Programming for Scientists COMP1730

Course overview

Assumed knowledge & required skills

solid mathematical background on the high-school level

Course description

This course teaches introductory programming within a problem solving framework applicable to the sciences. The course emphasises technical programming, the simulation of scientific systems and the processing of scientific data. There is an emphasis on designing and writing correct code. Testing and debugging are seen as integral to the programming enterprise. Both top-down and object oriented design are taught. There will be an introduction to widely-used computer science algorithms and to machine architecture. The course will be taught using one or more programming languages which are widely applicable to scientific work.

Course content

Module 1: Introduction and Basic Programming (text book Parts 1 and 2)

Module 2: Functions and Data Structures (text book Part 3)

Module 3: Classes, Making your own Data Structures and Algorithms (text book Part 4)

Module 4: Being a Better programmer (text book Part 5)

Textbooks

The Practice of Computing using Python
2nd Edition
by William Punch and Richard Enbody, Addison-Wesley, 2012.
ISBN-10: 0-13-280557-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-280557-X