Week of December 21st - 23rd, 2020

Monday, Tuesday:

Review Friday's test - any questions?

Remember that the Machine Learning paper is due on Friday, January 8th, at 7:30 AM.  Also remember that it was assigned over a month ago!  Make yours one that you can be proud of.  This might provide some inspiration. (13:56)

Overview of computer history:

How the First Computer Changed The World

Early Computing: Crash Course Computer Science #1 (11:52) Overview of computing up until the early 1900s

How an 1803 Jacquard Loom Led to Computer Technology (1:56)

The greatest machine that never was (12:14) Babbage, Lovelace, and Turing
Charles Babbage and his Difference Engine #2 (5:47) shows the Difference Engine #2 in action
Electronic Computing: Crash Course Computer Science #2 (10:43) From about 1900 to the beginning of the transistor era
ENIAC (0:38)
SAGE (just watch up to 6:55, the stuff after that is fairly irrelevant)

Recommended, but we won't have enough class time:
The Queen of Code (16:30) Grace Hopper was a serious badass.

How Computers Work:

Now we've learned a little about the early days of computing, from the abacus and Charles Babbage's analytical engine to the WW2 era Mark-I and ENIAC, and the gigantic SAGE computers built using vacuum tubes.  How do you get from that to a smartphone in your pocket?  The answer is the transistor, and the integrated circuit that combines millions or billions of transistors into a smallish chip.  Here is a circuit board that has several chips on it -- those black square things:

(These images are from sparkfun.com . . . ) Grind the top off one of those chips and it looks like this:

Take a closer look at the little square in the middle with the tiny wires:

Zoom in:

Zoom in more with an electron microscope (not the same chip as above):

So, how do you make something like this?  It's built up in many layers using a very complex technique called photolithograpy.  This gives a pretty good picture:
Integrated Circuits and Moore's Law: Crash Course in Computer Science (12:40 + promo at the end)
How do they make silicon wafers and computer chips? (8:53)
50 Years of Moore's Law (2:03)
Zoom into a microchip (3:40)

So, how does all this actually work?  Let me try to explain . . .
Here is a copy of the slides I'll be going through (updated).
Demo the Visible Computer.

Wednesday:

Wellness day!

Week of December 14th - 18th

Monday:
Finish up working on CMU Unit 5 this week: 5.3.5 (List methods), 5.3.6 (exercises), 5.4.1 (types and input), 5.4.2 (strings), 5.4.3 (exercises) I'll enter grades for these on Friday evening after 6 pm.

Review for loops, range(), len(), append(), remove(), pop(), insert()

Review 'Pyramid' problem from 5.3.4

Tuesday:

Continue to work on Unit 5

Cohort A students take a quick look at a computer motherboard

Wednesday:

Continue to work on Unit 5

Thursday:

Cohort B students take a quick look at a computer motherboard

Review for test.  Here is a list of things you should know.  Here is a review sheet I pasted together from various CMU Unit review sheets.

Friday:

Unit 5 test.

CMU Unit exercises by 6 pm this evening.

Note that the problems at the very end of the unit are optional -- I'll give extra credit if you want to do them.

Week of December 7th - 11th, 2020

Monday:
"Getting Started with Machine Learning Paper" assignment is due at 7:30 AM.
Video: 'Coded Bias'

Tuesday:
Wrap up 'Coded Bias' video

Continue work on CMU Unit 5:

Brief recap of groups and local variables from last week. 

Plan on finishing Unit 5 up to and including the exercises in Unit 5.3.4 (following 'traversing a list') by 7:30 next Monday.

Wednesday:

Virtual Wednesday schedule,  P1 is 8:00 to 9:00 and P2 is 9:05 to 10:05

Continue work on CS Academy Unit 5

Thursday:

Continue work on CS Academy Unit 5

Friday:

Last class time for Unit 5 through the end of 5.3.4 -- due Monday at 7:30 AM