Introductory Computer Science

This introductory text provides both a foundation in a popular programming language (Turbo PASCAL) and an introduction to the principles and applications of the field. It stresses applications that demonstrate computers' many roles in our lives

This book is suitable for use in a university-level first course in computing (CS1), as well as the increasingly popular course known as CS0. It is difficult for many students to master basic concepts in computer science and programming. A large portion of the confusion can be blamed on the complexity of the tools and materials that are traditionally used to teach CS1 and CS2. This textbook was written with a single overarching goal: to present the core concepts of computer science as simply as possible without being simplistic.

An Active Learning Approach to Teaching the Main Ideas in Computing Explorations in Computing: An Introduction to Computer Science and Python Programming teaches computer science students how to use programming skills to explore fundamental concepts and computational approaches to solving problems. Tbook gives beginning students an introduction to

Discusses most ideas behind a computer in a simple and straightforward manner. The book is also useful to computer enthusiasts who wish to gain fundamental knowledge of computers.

The new edition of an introductory text that teaches students the art of computational problem solving, covering topics ranging from simple algorithms to information visualization. This book introduces students with little or no prior programming experience to the art of computational problem solving using Python and various Python libraries, including PyLab. It provides students with skills that will enable them to make productive use of computational techniques, including some of the tools and techniques of data science for using computation to model and interpret data. The book is based on an MIT course (which became the most popular course offered through MIT's OpenCourseWare) and was developed for use not only in a conventional classroom but in in a massive open online course (MOOC). This new edition has been updated for Python 3, reorganized to make it easier to use for courses that cover only a subset of the material, and offers additional material including five new chapters. Students are introduced to Python and the basics of programming in the context of such computational concepts and techniques as exhaustive enumeration, bisection search, and efficient approximation algorithms. Although it covers such traditional topics as computational complexity and simple algorithms, the book focuses on a wide range of topics not found in most introductory texts, including information visualization, simulations to model randomness, computational techniques to understand data, and statistical techniques that inform (and misinform) as well as two related but relatively advanced topics: optimization problems and dynamic programming. This edition offers expanded material on statistics and machine learning and new chapters on Frequentist and Bayesian statistics.

While the development of information technology has been obvious to all, the underpinning computer science has been less apparent. Subrata Dasgupta provides a thought-provoking introduction to the field and its core principles, considering computer science as a science of symbol processing.

Introduction to Computer Science introduces students to the fundamentals of computer science by connecting the dots between applications they use every day and the underlying technologies that power them. Throughout, students learn valuable technical skills including how to write simple JavaScript programs, format a webpage with HTML and CSS code, reduce the size of a file, and more. Opening chapters of the text provide students with historical background, describe the numbering systems that computers operate with, and explain how computers store and convert data such as images and music. Later chapters explore the anatomy of computer hardware such as CPUs and memory, how computers communicate over networks, and the programming languages that allow us to solve problems using computation. The book concludes with chapters dedicated to security and privacy, the structure and function of operating systems, and the world of e-commerce. Accessible in approach, Introduction to Computer Science is designed to help non-computer science majors learn how technology and computers power the world around them. The text is well suited for introductory courses in computer science.