COMP 200 Elements of Computer Science &
COMP 130 Elements of Algorithms and Computation
Spring 2012

[Rice University]

COMP 130 meets MWF 10:00–10:50am, sometimes in Duncan Hall Symonds II Lab and sometmes in Sewall Hall 207, aka Symonds I Lab. In addition, it also meets 1:00 PM - 1:50 PM in Sewall Hall 207. While class notes will be posted here, class attendance and participation is expected.

Much of the supplementary materials for Comp130 can be found in the Spring 2012 COMP 130 Supplementary Home page.

To turn in assignments, see announcements and view scores, please go to the COMP 130 Spring 2012 Owlspace site.

The following schedule is tentative and will be updated as needed.

Overview
 
M 9 Jan Computational Thinking, Course Pragmatics Symonds II
W 11 Jan Installing Python, Introductory Python “Finger Exercises” Sewall 207
Module 1: Predator-Prey Modeling
 
F 13 Jan From Problem to Algorithm, Program Decomposition & Lists Finger Exercises Symonds II
W 18 Jan From Algorithm to Code (code) Symonds II
F 20 Jan Improving the Accuracy of the Algorithm I (code) Sewall 207
F(@1pm) 20 Jan Even More Refining of the Predator-Prey Algorithm Sewall 207
M 23 Jan Second-order correction to Lotka-Volterra Sewall 207
W 25 Jan Extending the Algorithm using Conditionals (code), Conditionals & Logic Finger Exercises, Starvation effects in Predatory-Prey Models   Sewall 207
F 27 Jan  (both hours) Starvation Effect continued.  Practice with Python Control Flow Sewall 207
Module 2: Text Analysis & Generation
 
M 30 Jan Text analysis introduction Symonds II
W 1 Feb String Matching (algorithm at end of class) Symonds II
F 3 Feb String Matching, Regular Expression Finger Exercises Symonds II
F(@1pm) 3 Feb Edit distance Sewall 207
M 6 Feb String Matching with Regular Expressions Sewall 207
W 8 Feb Exam 1 Review  (study topics guide) Sewall 207
F 10 Feb Exam 1 Sewall 207
F 10 Feb. ( 1 PM) Edit distance continued... Sewall 207
M 13 Feb Counting word frequencies (sample text files), Dictionary finger exercises Sewall 207
W 15 Feb Counting word frequencies (continued) Sewall 207
F 17 Feb Exam 1 Summary, Practice with Dictionaries — Substitution Ciphers Symonds II
F 17 Feb (1 PM) Stylometry and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) Sewall 207
M 20 Feb Counting word sequence frequencies Sewall 207
W 22 Feb Preparing Text Data for PCA Analysis,  Supplemental exercises Sewall 207
F 24 Feb Using PCA for Text Analysis, PCA documentation Sewall 207
F 24 Feb (1 PM) Using PCA for Text Analysis, continued... Sewall 207
M 5 Mar Text Generation — Who was Mark V Shaney? Symonds II
W 7 Mar Text Generation — Who was Mark V Shaney? (continued), Johnny B. Goode example, Eight Days a Week example, Scientific American article Symonds II
F 9 Mar Distributed Parallel Processing with MapReduce, Practice with nested data structures Sewall 207
F 9 Mar (1 PM) Currying Functions Sewall 207
Module 3: Graphs/Networks
 
M 12 Mar Graphs Introduction Symonds II
W 14 Mar Practice with Graphs Sewall 207 
F 16 Mar Exam 2 Review (study topics guide) Sewall 207
F 16 Mar (1 PM) Comp130-specific review Sewall 207
M 19 Mar Exam 2 Review (study topics guide) Sewall 207
W 21 Mar Graph Searching Introduction Symonds II
M 26 Mar Aside: Introduction to Recursion (code) Symonds II
W 28 Mar Aside: Another Recursion Example, Tower of Hanoi applet (code) Symonds II
F 30 Mar Aside: Another Recursion Example (code) Symonds II
F 30 Mar (1 PM) Assignment 5 discussion, Classes in Python, Advanced Notions in Recursion, networkx Techniques , networkx Exercises Sewall 207
M 2 Apr Depth-First Search (code -- different from Comp200 code!) Sewall 207
W 4 Apr Breadth-First Search  (code -- different from Comp200 code!   Includes unification of DFS and BFS  using either a function or a Restricted Access Container)
Additonal notes on inheritance and polymorphism. 		Sewall 207
F 6 Apr Dijkstra's Shortest Path (applet 1, applet 2, pseudo-code) Symonds II
F 6 Apr (1 PM) Priority Queues and Big-O Notation Sewall 207
M 8 Apr Priority Queues in Dijkstra's Shortest Path Algorithm Sewall 207
Module 4: Probability and Bayesian Inference
 
W 11 Apr Computing with Probabilities Sewall 207
F 13 Apr Bayesian Inference Sewall 207
F 13 Apr (1 PM) Bayesian Inference (continued) Sewall 207
M 16 Apr Assignment 6 class discussion and team work. Sewall 207
W 18 Apr Google PageRank and Quantum Mechanics? Sewall 207
F 20 Apr Exam 3 Review (study topics guide) Sewall 207
F 20 Apr (1 PM) Exam 3 Review Sewall 207