Today was primarily an introduction day — everyone got their schedule sorted out and got an opportunity to introduce themselves to the class.  This is meant to be a college-level course and based on how you guys presented yourselves on our first day, I think we’ll be able to run it that way!

I went over a bunch of slides describing the course and its goals. Slides are on the course calendar as is the syllabus and the letter I am sending home with you.  Please look over the syllabus and ask me any questions you may have.

We ended the day with a sorting exercise.  We discussed sorting as an important task for software and mentioned a few examples where it’s used: iTunes music listing, Facebook friends, Excel.  Students suggested excellent tactics for sorting themselves alphabetically by first name and managed to do it very quickly.  We discussed how these solutions students came up with were alike and different from what a computer would do.  I mentioned that there is a minimum number of steps a computer must take to sort a data set and said we would come back to this important topic later in the year.

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