General information#

  • Dr. Minh Bui is your lecturer in the 1st half of the semester.
  • Dr. Alberto F. Martin is your lecturer in the 2nd half of the semester.
  • Lectures twice a week: Monday, 1-2PM & Tuesday, 4-5PM.
  • All lectures take place in room 1.01 Barry Drive 7-11, O007 building.
  • Links to PDFs of the lecture slides and associated Python codes will be available (at the latest) after each lecture.
  • Livestream lectures and recordings available on echo360, see the link on Course Wattle page.
  • Ignore timetabling message that the lecture slot is full; just come to the lecture hall!

Schedule#

Links to slides will be available here and on Ed Lessons on the lecturing dates. Ed Lessons will additionally contain code demonstrated in lectures.

Week Date/Time Lecture Topic and Slides
1 22/07/24 1 Intro and admin matters
23/07/24 2 Functional abstraction
2 29/07/24 3 Data value, types and expressions
30/07/24 4 Functions
3 05/08/24 5 Branching (if statement)
06/08/24 6 Iterations (loop)
4 12/08/24 7 Sequence data
13/08/24 8 Code quality
5 19/08/24 9 Strings, slicing and other operations
20/08/24 10 Testing and debugging
6 26/08/24 11 More about lists
27/08/24 12 Data analysis and visualisation
Teaching break
7 16/09/24 13 Numpy arrays
17/09/24 14 Data analysis with Pandas
8 23/09/24 15 Files and I/O
24/09/24 16 Dictionaries and sets
9 30/09/24 17 Computational complexity
01/10/24 18 Errors and exceptions
10 07/10/24 - No Lecture: Labour day
08/10/24 19 Dynamic programming
11 14/10/24 20 Modules and command-line parsing
15/10/24 21 Classes and object-based programming
12 21/10/24 22 Computational science and Engineering (CSE)
22/10/24 23 Exam revision

Find below some recommended readings if you want to come better prepared to the lectures and/or reinforce your understanding afterwards.

Week Recommended readings
1 Downey’s book, chapters 1-2. Sundnes’s book, Sects. 2.1-2.2 and 4.1-4.3, 4.5-4.7
2 Downey’s book, chapters 3. Sundnes’s book Sects. 2.1-2.2 and 4.1-4.3, 4.5-4.7
3 Downey’s book, chapters 5 and 7. Sundnes’s book, Sects. 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 4.4. docs.python.org, 4.1 to 4.5
4 Downey’s book, chapter 8.
5 Downey’s book, chapter 8, 10, 11 and 12. Sundnes’s book, Section 3.3, 3.6, 7.1 and 7.4. docs.python.org, 3.1, 5.1.0, 5.1.1, 5.1.2, 5.3 and 5.5
6 Downey’s book, chapter 14. docs.python.org, 6.0, 6.1, 7.2, 9.3
7 Sundnes’s book, chapter 6. (excluding section 6.4). 10 minutes to pandas
8 Downey’s book, Sects. 11.1-11.5 and 19.5, chapter 14. Sundnes’s book Sects. 5.3-5.4, chapter 7
9 Downey’s book, chapter 21 (“Analysis of Algorithms”, called Appendix B in the on-line edition) introduces complexity and analysis of algorithms. Downey’s book, chapter 20 (called “Appendix A” in the on-line edition), chapter 14 section “Catching Exceptions”. Sundnes’s book, Section 5.5
10 –
11 Downey’s book, Section 14.9, Chapters 15-17. Sundnes’s book Section 5.6, chapter 8
12 TBA
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