known to
science in 1870. Had you been able to
read and understand this book in 1975, you could have developed the first Apple
Computer and become fabulously wealthy, as Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs
did.
The Petzold
book ranges from being light and fun, to being genuinely difficult. Significant parts of it will require that you
study it, not merely read it. The more
difficult parts will also be covered by lectures in class. I do not plan to lecture in any substantive
way on the other readings that will be assigned. However, you should spend a substantial
amount of time reading through them and thinking about what they have to
say. You should be prepared to discuss
them in essays on the course exams. If
you are the sort of person who never quite gets around to reading textbooks in
your courses, you should seriously consider dropping this course right
now. However, from past experience I
know that if you are the sort of person who doesn’t read textbooks you probably
haven’t read this far in the syllabus either!
There will be two midterm exams in this
course and a comprehensive course final.
All three exams will be weighted equally. In addition, I will pass out some problem
sets from time to time. I will ask you
to hand in the problem sets, but I won’t “grade” them in the usual sense. Instead, your grade on the problem sets will
depend on whether you make a good faith effort to complete them. My experience with problem sets is that the
biggest benefit that you will receive from them is not receiving a grade for
them, but rather using them as practice for the exams. As a result, the problem sets will not figure
directly into your grade, but rather will be taken into account if your
calculated final grade is on the line between two letter grades. For example, if your test grades on the exams
were B-, B, and A-, the calculated average of these grades would be on the line
between a B and a B+. If you had turned
in all of the problem sets, your grade would be rounded up to a B+.