This is an archived syllabus from 2013-2014

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COMP11212 Fundamentals of Computation

Level 1
Credits: 10
Enrolled students: 218

Course leader: Andrea Schalk

Additional staff: view all staff

Assessment methods

• 75% Written exam
• 25% Coursework

Timetable

Semester	Event	Location	Day	Time	Group
Sem 2	Lecture	1.1	Wed	09:00 - 09:00	-
Sem 2	Lecture	1.1	Thu	10:00 - 10:00	-
Sem 2 w2+	Examples	IT407	Mon	13:00 - 13:00	M+W
Sem 2 w2+	Examples	IT407	Mon	14:00 - 14:00	B+X
Sem 2 w2+	Examples	IT407	Mon	15:00 - 15:00	Y
Sem 2 w2+	Examples	IT407	Mon	16:00 - 16:00	Z
Sem 2 w27	ADHOCBOOKING	1.1	Fri	17:00 - 17:00	2014/03/26-10:06:44

Overview

The building of real-life computing systems, e.g. mobile phone, tv/video remote control, internet shopping, air-traffic control, internet banking, etc., is always a complex task. Mistakes can be very annoying, costly and sometimes life threatening. Methods and techniques to support the building and understanding of such systems are essential. This course unit provides an introduction to the basic computer science ideas underlying such methods. It is also a part of, and an introduction to, the Modelling and Rigorous Development theme.

Aims

This course unit provides a first approach to answering the following questions. What methods are there that can help understanding complicated systems or programs? How can we make sure that a program does what we intend it to do? How do computers go about recognizing pieces of text? If there are two ways of solving the same problem, how can we compare them? How do we measure that one of them gives the solution faster? How can we understand what computers can do in principle, and are there problems that are not solvable by a computer?

Syllabus

There are two groups of topics covered. One of the lectures will be an introduction to the course unit, and one is reserved for revision. That leaves 10 lectures for each part.

The first part (10 lectures) is concerned with expressing particular strings, and collections of strings, and here we will introduce the methods by which a computer goes about it. The ability to recognize key strings (such as programming constructs or variable names) are, for example, required in every compiler, but they are also used by search engines such as Google.The formalisms introduced include finite state automata, regular expressions (most often used in pattern matching), (regular) grammars. The emphasis is on students being able to use these formalisms to solve problems.

The second group (10 lectures) provides anintroduction to the two topics of computability and computational complexity. There are five big topics:

• recursion and induction
• the WHILE programming language
• asymptotic complexity
• partial and full program correctness
• computability

Teaching methods

Lectures

22 in total, 2 per week

Examples classes

1 per week (starting in week 2)

Feedback methods

Study hours

• Assessment written exam (2 hours)
• Lectures (24 hours)
• Practical classes & workshops (11 hours)

Employability skills

• Analytical skills
• Oral communication
• Problem solving

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, a student will be able to:

Learning outcomes are detailed on the COMP11212 course unit syllabus page on the School of Computer Science's website for current students.

Reading list

Additional notes

Course unit materials

Links to course unit teaching materials can be found on the School of Computer Science website for current students.