CSC151.01 2015F, Class 01: An Introduction to Algorithms

Overview

Preliminaries

Pun Club, Saturday, 4pm, Way over Younker
Forthcoming: Pals of PALS, pals@grinnell.edu, normally Saturday at 1:30 and Mondays at 4:45. Requires sign up in advance.
Indoor soccer 4:30.

I would like to know
- What name to use for you in normal situations. This will usually be your given name or a nick name.
- What name to use if I am addressing you by family name or last name.
- Your preferred gender pronoun.
- Optionally, any upcoming events in which you are participating that you would like classmates to attend.
I will take attendance using last names. When I call a name that resembles your name, please answer using something like the following models. (It's okay if you don't have any upcoming events.)
- Hi. My name is Casey Smith. I prefer that you call me "Case" or "Mr. Smith". My preferred gender pronouns are he, him, and his. I'm singing in a Con Brio concert this weekend, and I hope to see many of you there, whether or not you are opposed to toy trains.
- Hi. My name is Casey Smith. I prefer that you call me "Casey" or "Ms. Smith". My preferred gender pronouns are she and her. I'm swimming against cornfolk from the neighboring state a week from Friday, and we always like to have folks cheer us on.
- Hi. My name is Casey Smith. I prefer that you call me "Cay" or "Mx. Smith". My preferred gender pronouns are zi and zir. I'm giving a math talk on non-Euclidean combinatorics next Tuesday.

There is a waiting list for this class. If you decide to drop (and I hope that you do not), plesae let me know asap.
The computer science department maintains a mailing list for assorted announcements (talks, discussions, study breaks, internship opportunities, etc.). Please drop me an email message if you'd like to be added.
It's Friday. I do a Public Service Announcement every Friday.

Use a language to tell a computer how to solve problems?
Study of how computers function
- We study in order to make things better?
Writing programs?
Science: A way of studying the world; a method of inquiry.
- We observe to understand how things work.
- We ask why.
- We come up with hypotheses
- We design experiments
- We conduct experiments.
- Analyze the results
- And do it all over again
Computer science is the study of algorithms and data representation
- Algorithm - Fancy term for instructions
Generally, we write our algoriths and representations for use on the computers