Department of Computer Science
Pomona College
CS 51A —Intro to Computer Science with Topics in AI
Spring 2025

Instructor

Dave Kauchak
e-mail: David.last_name@pomona.edu
office hours: Edmunds 224
  Mon: 10-11am
  Tue: 10-11am
  Thu: 10-11am, 4-5pm
  and by appointment

Mentor hours (Edmunds 229)

Web page: http://www.cs.pomona.edu/classes/cs51a/

Textbook: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Interactive Edition. Brad Miller and David Ranum, based on original work by Jeffrey Elkner, Allen B. Downey, and Chris Meyers. It is available online for free.

Other information:

Schedule

Note: This is a tentative schedule and will likely change
DateTopicReadingAssignmentMisc
8/26 introduction Ch 1-2
8/28 functions Ch 1-2 Assignment 0
9/2 modules Ch 4-5 practice 1 (solutions)
9/4 random, booleans Assignment 1 practice 2 (solutions)
9/9 conditionals Ch 7-8 practice 3 (solutions)
9/11 while loops and lists Ch 9 Assignment 2 practice 4 (solutions)
9/16 sequences Ch 10 practice 5 (solutions)
9/18 aliasing, parameter passing Ch 6 Assignment 3 practice 6 (solutions)
9/23 scope and debugging Appendix (Debugging)
9/25 reading files Ch 11 Assignment 4
9/30 dictionaries Ch 12
10/2 recursion Ch 16 Assignment 5
10/7 more recursion
10/9 Midterm 1 problems (solutions)
10/14 Fall break
10/16 Intro to AI, neural nets (ppt) Assignment 6
10/21 machine learning, naive bayes (ppt)
10/23 classes Ch 17 Assignment 7
10/28 more classes Ch 18
10/30 search (ppt), matrices Assignment 8
11/4 problem solving via search (ppt)
11/6 informed search (ppt) Assignment 9
11/11 adversarial search
11/13 web pages Assignment 10
11/18 exceptions and sets Ch 3, 13
11/20 Midterm 2 Assignment 11
11/25 higher order functions
11/27 Thanksgiving
12/2 TBD

Final exam: Tuesday, Dec 9 2-5pm