Ah, my second semester in computer science has finally come to a close. When the Spring semester starts, I’ll no longer be a pre-CS student but a full-fledged CS student. It’s been a very busy semester for me but very rewarding at the same time. I finally feel like I’m at the point where I can comprehend most any topic in CS that anyone cares to throw at me, even though it may still take a little extra time to sink in.

Anyhow, some closing thoughts on the classes that have encompassed me for the past few months:

CS 315: Algorithms and Data Structures (Novak)

Novak’s CS 315 site is one of the best in the department–if for nothing else than having an excellent vocabulary list and so many ways to browse the class notes. Novak wasn’t the most exciting lecturer, but he always made sure we understood what was going on. If I could change one thing about this class, though, I’d like to look at implementations a bit more. He’d tell us that the code already existed, and his focus was on making programming faster and easier for others, but for now I still want to see things very in depth.

CS 310: Computer Organization and Programming (Boral)

In this course, we got to learn the fundamentals. We implemented our own stack and heap using LC-3 and learned how to write machine code. There’s much to be learned from this, but I think the main thing is to cherish the high-level languages we get to use (I still think it’s funny to call C “high-level” though) and to optimize how we use them without having to constantly focus on the small details. Boral was usually an entertaining lecturer, and if it wasn’t for the unpredictability of his tests I’d love to take another course with him.

CS 313K: Logic, Sets, and Functions (Lifschitz)

I took this class ten years ago as Philosophy 313K, so I expected this to be mostly a refresher course, and as such much of it was quite boring. However, I couldn’t miss any lectures because the exams would have questions about topics that weren’t in any of our notes or assignments. The course was mainly focused on mathematical functions and sequences, and I was a bit disappointed that logical quantifiers and connectives weren’t really covered. At least it was a (mostly) easy A for me.

EE 316: Digital Logic Design (Touba)

Between readings, homeworks, and labs, EE 316 is probably the most time-intensive course I’ve taken so far. (The required lab section doesn’t count for any credit hours.) Much of the material looks easy in retrospect, but the pace is so quick that you’re sure to get behind at some point along the way and have a lot of trouble catching up. The verbosity of VHDL is quite irritating, but learning all the tricks with Karnaugh maps was fun and state diagrams seem almost natural now.

M 328K: Introduction to Number Theory (Caputo)

Ah, my last ever pure math course. For being a rather easy course, though, it really made me miss Differential Equations. I mentioned this earlier, and now I’m sure that Moore method isn’t my strong point. I love to research things just to get new ideas even and felt pretty stifled in this class. It looks like what I did learn won’t go to waste, though. I’ve been looking over the supplementary textbook for CS 336 (next semester), and many of the theorems and algorithms I’ve learned are in there.

(Note: I’m still waiting for my official grades to come out, but as I’ve calculated it: for the semester I have A’s in CS 310, CS 313k, and M 328k, and B’s in CS 315 and EE 316.
Update: I got an A in CS 315 and an A- in EE 316. Whoo!)

Some things just take a while to sink in. This summer I was studying my class textbooks in advance because the ideas just simmer in the back of my brain and then make so much more sense when we actually get to them in class. However, my number theory class this semester is different. The class textbook is super thin and holds a few axioms to learn, but then asks us, the students, to explain them and to prove other theorems based on them. Sure, I can read in advance and try to work my way through, but it’s difficult without any feedback. With all these worries, can this still be a better way to learn?

This is a way of teaching known as the Moore method. Instead of the standard lectures, this method allows students to experiment in a way by doing proofs and seeing how what we already know applies to new situations. We all progress at the same rate by presenting what we’ve learned in class and discussing what we did differently or anything that still doesn’t make sense.

Though this method is also used in our logic course, most computer science classes follow the standard lecture and lab format. Professor Gordon Novak told us, “CS is an experimental science,” but by this he didn’t mean that we discover new data structures just by trying to solve a problem and seeing that that would be the best possible solution. Instead with some exceptions, we learn most of the time we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. The focus is on learning about many different data structures, gaining experience using them, and figuring out how to decide which is the best solution to any particular problem.

Of course, the concept of number theory is completely different than most of what we encounter in computer science. The method of proving the theorem (which may be as close to programming as math gets) isn’t so important as the fact that you can prove it and really understand why something’s true. It’s still kind of a shock being in a Moore method class, but it’s only been two weeks, so I still have most of a semester left to see if this works for me.

On Friday, WICS hosted a faculty lunch with our department chair, Dr. J Strother Moore. I was a little late coming from class, but fortunately the part I missed out on was about backpacking, rock-climbing, and fishing, none of which interest me too much.

Afterwards, he talked quite a bit about his main project as chair–which is to get a new building for our Computer Science department. Right now our faculty is spread across 6 different buildings, not all close to each other, and having everyone together would be great for sharing ideas, working on research, and just building a community. I frequently hang out in the basement where the ACM and WICS offices are, but it’s not convenient for most other people to just come by, and yes, it does smell a little funny. Unfortunately, the date for starting the new building still isn’t set, and it would take four years or so to complete, so it definitely won’t be up while I’m still here. I’m still not completely sure it’s necessary to take on that cost of not having a central hub for that amount of time, but the ideas Moore presented of our new building sure did sound lovely.

Another interesting idea he had was to have senior faculty teach the lower-level classes, while the newer faculty who are doing more research would be teaching the upper level classes. Personally, I think that’s a great idea since there’s nothing that turns more students off of certain classes than not having a teacher who really has teaching experience. I agree with this completely, as well as his idea to have larger class sizes using tools such as iClicker for extra interaction. My one concern with his ideas here was that of reducing reliance on lecturers. It really makes sense financially since the funds for lecturers fluctuate every year, but Mike Scott has been doing a great job of teaching CS 307 for about a decade now, and I don’t know if anyone else could fill that role so well.

Anyhow, Moore is teaching CS 313k occassionally and I don’t have him next semester, so I may never get to see how he is as a professor, but it certainly was enjoyable to have our group sit down to lunch with him and learn a bit more about what’s going on with the department.