COM 1723: Freshman Honors Seminar III

A Random Walk Through Computing

Spring 2003

113 Cullinane Hall                                                                      Work: 617-373-2075
College of Computer Science                                                 Email: rraj@ccs.neu.edu
Northeastern University                                                           Home: 617-232-8298
Boston, MA 02115                                                                      Fax:    617-373-5121

COM1721: Freshman Honors Seminar I (Fall 2002)

COM1721: Freshman Honors Seminar II (Winter 2003)

Class meeting times/location: 149 CN, W 5:20-6:25

Office Hours: T 11:30-12:30

Course Description

Textbook

Grading

CALENDAR (Includes homeworks, handouts, and readings)

Course Description

The goal of this year-long course is to give the best first year students an opportunity to explore a variety of topics in computer science. This academic year, we will consider a potpourri of important concepts in computing including abstraction, modularity, presentation, randomization, recursion, refinement, representation, and self-reference. Selected topics that we will cover during this random walk include self-reproducing programs, privacy in communication, relational databases, basic processor design, multimedia data representations (MPEG), structural properties of the World Wide Web, program verification, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, and quantum computing.

In the Spring quarter, the theme of the course will be problem-solving, through programming exercises and an introduction to fundamental algorithm concepts. To this end, we will
cover (a) algorithm design and analysis paradigms; (b) puzzles and games; and (c) a few problems from the ACM international programming contest. We will also have a lecture or two on advanced topics, that may include quantum computing, content delivery networks, and bioinformatics.

Textbook

There is no required textbook for this course. Handouts and web links will be provided as reading assignments.

Grading

In this quarter, we will have 3 in-class quizzes and 4-5 homeworks, including short programming assignments. Your lowest score on the quizzes will be dropped. The grade for this quarter will be based on quizzes (total 20%), homeworks (total 60%) and class participation (20%).