Announcements

• [Feb 10] Remember: You have to read Chapter 1, What's it all about?, and email me 'something inspired' by Monday the 13th (see the slides for more details on this).
• [Feb 10] First set of slides of Week 5 posted below.
• [Jan 29] Note that the book Computers Ltd.: What They Really Can't Do is required for this course. Please order it now (on-line or otherwise) so that you can participate fully in the seminars. It does not matter whether you buy the hardcover or the paperback version. If you buy a used one it should only cost you a few dollars.
• [Jan 29] This seminar has a Discussion group at http://groups.google.com/group/thingscomputerscantdo. It seems that you need a Gmail account to post a message to the group, although it is also possible to do this by mailing it to thingscomputerscantdo@googlegroups.com. This Discussion Group is an experiment, so comments and suggestions are encouraged.
• [January 11, 2006] Please note: we do not start this seminar until the 8th of February.
• [October 14, 2005] Installment of the Freshman Seminar website for Winter 2006.

Course Info

Description:

• We will investigate the ultimate limits are of what one can do with a computer. Questions that we will discuss are: can computers think?, how well can computers do math?, how good are computers at board games like chess or go?, and so on. In our discussion we will also look at non-standard computers like neural networks, DNA computing and quantum computers.

Required Textbook:

• Computers Ltd.: What They Really Can't Do, by David Harel, Oxford University Press (2000)

Grading/Exams:

• TBA

Weekly Schedule:

• Wednesday 15:30-17:30: Seminar in PHELPS 1401

Contacting/Questions:

• I prefer that you use my office hours for your questions, rather than doing a lengthy Q&A exchange via email. Ideally, you could email me about the issue in advance so that I can look into it before my office hour session. Thanks.

Schedule and Slides

• Week 5 [February 6 - February 12]
  Wednesday Feb 8: Slides (ppt|pdf)
  
  
• Week 6 [February 13 - February 19]
  Wednesday Feb 15:
  
  
• Week 7 [February 20 - February 26]
  Wednesday Feb 22:
  
  
• Week 8 [February 27 - March 5]
  Wednesday Mar 1:
  
  
• Week 9 [March 6 - March 12]
  Wednesday Mar 8:
  
  
• Week 10 [March 13 - March 19]
  Wednesday Mar 15:
  
  

	This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.
Created October 14, 2005 / last updated February, 2006 by vandam@cs