Description: This is an introductory course in computer programming for students interested in numerical and scientific computation. Emphasis will be placed on problems drawn from the sciences. Many mathematical models of the behavior of complex natural systems have no closed-form solution, and computational modeling is needed for data exploration and to obtain approximate solutions. The course discusses different models and approximation methods, how to implement them as computer programs, and the factors that influence approximation quality. Topics include computer representation of floating-point numbers and data, computer program design and control flow, data visualization, nonlinear equations, systems of linear equations and least-squares, and Fourier analysis, with additional topics as time allows. Students will write programs in the Python programming language, primarily.
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 125 MWF 02:00PM-02:50PM
Time Category: Evening
Used Seats: 37 / Total Seats: 40
Description: A course in the mathematical foundations of Computer Science, illustrated throughout with applications such as sets and functions, propositional and predicate logic, induction and recursion, basic number theory and mathematical models of computation such as formal languages, finite state machines, and Turing machines.
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: Fulton Hall 453 MW 01:30PM-02:45PM
Time Category: Evening
Used Seats: 40 / Total Seats: 40
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 229 TuTh 01:30PM-02:45PM
Time Category: Evening
Used Seats: 45 / Total Seats: 45
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 229 TuTh 12:00 Noon-01:15PM
Time Category: Afternoon
Used Seats: 43 / Total Seats: 43
Description: This course presents the mathematical and computational tools needed to solve problems that involve randomness. For example, an understanding of random variables allows us to efficiently generate the enormous prime numbers needed for information security, and to quantify the expected performance of a machine learning algorithm beyond a small data sample. An understanding of covariance allows high quality compression of audio and video. Topics include combinatorics and counting, random experiments and probability, random variables and distributions, computational modeling of randomness, Bayes' rule, laws of large numbers, vectors and matrices, covariance and principal axes, and Markov chains.
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 125 MWF 12:00 Noon-12:50PM
Time Category: Afternoon
Used Seats: 39 / Total Seats: 40
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 229 TuTh 09:00AM-10:15AM
Time Category: Morning
Used Seats: 44 / Total Seats: 44
Description: The web connects our society, providing enormous opportunities for changing and improving how we live every day, from sharing information to interacting with others. We have witnessed the power of the web through various web-based applications, including social media apps like Instagram and Twitter, productivity apps like Google Drive and Slack, and transportation apps like Uber and Lyft. These apps are now deeply immersed in our everyday lives and have drastically changed how we communicate, work and move in recent years.Students will learn how to develop usable and useful web applications in this course. Using basic web technology, includingHTML,CSS, andJavascript, they will build a data-driven portfolio website in the first half of the course. Next, students will create a social media app usingReact, a component-based library for building frontend interfaces, andFirebase, a cloud-based backend service. The course will culminate with a final project where students take a human-centered design approach to address the needs of people by building a sophisticated web application.
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 125 TuTh 04:30PM-05:45PM
Time Category: Evening
Used Seats: 39 / Total Seats: 37
Description: This interdisciplinary course will first investigate the social, political, psychological, ethical, and spiritual aspects of the Western cultural development with a special emphasis on scientific and technological metaphors and narratives. We will then focus on the contemporary world, examining the impact of our various technological creations on cultural directions, democratic process, the world of work, quality of life, and especially on the emergent meanings for the terms "citizen" and "ethics" in contemporary society. Students will explore technologies in four broad and interrelated domains: (1) computer, media, communications, and information technologies, (2) biotechnology, (3) globalization, and (4) environmental issues.
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: Fulton Hall 250 M 04:30PM-06:50PM
Time Category: Evening
Used Seats: 33 / Total Seats: 23
Description: If you tried to live for one day without generating any data, how would you spend it? The use of data has proliferated andis pervasive. This timely, topical course examines key ethical questions of the Information Age. These issues pervade numerous, diverse aspects of the economy and society, from human rights to international trade. Students will learn about these topics, beginning first with acquaintance with the dominant ethical frameworks of the 20th and 21st centuries. They will then employ these frameworks to understand, analyze, and develop solutions for leading problems in the Information Age and their technological, social, economic, policy, and legal implications. Subjects include artificial intelligence (AI), big data, privacy, bias, accountability, mis/disinformation, human rights, hate speech, liberty, autonomy, international and global concerns, and emerging issues. You will come away with useful tools to understand and craft answers to some of the most pressing problems of our time.
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 102 TuTh 01:30PM-02:45PM
Time Category: Evening
Used Seats: 20 / Total Seats: 20
Description: This course is concerned with machine-level program and data representation on modern computer systems and on some of the trade-offs that must be considered when selecting one representation (or programming paradigm) over another. We consider how various representations can affect the efficiency, reliability, and security of computing systems. This is a hands-on course; programming will be completed in the procedural language C with comparisons to object-oriented languages such as Java.
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 102 MWF 11:00AM-11:50AM
Time Category: Morning
Used Seats: 43 / Total Seats: 45
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 102 MWF 10:00AM-10:50AM
Time Category: Morning
Used Seats: 40 / Total Seats: 44
Description: This course studies the internal organization of computers and the processing of machine instructions. Topics include computer representation of numbers, combinational circuit design (decoders, multiplexers), sequential circuit design and analysis, memory design (registers and main memory), and simple processors including datapaths, instruction formats, and control units. In the laboratory-based portion of course students design and build digital circuits related to lecture. Exercises include hardware description languages, combinational and sequential circuits, arithmetic and logic units, and simple datapath and control units.
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 103 Tu 03:00PM-04:50PM
Time Category: Evening
Used Seats: 20 / Total Seats: 20
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 125 TuTh 09:00AM-10:15AM
Time Category: Morning
Used Seats: 40 / Total Seats: 40
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 103 W 02:00PM-03:50PM
Time Category: Evening
Used Seats: 20 / Total Seats: 20
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 125 TuTh 10:30AM-11:45AM
Time Category: Morning
Used Seats: 39 / Total Seats: 40
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 103 M 12:00 Noon-01:50PM
Time Category: Afternoon
Used Seats: 19 / Total Seats: 20
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 103 Th 01:00PM-02:50PM
Time Category: Evening
Used Seats: 20 / Total Seats: 20
Description: In this class, students will learn about how digital texts are created, stored, and processed in order to support the exploration of text using naturallanguage processing (NLP) methods. Topics will include character encoding, file formatting, methods of text compression, fluent use of a modern texteditor, text hacking using unix utilities, and text analysis techniques, such as building word frequency distributions, n-gram models,andword embeddings, with Python. Interested students should have at least intermediate Python programming skills and an interest in text andhuman language.
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: Fulton Hall 415 MW 10:30AM-11:45AM
Time Category: Morning
Used Seats: 31 / Total Seats: 45
Description: Data can capture a snapshot of the world and allow us to understand ourselves and our communities better. With ever-increasing amounts of data, the ability to understand and communicate data is becoming essential for everyone. Visualization leverages our visual perception to provide a powerful yet accessible way to make sense of large and complex data. It has been widely adopted across disciplines, from science and engineering to business and journalism, to combat the overabundance of information in our society. In this course, students will learn to acquire foundational knowledge about how to design effective visualizations for analysis and presentation based on theories and principles from graphic design, perceptual psychology, and cognitive science. Students will also learn practical skills about how to rapidly explore and communicate data using Tableau and build interactive visualization products (e.g., articles, tools, and systems) using web-based frameworks including D3.js and Vega-Lite.
Professors: (BC Email Needed)
Location and Time: 245 Beacon Street Room 229 MWF 02:00PM-02:50PM
Time Category: Evening
Used Seats: 40 / Total Seats: 36