ENGINEERING TRIPOS PART IA – 2012/2013

PAPER 4- MATHEMATICAL METHODS

Computing

Leader: Dr. G. Csanyi

Timing:
Michaelmas Term: week 1, 1 lecture; weeks 7-8, 3 lectures
Lent Term: weeks 1-2, 2 lectures per week

Structure: 8 lectures

AIMS

The aims of the lecture series are to:

• Give a good understanding of basic design methods and techniques and emphasise, in particular, the need to produce well-structured, maintainable computer software.
• Reinforce the IA practical classes in C++ programming and provide a firm foundation for IB practical work.

OBJECTIVES

As specific objectives, at the end of the course students should:

• Understand the nature of software engineering and the software life cycle;
• Appreciate the need for structured programming in software engineering projects;
• Be able to write well-structured programs in the C++ programming language to solve practical problems;
• Understand the sources of errors in numerical programming and how to guard against them;
• Appreciate the issue of complexity in algorithm design, with particular reference to searching and sorting algorithms.

SYLLABUS

1. Introduction: basic computer operation, the software life cycle, aspects of software engineering, structured programming and programming languages.
2. Elements of C++: program structure, defining and manipulating data, program execution, control statements, user-defined data types, functions.
3. Program Design: the design process, using functions in program design, parameters and local variables.
4. Arrays: defining and using arrays, memory organisation, multi-dimensional arrays.
5. Data Structures: data abstraction, designing data structures, hierarchical data structures, examples.
6. Numerical Programming: floating point numbers, round-off error, error analysis, truncation error, unstable algorithms.
7. Searching and Sorting: the search problem, linear search, binary search, hashing, the sort problem, exchange sort, bubble sort, Quick Sort, recursion.
8. The Lent Term Computing Problem: general problem description, aspects of program design, reading data from files, working in teams.

REFERENCES

Please see the Booklist for Part IA Courses for module references.

Last updated: May 2012