Computer Science for Non-Majors
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Course Introduction
This course introduces fundamental concepts of computer science for students from non-technical backgrounds. Topics include problem-solving techniques, algorithms, computer programming basics, data representation, networking, and the societal impact of computing. Through hands-on activities and real-world examples, students gain practical experience in logical thinking and computational methods, enabling them to utilize technology more effectively in various fields. No prior programming experience is required.
Recommended Textbook
Invitation to Computer Science 7th Edition by G.Michael Schneider
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Chapter 1: An Introduction to Computer Science
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Q1) Explain the achievement of the Difference Engine of Charles Babbage, and explain the challenge he confronted in trying to construct the larger model.
Answer: In 1823, Babbage extended the ideas of Pascal and Leibniz and constructed a working model of the largest and most sophisticated mechanical calculator of its time.This machine, called the Difference Engine, could do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division to 6 significant digits, and it could solve polynomial equations and other complex mathematical problems as well.Babbage tried to construct a larger model of the Difference Engine that would be capable of working to an accuracy of 20 significant digits, but after 12 years of work he had to give up his quest.The technology available in the 1820s and 1830s was not sufficiently advanced to manufacture cogs and gears to the precise tolerances his design required.Like Galileo's helicopter or Jules Verne's atomic submarine, Babbage's ideas were fundamentally sound but years ahead of their time.(In 1991, the London Museum of Science, using Babbage's original plans, built an actual working model of the Difference Engine.It worked exactly as Babbage had planned.)
Q2) Computer science is the study of computers.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 2: Algorithm Discovery and Design
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Q1) To create a loop that executes exactly b times, we create a ____.
A) control object
B) counting method
C) counter
D) variable
Answer: C
Q2) A purely ____ algorithm is sometimes termed a straight-line algorithm.
A) sequential
B) conditional
C) iterative
D) control
Answer: A
Q3) The three basic sequential operations are called addition, multiplication, and exponentiation.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q4) The process of finding a solution to a given problem is called ____________________ discovery.
Answer: algorithm
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Chapter 3: The Efficiency of Algorithms
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Q1) What is the definition of order of magnitude n?
Answer: Anything that varies as a constant times n (and whose graph follows the basic shape of n) is said to be order of magnitude n.
Q2) Placing a list of items into alphabetical or numerical order is called ____.
A) simplifying
B) searching
C) sorting
D) pattern matching
Answer: C
Q3) The study of the efficiency of algorithms is called the ____ of algorithms.
A) design
B) analysis
C) implementation
D) testing
Answer: B
Q4) The shuffle-left algorithm <u>is not</u> space-efficient._________________________
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
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Chapter 4: The Building Blocks: Binary Numbers, Boolean
Logic, and Gates
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Q1) Using the leftmost bit of a number to represent the sign, with 0 meaning positive and 1 meaning negative is termed ____ notation.
A) one's complement
B) two's complement
C) sign/magnitude
D) unsigned
Q2) The ____ of a sound wave is a measure of its loudness.
A) amplitude
B) frequency
C) period
D) wavelength
Q3) The total number of ____ per second is called hertz.
A) bits
B) bytes
C) periods
D) cycles
Q4) To construct an AND gate, two transistors are connected in parallel.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What is the rule for evaluating the NOT operation?
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Chapter 5: Computer Systems Organization
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Q1) The branch of computer science that studies computers in terms of their major functional units and how they work is known as computer organization.
A)True
B)False
Q2) In a two-level memory hierarchy, when the computer needs a piece of information, it looks in RAM first, then cache memory.
A)True
B)False
Q3) MIMD parallelism is a <u>scalable</u> architecture._________________________
A)True
B)False
Q4) Computer manufacturers use a standard cell size of eight ____________________.
Q5) It is the task of the ____ to fetch and execute instructions.
A) arithmetic/logic unit (ALU)
B) I/O controllers
C) memory
D) control unit
Q6) Explain what a register is and how it differs from random access memory cells.
