What, I hear you ask, do information and intelligence have to do with each
other? And what, you might also ask, do they have to do with computer science?
The short answer: information theory is one of the key underpinnings of
computer science, and artificial intelligence is a key area of computer science
that owes its success to careful exploitation of the principles of information
theory (among others).
The longer answer is why we have an entire semester devoted to this “special topic” course!
The course will be conducted in seminar form: students will play an active role in the course, and will each be responsible for leading some of the discussions and activities in the course. The goal here is for you to learn to organize and express your understanding of some complex, but interesting, topics.
There are two main readings for the course, the first two items in the Texts section below. As its title suggests, the Gleick book deals with information theory. Don’t let the word “theory” put you off: despite information theory’s basis in mathematics, Gleick presents the material without assuming any particular mathematical spohistication, yet without watering down its essence. The Christian book is written at a level that assumes no more preparation than a willingness to think about and evaluate ideas that might be new to you. Coincidentally, the two books were published within a month of each other early in 2011.
The course requires a regular time committment from you: because of the seminar format, you have to be prepared for each class (especially the ones where you lead part of the discussion!), and you will be required to complete a small (1-2 page) writing assignment each week.
In addition to reading, discussing, and writing about course topics, there is another course component: coding. Writing code is emerging as a valuable skill for artists, social and natural scientists, business people, and professionals of all types. This course does not aim to make you into a programmer, but will use one or more coding exercises as a way to reinforce the principles of information theory and artificial intelligence you will be wrestling with during the semester.
Students who complete this course successfully will be able to:
There are two 75 minute class meetings per week. Attendance will not be taken (except at the beginning of the semester to verify your registration for the course), but students who often miss class will probably fail the course. The reading assignments for the course are listed below, and will be broken down further in the course schedule page for the semester.
Grades are posted on the web as soon as they are available.
Exam and assignment grades become permanent one week after they have been posted, even if there has been a scoring error. Be sure to check that your exam was scored correctly and that the correct grade has been recorded (using the “Check My Grades” form on the course schedule page) as soon as exams are returned.
The College has a standard policy for converting course averages into letter grades, which I follow mechanically, except I compute fractional course averages and round to the nearest integer, which gives you half a point of automatic grade inflation. For example, the college policy specifies a grade of B+ for course averages between 87 and 90: because of rounding, that means that any score between 86.5 and 89.5 is a B+.