Lecturer: Prof Wang Jian-Sheng; TA: Oliver Ching Meng Hui.
Schedule: lecture Wed 4:00-6:00pm, LT26; Tutorial slots Tue 10-11, 11-12, Wed 10-11, 11-12, Thu 10-11, 11-12, Fri 12-1, 1-2, venue S16-03-03. Final examination, Thursday 27 Apr 06, 9:00am, venue MPSH6.
Course Description: See IVLE. Students are welcome to watch a 25min video at IVLE "multimedia: course videos". It is about computations featuring sundial, babylonians, soroban, Napier's bones, and Babbage's difference machine.
Books: There will be no standard textbook, but some references books: "The Saga of Mathematics", Lewinter and Widulski, "A History of Computing Technology", M R Williams. Additional references are introduced at the "notes" section of the lecture slides.
Lecture Notes and Reading
week 1, 11 Jan 06, Introduction
week 2, 18 Jan 06, Mysterious Egyptian Math, tutorial 1, (reading: Egyptian numerals, Rhind Papyrus, Egyptian fractions)
week 3, 25 Jan 06, Babylonian base 60 number system, tutorial 2 (reading: base 60 system, square root)
week 4, 1 Feb 06, Greek geometry and number theory, tutorial 3, (reading: Euclid's algorithm, sample the Euclid's Elements online)
week 5, 8 Feb 06, Counting boards, tutorial 4
week 6, 15 Feb 06, Quest of π, tutorial 5, (reading: the Pi)
week 7, no class (mid term break), also no tutorials
week 8, 1 Mar 06, Napier's bones (1 hour midterm test), tutorial 6
week 9, 8 Mar 06, Babbage and computer, tutorial 7, (reading: difference machines)
week 10, 15 Mar 06, Computer organization and Turing machine, tutorial 8, (reading: Turing machine)
week 11, 22 Mar 06, Numbers in computer, tutorial 9, (reading: IEEE floating-point numbers)
week 12, 29 Mar 06, Programming a computer, tutorial 10
week 13, 5 Apr 06, Quantum computing (reading: quantum computer)
week 14, 12 Apr 06, revision