Difference between revisions of "CSC103 Weekly Schedule 2013"

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*** [http://cs.smith.edu/~thiebaut/research/singularity/ieee_spectrum__signs_of_the_singularity.pdf Signs of the Singularity] by Vernor Vinge.
 
*** [http://cs.smith.edu/~thiebaut/research/singularity/ieee_spectrum__signs_of_the_singularity.pdf Signs of the Singularity] by Vernor Vinge.
 
*** [http://cs.smith.edu/~thiebaut/research/singularity/ieee_spectrum__can_machines_be_conscious.pdf Can Machines Be Conscious?], Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi.
 
*** [http://cs.smith.edu/~thiebaut/research/singularity/ieee_spectrum__can_machines_be_conscious.pdf Can Machines Be Conscious?], Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi.
 +
** Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity.  Bio taken from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil Wikipedia]:
 +
<blockquote>
 +
Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil (/ˈkɜrzwaɪl/ kurz-wyl; born February 12, 1948) is an American author, inventor, futurist, and a director of engineering at Google. Aside from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements, as has been displayed in his vast collection of public talks, wherein he has shared his primarily optimistic outlooks on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.
 +
</blockquote>
 
<br />
 
<br />
 
<center><videoflash>1uIzS1uCOcE</videoflash></center>
 
<center><videoflash>1uIzS1uCOcE</videoflash></center>

Revision as of 07:28, 17 October 2013

--D. Thiebaut 10:23, 1 April 2013 (EDT)




Syllabus | PIAZZA


Week Topics Reading
Week 1
9/3
  • Tuesday
    • Syllabus
    • Introduction to the class and the 1/2 semester schedule
    • Organization of the class
    • a short movie to get the discussion started...
    • some examples of computers:


AbacusWolfram.png


DifferenceEngine.jpg


DifferenceEngineDetail.jpg


DNAComputer.png


Antikythera.jpg
Antikythera mechanism, oldest computer


(start at 1min 47sec)

DoubleHelix.jpg
Harvard research: 1.8 zettabytes in 4 grams of DNA


    • Keywords:
      • code: Translating from one system of values to another system.
    • Electricity
    • The Binary System: a system where the only two numbers available are 0 and 1. Every operation that we can do in decimal, with 10 digits, we can also do in binary.
    • The Transistor: A switch controlled by electricity.
  • Counting in binary




  • Thursday
    • Announcement: If you want to take CSC102 and haven't contacted Pippin Wolfe (apwolfe@smith.edu), please do so now!
    • Quick recap of Tuesday's lecture.
    • A movie on Babbage's Difference Engine
  • We continue counting in binary, then move on to simple additions in binary, remembering first how we do additions by hand in decimal.
  • Figuring out the value of a binary number: what is the value of 1110, for example?
  • ==> Main message: everything we can do in decimal we can do in binary
  • Recap:
    • at some point in time, engineers had very fast electronic switches at their disposition in the form of transistors
    • mathematicians had shown that a binary system allowed the same quality of arithmetic as the decimal system.
  • Comes Boole (1815-1864), and the boolean algebra (very soon we'll talk about Shannon, who linked Boole's work with binary arithmetic. More on that later)
    • Boolean assertions can be either True or False
    • new boolean assertions can be combined with simple operators to form other assertions that are also boolean and can only be True or False
    • The operators are AND, OR, and NOT. They are defined by truth tables.
    • Several examples to discuss in class:
      • Alarm system to go to CSC103 the right day at the right time
      • Alarm system to allow one to stay in bed during the weekend
      • True/False machine to pick ice cream

Week 2
9/10
  • Tuesday
    • Review of where we are
    • Binary system
    • Boolean variables, boolean operators, and boolean functions
    • The "ice cream machine" example
    • From boolean function to truth table
    • From truth table to boolean function
    • Shannon's thesis (1948): we can do arithmetic with logic!
    • Look at the binary addition as an operation in the world of logic
    • Logic gates: the AND gate, the OR gate, and the NOT gate (also called inverter).
    • building a 2-bit adder with logic gates.
    • Electronic circuit: Logic Gates
    • Data sheet for the AND gate.
    • Data sheet for the NOT gate.
    • Data sheet for the OR gate.


  • Thursday



    • Lab (you may want to bring your laptop if you prefer to work on your laptop rather than the iMacs)
    • The lab is available here.

  • Reading:
    • Instructor's Notes
    • Logic Gates on wikipedia: You can skip the Universal Logic Gate section, the De Morgan section, and the remaining sections until the end.

 


Week 3
9/17


  • Thursday


Reading:

Week 4
9/24
  • Tuesday




  • Thursday MOUNTAIN DAY!


MountainDay.png


  • Homework 3 is available. Due 10/3/13 10/8/13 @ 9:00 a.m.

 

Week 5
10/1
  • Tuesday
    • Going over the last problem of Lab 2
    • The Von Neumann bottleneck.
MooresLawProcessorMemoryGap.png


FootballField.jpg


    • Moore's Law, first introduced in 1965. The number of transistors in circuits doubles every 18 months. What it is, what it means, how it has been extended.
    • Understanding Exponential Growth
RiceOnChessboard.jpg


CSC103 ExponentialGrowth4.png


HockeyStick.gif


LogarithmicScale1.jpg


CSC103 ExponentialGrowthLogarithmicScale.png


MooresLaw.jpg


MooresLawForSpeed.png




MooresLawProcessorMemoryGap.gif




  • Thursday
    • What is Processing? Ben Fry, one of the co-inventors of the language, explains.

This is less about Processing than about data visualization, and how Ben Fry, one of the co-authors of Processing uses the language to represent data. Several of his projects are presented.


Ben Fry generated the computer graphics for Minority Report (start watching around Time Stamp 7 minutes 25 seconds).

Reading:

Week 6
10/8
  • Tuesday
  • Thursday
FacebookPage1013.png

 

Week 7
10/15
  • Tuesday: Fall Break

DancingCalving.gif




Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil (/ˈkɜrzwaɪl/ kurz-wyl; born February 12, 1948) is an American author, inventor, futurist, and a director of engineering at Google. Aside from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He has written books on health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism. Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements, as has been displayed in his vast collection of public talks, wherein he has shared his primarily optimistic outlooks on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.