Q7) What is the most fundamental characteristic of the Von Neumann architecture?
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Chapter 6: An Introduction to System Software and Virtual Machines
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Q1) List four responsibilities of the system software.
Q2) A(n) ____ invokes a service of the assembler.
A) compiler
B) pseudo-op
C) loader
D) operation
Q3) How does a GUI communicate with a user?
Q4) A machine language program is called the ____ program.
A) source
B) object
C) data
D) virtual
Q5) For a program to run on a naked machine, it must be represented in <u>decimal</u>._________________________
A)True
B)False
Q6) It is the responsibility of the ____________________ to safeguard the password file that stores all valid user name/password combinations.
Q7) Describe four problems with machine language.
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Chapter 7: Computer Networks and Cloud Computing
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Q1) In the commercial and office environment, the most widely used broadband technology is ____.
A) ATM
B) token-ring
C) Ethernet
D) SONET
Q2) ____ is the term for the separation of a service from the entity(or entities) providing that service.
A) Visualization
B) Distributed computing
C) Virtualization
D) Topological change
Q3) Generally, it is difficult to intercept transmissions and gain unauthorized access to wireless networks.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Explain what the function of a WWAN network is in the context of the transmission limitations of Wi-Fi.
Q5) What is IPv6?
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Chapter 8: Information Security
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Q1) The term ____________________ comes about because perpetrators cast out bait, in the form of e-mail messages, to thousands of potential victims in the hope that one or two will "bite" and fall for this scam.
Q2) Any positive ____________________ is either a prime number or a number that can be written in a unique way as a product of prime factors.
Q3) A(n) <u>Trojan horse</u> embeds itself within another program or file and when that program or file is activated, it copies itself and attacks other files on the system._________________________
A)True
B)False
Q4) The most common public key encryption algorithm is ____.
A) SHA1
B) AES
C) DES
D) RSA
Q5) A text file can be hidden in an image file by changing (if needed) the least significant bit of each byte of the image file to match the ____________________ form of the characters in the text.
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Chapter 9: Introduction to High-Level Language Programming
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Q1) ____ are instructions in the programming language.
A) Immediate commands
B) Imperative commands
C) Intrinsic commands
D) Internal commands
Q2) If anything is changed on an already-tested module, update testing is done to be sure that this change hasn't introduced a new error into code that was previously correct.
A)True
B)False
Q3) In assembly language, the programmer need not manage the details of the movement of data items within memory.
A)True
B)False
Q4) In a high-level language, the programmer's only responsibilities for managing data items are to declare (or in the case of Python, create) all constants and variables the program will use.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What is the purpose of the feasibility study?
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Chapter 10: The Tower of Babel
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Q1) C# is the successor to C++ and is the same basic language.
A)True
B)False
Q2) The majority of business transactions, billions of them per day, are still done on ____________________ code that has now been updated and is likely to continue to run for the foreseeable future.
Q3) A ____ expresses a property about a single object or a relationship among several objects.
A) fact
B) fallacy
C) query
D) connection
Q4) FORTRAN does not allow the use of external libraries.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Briefly discuss the relationship between facts and queries in logic programming.
Q6) FORTRAN and ____________________ were the dominant high-level languages of the 1960s and 1970s.
Q7) With what is SQL designed to be used?
Q8) Explain the MIMD model of parallel architecture.
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Chapter 11: Compilers and Language Translation
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Q1) In BNF, the syntax of a language is specified as a series of <u>grammars</u>._________________________
A)True
B)False
Q2) In BNF, a ____ is an intermediate grammatical category used to help explain and organize the language.
A) production
B) rule
C) terminal
D) nonterminal
Q3) During parsing, a compiler deals only with the ____ of a statement.
A) semantics
B) syntax
C) grammar
D) rules
Q4) Explain what metasymbols are and discuss their use as part of BNF rules.
Q5) What are the four phases of compilation?
Q6) A BNF rule is also known as a production.
