1. COSC 235: Programming and Problem Solving Instructor: Dr. Xenia Mountrouidou 1

2. 2 Who am I? Dr. X – Computer Scientist PhD at North Carolina State University – Optical networks performance Worked at IBM – Software Performance Engineer Post doc at College of William and Mary – research on performance and power savings for hard disk drives Assistant professor at Jacksonville University Assistant professor at Wofford College! Scuba diver, manga comics collector, science fiction reader

3. 3 Who am I?

4. Topics Who are you and what are you looking from this course? Syllabus and Policies Group activities on Syllabus What is Computer Science? What do Computer Scientists study? What do they actually do? 4

5. What is computer science? “Computers are to computer science what telescopes are to astronomy.” – E. Dijkstra The study of what can be computed Computer scientists… (what do they do, what do they look like?) Computer scientists 5

6. http://services.allegany.edu/acmlife/?pa ge_id=2065 6

7. Algorithms What is an algorithm? How does algorithmic thinking help in problem solving? How did you apply algorithmic thinking this weekend? 7

8. The Universal Machine “a machine that stores and manipulates information under the control of a changeable program.” Two key elements: – Manipulating information… data! – Changeable program

9. The Universal Machine What is a computer program? 9

10. Program Power http://www.theworkprint.com/jubi lee-joins-x-men-apocalypse/123 10

11. Why do you want to learn how to code? 11

12. References “Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science”, 2 nd ed., John M. Zelle 12