CompSci 101, Fall 2016
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Assigned Reading

The assigned reading for the course is listed below.

Be sure to check the calendar page to see if there is a reading quiz on Sakai to go along with the assigned reading.

The book for the course is listed below. You'll need a code to register for our version of the book. The code is on Sakai under announcements.

How To Think Like a Computer Scientist - Learning with Python: Interactive Edition 2.0 by Jeffrey Elkner, Allen B. Downey, and Chris Meyer

Note the book is free, but not really free. A lot of work went into building and maintaining this online book. Please give a donation of at least $15. More if you can.

Note: You do not need to do the exercise sections at the end of the chapters. But you should do the questions and little exercises that are integrated into the reading.

NOTE: THESE READINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Reading

• Sept 1, 2016
• Read the Course web pages (which include the syllabus) (This part is not the online book)
• General Introduction (all) (This part is a chapter in the online book)
• Sept 6, 2016
• Simple Python Data (all)
• Sept 8, 2016
• Debugging Interlude 1 (all)
• Python Turtle Graphics (just first three sections)
• Hello Little Turtles!
• Our First Turtle program
• Instances - A Herd of Turtles
• Python Modules (all)
• Functions (just first three sections)
• Functions
• Functions that Return Values
• Variables and Parameters
• Sept 13, 2016
• Python Turtle Graphics (next four sections)
• The for Loop
• Flow of Execution of the for loop
• Iteration Simplifies our Turtle Program
• The range Function
• Functions (next three sections)
  • The Accumulator Pattern
  • Functions that can Call Other Functions
  • Flow of Execution Summary
• Strings (first seven sections)
  • Strings Revisted
  • A Collection Data Type
  • Operations on Strings
  • Index Operator: Working with the Characters of a String
  • String Methods
  • Length
  • The Slice Operator
• Sept 15, 2016
• Python Turtle Graphics (rest of chapter)
• A few more turtle functions and observations
• rest of chapter
• Selection (first four sections)
  • Boolean Values and Boolean Expressions
  • Logical Operators
  • Precedence of Operators
  • Conditional Execution: Binary Selection
• Strings (next three sections)
  • Strings are Immutable
  • Traversal and the for loop: by item
  • Traversal and the for loop: by index
• Lists (first four sections)
  • Lists
  • List Values
  • List Length
  • Accessing Elements
• Sept 20, 2016
• Functions (rest of chapter)
• Selection (rest of chapter)
• Strings (two sections)
• The In and Not In operators
• The Accumulator Pattern with Strings
• Lists (four sections)
• List Membership
• Concatenation and Repetition
• List Slices
• List are Mutable
• Sept 22, 2016
• Strings
• String Comparison
• Looping and Counting
• Lists
• List Deletion
• Objects and References
• Aliasing
• Cloning Lists
• Files (first four sections)
• Working with Data Files
• Finding a File on your disk
• Reading a File
• Iterating over lines in a file
• Sept 27, 2016
• Lists
• Lists and for loops
• Files
• Alternative File Reading Methods
• Writing Text Files
• Glossary
• EXAM 1
• Oct 6, 2016
• More about Iteration
• Iteration Revisited
• The for loop revisited
• The while statement
• Randomly Walking Turtles
• The 3n+1 Sequence
• Strings
• Traversal and the while Loop
• A find function
• Optional Parameters
• Character classification
• Summary
• Glossary
• Oct 13, 2016
• Lists
• Repetition and References
• List Methods
• Append vs Concatenate
• Using Lists as Parameters
• Pure Functions
• Which is Better?
• Functions that Produce Lists
• List Comprehensions
• Oct 18, 2016
• This reading is not in the textbook but here: Sets
• Oct 20, 2016
• Lists
• Nested Lists
• Strings and Lists
• list Type Conversion Function
• Oct 25, 2016
• Lists
• Tuples and Mutability
• Tuple Assignment
• Tuples as Return Values
• Glossary
• More About Iteration
• 2-Dimensional Iteration:Image Processing
  Note 1: This has three parts (The RGB Color Model,
  Image Objects, Image Processing and Nested Iteration)
  

• Oct 27, 2015
• More About Iteration
• Newton's Method
• Algorithms Revisited
• Simple Tables
• Glossary
• Nov 1, 2016
• Dictionaries
• Dictionaries
• Dictionary Operations
• Dictionary Methods
• Nov 3, 2016
• Dictionaries
• Aliasing and Copying
• Sparse Matrices
• Glossary
• EXAM 2
• Dec 1, 2016
• Recursion
• What is Recursion?
• Calculating the Sum of a List of Numbers
• The Three Laws of Recursion
• Converting an Integer to a String in Any Base
• Dec 6, 2016
• Regular expressions
• Regular expressions Python Doc - 7.2 intro and 7.2.1
• More info on Reg Expr