A)True
B)False
Page 13
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Chapter 12: Models of Computation
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Q1) The Turing machine contains two separate units, one for input and one for output.
A)True
B)False
Q2) A computing agent must be able to act in accordance with ____________________ instructions.
Q3) <u>Prototypes</u> are an important way of studying many physical and social phenomena._________________________
A)True
B)False
Q4) An extra bit, called a(n) ____, can be attached to the end of a string of bits.
A) state bit
B) odd parity bit
C) inverted bit
D) sentinel bit
Q5) In <u>binary</u> representation, any unsigned whole number n is encoded by a sequence of n + 1 1s._________________________
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 13: Simulation and Modeling
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Q1) We can experiment on the model and use these results to understand the behavior of the actual system.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Interpreting a(n) ____________________ is a great deal easier than working directly with raw numerical data.
Q3) In a(n) <u>technical</u> simulation, a physical system is modeled as a set of mathematical equations and/or algorithmic procedures that capture the fundamental characteristics and behavior of a system._________________________
A)True
B)False
Q4) ____ is a design approach that says only when we think we have created the best design possible would we actually build it.
A) Computational decomposition
B) Computational analysis
C) Computational steering
D) Computational methodology
Q5) What happens in a simulated system when we process an event?
Q6) What about stochastic components makes some systems difficult to model?
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Chapter 14: Electronic Commerce, Databases, and Personal
Privacy
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Q1) Opening an online store requires less planning than building another physical store location.
A)True
B)False
Q2) A ____ gives the user, or the user's application software, the ability to combine and manipulate data easily in ways that would be very difficult if the data were kept in separate and unrelated files.
A) file
B) database
C) datastore
D) data system
Q3) A database management system works much like a simple file manager.
A)True
B)False
Q4) ____________________ is an online payment service, analternative to a customer paying an online merchant by credit card.
Q5) The Internet has been around since 1969.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 15: Artificial Intelligence
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Q1) Explain the characteristics that any knowledge representation scheme that we select must have.
Q2) The ____ test tests to see if a machine exhibits behavior indistinguishable from a human.
A) computer intelligence
B) AI
C) Turing
D) cognitive
Q3) A formal language representation has the disadvantage of extracting the essentials.
A)True
B)False
Q4) If an output neuron fires when it is not supposed to, then the positive input values coming into it are adjusted <u>upward</u>._________________________
A)True
B)False
Q5) What does the term robot imply?
Q6) Explain in detail what swarm intelligence is.
Q7) Prolog is a(n) ____________________ programming language.
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Chapter 16: Computer Graphics and Entertainment: Movies, Games,
and Virtual Communities
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Q1) Distinguish movies from video games in terms of their interactive environments.
Q2) Explain in detail what medical imaging is and what is empowers physicians to do.
Q3) The process of "move the model, shoot a frame" was repeated thousands of times when filming King Kong,
A)True
B)False
Q4) A ____ executes instructions in parallel with the CPU, the main processor, and carries out all graphics operations including modeling, motion, rendering, and display.
A) GPU
B) NPU
C) PGU
D) GIPU
Q5) King Kong's movements in the 1933 film were created using a manual technique called ____.
A) CGI
B) film overlay
C) skip-motion animation
D) stop-motion animation
Q6) How are graphics operations handled in the absence of a GPU?
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Chapter 17: Making Decisions About Computers,
Information, and Society
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Q1) An ethical dialectic usually has a clean stopping point.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Napster lost the case accusing it of copyright infringement but won subsequent appeals.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The power of ____________________ is that it can transfer our understandings and intuitions about something well known to a situation or entity that is less well known.
Q4) ____ arguments focus on the duties of the person acting and the way the act impinges on the rights of others.
A) Utilitarian
B) Consequentialist
C) Hacker
D) Deontological
Q5) Define cyberbullying.
Q6) Explain what sexting is.
Q7) What is Kant's second categorical imperative?
Q8) Identify two of the major leaks in which WikiLeaks has been involved. Page 19
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