Computational Thinking
16:198:503, Fall 2007
Class meetings
Thursdays, 5pm-8pm, Psych A139 (RuCCS Playroom)
Recitations
Mondays, 11:30-12:20pm, Psych A139 (RuCCS Playroom)
or
Wednesdays, 10:30-11:20am, Psych A139 (RuCCS Playroom)
Instruction team
Office Hours: Monday 4:00-6:00, Core 328.
Ali El Qursh (email: elqursh at cs.rutgers.edu)
Office Hours: Wednesday 4:30-6:30pm, Hill 420.
Requirements
Small in-class exercises, recitations and weekly homeworks will give you practice in understanding problems computationally, solving them, and critiquing solutions. Grades will be assigned based on homeworks, class participation, and take-home midterm and final exams. We'll focus on talking computationally as well as thinking computationally, so you understand how to play your part in computational projects - especially those where not everyone on the team has a hand in the programming.
The central place of skills development in the class means that those who lack background in computer science will not be well served by attending as auditors.
Audience
The course is geared to students with some mathematical sophistication. You should be familiar with abstraction and proof from a course such as linear algebra (as 01:640:250), mathematics of probability (as 01:640:477 or 01:198:206), or formal logic (as 01:640:461 or 01:730:407). No background in computer science or programming will be presupposed.
Typical class meetings will have 1:20 of hands-on technical teaching, followed by a 20 minute break, followed by 1:20 of big picture lectures and discussion.
Computer science students with interdisciplinary interests are very welcome in the class, as they are likely to benefit from our reflections on talk and teamwork in computer science. CS students can also consider auditing just the second half of each course meeting, from 6:40-8pm.
Curriculum
While the course will not count towards graduate requirements in computer science (other than the graduate school's general requirement that PhD students take 48 credits of coursework), students can take it together with its companion class CS 504 in the Spring to satisfy prerequisites for Rutgers's advanced graduate courses in Artificial Intelligence.