Posts Tagged mathematics
Edinburgh University, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Semester II
Posted by Manfredas Zabarauskas in Education on September 6th, 2009
Labs @ Edinburgh University
As I have promised earlier, here's the second part of my impressions about the individual courses in the first year of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh. Hopefully you will find it useful, e.g. when choosing your outside courses, preparing for the exams or simply getting a taste of the CS undergraduate life in the University of Edinburgh.
Once again, please bear in mind that all what is written below represents only my personal opinion.
Innovation and Enterprise for Scientists and Engineers
Professor: Khaled Benkrid
Lectures: a brilliant introduction to the main components and aspects of modern entrepreneurship, definitely one of the most interesting business courses that I’ve been to so far. Not only will you get the basic theoretic concepts of the modern business (like industry, marketing, operational, financial analyses, risk assessment), but you’ll also put them into practice while writing a business plan for your own idea, which will then account for 50% of your final grade.
What’s more, you’ll get the guest talks of local entrepreneurs (either spin-offs from the university, or related in some other way), an overview of the legal system regarding UK start-ups and businesses (PLCs, sole-traders, etc) and on top of that – it will all be related to the science and engineering (with Dr. Benkrid being a computer scientist himself!).
All in all – a highly inspiring, exciting and recommended course!
Exam: well… it all can’t be that interesting. Read the rest of this entry »
Edinburgh University, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Semester I
Posted by Manfredas Zabarauskas in Education on July 27th, 2009
1 Night in Haskell
Since the exam results came back and the first year is finally over, I have decided to share my impressions about the individual lectures in the first two semesters. Hopefully it will help someone to choose one subject over another, not to make the same mistakes when preparing for the exams that I did, or simply to get the taste of the first year in college. Please bear in mind that all what is written below represents only my personal, highly subjective opinion.
Functional Programming
Professor: Philip Wadler
Lectures: a wonderful introduction to the functional programming. Amazing teaching skills and professor's authority in the classroom - from ripping a T-shirt to reveal a big superman-lambda, to being one of the principal engineers and designers of the Haskell programming language - 10 out of 10.
Exam: Final grade is made by a programming class test (10%) and a final exam (90%). The programming class test is pretty straightforward - three simple tasks to test one's basic knowledge of Haskell (things you need to know are the syntax, because it's done on paper, list comprehension, recursion and simple library functions). The final exam is done in front of computer with plenty of time (2 hours) for three simple tasks (e.g. take a list of integers and return the sum of the cubes of the positive numbers in that list). The only catch is that the same problem has to be solved in a couple of different ways: using basic functions, using list comprehension, using recursion and using the higher-order functions, however... at the end of the day - it's still the same problem.
My advice in succeding in this subject - Read the rest of this entry »