About this course: This two-part course introduces the basic mathematical and programming principles that underlie much of Computer Science. Understanding these principles is crucial to the process of creating efficient and well-structured solutions for computational problems. To get hands-on experience working with these concepts, we will use the Python programming language. The main focus of the class will be weekly mini-projects that build upon the mathematical and programming principles that are taught in the class. To keep the class fun and engaging, many of the projects will involve working with strategy-based games. In part 2 of this course, the programming portion of the class will focus on concepts such as recursion, assertions, and invariants. The mathematical portion of the class will focus on searching, sorting, and recursive data structures. Upon completing this course, you will have a solid foundation in the principles of computation and programming. This will prepare you for the next course in the specialization, which will begin to introduce a structured approach to developing and analyzing algorithms. Developing such algorithmic thinking skills will be critical to writing large scale software and solving real world computational problems.
Taught by: Scott Rixner, Professor
Computer Science
Taught by: Joe Warren, Professor
Computer Science
Taught by: Luay Nakhleh, Associate Professor
Computer Science; Biochemistry and Cell Biology
| Basic Info | Course 4 of 7 in the Fundamentals of Computing Specialization |
| Commitment | 4 weeks of study, 7-10 hours/week |
| Language | English |
| How To Pass | Pass all graded assignments to complete the course. |
| User Ratings |
- Video: Introduction
- Video: The Importance of Searching
- Video: Generators
- Video: Stacks and Queues
- Video: Inheritance
- Video: Grid Class
- Video: Grid search
- Video: Mini-project Video
- Reading: Mini-project Description
- LTI Item: Assignment Submission History
- Reading: Math Notes on Growth Rates of Functions
- Reading: Math Notes on Grid Representations
- Reading: Math Notes on Breadth-First Search
- Reading: Practice Activity - Sorting strings
- Reading: Practice Activity - Working with Distance Fields
- Video: CodeSkulptor (optional video from our previous class)
- Video: Saving in CodeSkulptor (optional video from our previous class)
- Video: Beyond CodeSkulptor (optional video from our previous class)
- Video: The Importance of Recursion
- Video: Recursion
- Video: Binary Search
- Video: Visualizing Recursion
- Video: Recurrences
- Video: Reading Files
- Video: Mini-project Video
- Reading: Mini-project Description
- Reading: Math Notes on Recurrence Relations
- Reading: Practice Activity - Recursion
- Reading: Practice Activity - Binary representations for numbers
- Reading: Practice Activity - Visualizing recurrences
- Video: The Importance of Trees
- Video: Lambda
- Video: Trees
- Video: Illustration of Trees
- Video: Minimax
- Video: Mini-project Video
- Reading: Mini-project Description
- Reading: TTTBoard Class
- Reading: Math Notes on Trees
- Reading: Math Notes on Minimax
- Reading: Practice Activity - Nim (Tree search)
- Reading: Practice Activity - Drawing trees
- Video: The Importance of Modeling
- Video: Assertions
- Video: Invariants
- Video: Modeling
- Video: Software Development
- Reading: The Basics of the Fifteen Puzzle
- Video: Mini-project Video
- Reading: Mini-project Description
- Reading: Math Notes on Invariants
- Reading: Practice Activity - Solitaire Tantrix
- Video: What is Algorithmic Thinking?
Each course is like an interactive textbook, featuring pre-recorded videos, quizzes and projects.
Connect with thousands of other learners and debate ideas, discuss course material, and get help mastering concepts.
Earn official recognition for your work, and share your success with friends, colleagues, and employers.
| Purchase Course | Audit | |
|---|---|---|
| Access to course materials | Available | Available |
| Access to graded materials | Available | Not available |
| Receive a final grade | Available | Not available |
| Earn a shareable Course Certificate | Available | Not available |
Great Course - learned a lot - Great Projects
Great course, but the final project in W4 is very long compared the rest of the projects in this series of courses. Content is still top notch though.
A rigorous, but short, computer science course. The projects for this class took widely differing amounts of time to complete. Some, I could do in a few hours. The more difficult ones, like the final project, took me days of thinking and coding to do. I highly recommend it, though. By the end, you'll be a much better programmer.
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Learned lots! One year down the line I was asked at a job interview about my past experience in python and gave this!