COSC 150: Science Using Computation

Instructor: Dr. Xenia Mountrouidou

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Who am I?• Dr. X – Computer Scientist• PhD at North Carolina State University – Optical

networks performance • Worked at IBM – Software Performance Engineer• Post doc at College of William and Mary – research on

performance and power savings for hard disk drives• Assistant professor at Jacksonville University• Assistant professor at Wofford College!• Scuba diver, manga comics collector, science fiction

reader, …hacker

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Who am I?

Topics

• Who are you and what are you looking from this course?

• Syllabus and Policies• Group activities on Syllabus• What is Computer Science?• What do Computer Scientists study?

What do they actually do?

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Syllabus Activity

• What do you think we will be doing in this class?

• What do you think we will not be doing in this class?

• What do you dread most?• What do you hope most?

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About this course

• It is not about just coding…• It is not about just science…• It is about using computation for scientific

problem solving

http://www.hybridsoundsafety.com/images/hybrid.jpg, http://wesayyesprogram.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/0

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What is computer science?

• “Computers are to computer science what telescopes are to astronomy.” –E. Dijkstra

• The study of what can be computed• Computer scientists… (what do they do, what

do they look like?)

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Program Power

http://www.theworkprint.com/

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Science and Computation

• What is Science?• What is Computation?• What is Simulation?

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