Jessen Havill is a Professor of Computer Science at Denison University. He has been teaching courses across the computer science curriculum for almost thirty years, and was awarded the College's highest teaching honor, the Charles A. Brickman Teaching Excellence Award, in 2013. Although his primary expertise is in the development and analysis of online algorithms, Dr. Havill has spent many years collaborating with colleagues across the curriculum to develop interdisciplinary academic opportunities for students. From 2016-2019, he became the founding Director of Denison University's interdisciplinary Data Analytics program. Dr. Havill earned his bachelor's degree from Bucknell University and his Ph.D. in computer science from The College of William and Mary.

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the author

How to Solve It

UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM

DESIGN AN ALGORITHM

WRITE A PROGRAM

LOOK BACK

SUMMARY AND FURTHER DISCOVERY

Visualizing Abstraction

DATA ABSTRACTION

DRAWING FLOWERS AND PLOTTING EARTHQUAKES

FUNCTIONAL ABSTRACTION

PROGRAMMING IN STYLE

A RETURN TO FUNCTIONS

SCOPE AND NAMESPACES

SUMMARY AND FURTHER DISCOVERY

Inside a Computer

COMPUTERS ARE DUMB

EVERYTHING IS BITS

COMPUTER ARITHMETIC

BINARY ARITHMETIC

THE UNIVERSAL MACHINE

Growth and Decay

ACCUMULATORS

DATA VISUALIZATION

CONDITIONAL ITERATION

CONTINUOUS MODELS

NUMERICAL ANALYSIS

SUMMING UP

FURTHER DISCOVERY

PROJECTS

Forks in the Road
RANDOM WALKS

PSEUDORANDOM NUMBER GENERATORS

SIMULATING PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTIONS

BACK TO BOOLEANS

DEFENSIVE PROGRAMMING

GUESS MY NUMBER

SUMMARY AND FURTHER DISCOVERY

PROJECTS

Text, Documents, and DNA

FIRST STEPS

TEXT DOCUMENTS

A CONCORDANCE

WORD FREQUENCY TRENDS

COMPARING TEXTS

TIME COMPLEXITY

COMPUTATIONAL GENOMICS

SUMMARY AND FURTHER DISCOVERY

PROJECTS

Data Analysis

SUMMARY STATISTICS

WRANGLING DATA

TALLYING FREQUENCIES

READING TABULAR DATA

DESIGNING EFFICIENT ALGORITHMS

LINEAR REGRESSION

DATA CLUSTERING

SUMMARY AND FURTHER DISCOVERY

PROJECTS

Flatland

TABULAR DATA

THE GAME OF LIFE

DIGITAL IMAGES

SUMMARY AND FURTHER DISCOVERY

PROJECTS

Self-similarity and Recursion

FRACTALS

RECURSION AND ITERATION

THE MYTHICAL TOWER OF HANOI

RECURSIVE LINEAR SEARCH

DIVIDE AND CONQUER

LINDENMAYER SYSTEMS

9SUMMARY AND FURTHER DISCOVERY

PROJECTS

Organizing Data

BINARY SEARCH

SELECTION SORT

INSERTION SORT

EFFICIENT SORTING

TRACTABLE AND INTRACTABLE ALGORITHMS

SUMMARY AND FURTHER DISCOVERY

PROJECTS

Networks

MODELING WITH GRAPHS

SHORTEST PATHS

IT'S A SMALL WORLD

RANDOM GRAPHS

SUMMARY AND FURTHER DISCOVERY

PROJECTS

Object-oriented Design

SIMULATING AN EPIDEMIC

OPERATORS AND POLYMORPHISM

A FLOCKING SIMULATION

A STACK ADT

A DICTIONARY ADT

SUMMARY AND FURTHER DISCOVERY

PROJECTS

Bibliography

Appendix A ¿ Python Library

Appendix B ¿ Selected Exercise
Index