Course description

This course is the first in a three-quarter sequence that teaches computational thinking and skills to students in the sciences, mathematics, economics, etc. Lectures cover topics in (1) Programming, such as recursion, abstract data types, and processing data, (2) Computer Science, such as clustering methods, event-driven simulation, and theory of computation, and to a lesser extent (3) Numerical Computation, such as approximating functions and their derivatives and integrals. Applications and datasets from a wide variety of fields serve both as examples in lectures and as the basis for programming assignments. In recent offerings, students have written programs to evaluate betting strategies, determine the number of voting machines needed at a polling place, and predict the size of extinct marsupials. Students will learn Python and a bit of Java in this course.

Placement into MATH 15200 or higher, or instructor’s consent, is a prerequisite for taking this course.