ACO 101 Study Guide - Final Guide: The Algorithm, Application Software, Formal Language
Document Summary
Some possible misconceptions are: the study of computers, programming and programming languages, applications software like ms word, adobe photoshop, etc. A widely accepted definition of computer science was given by norman gibbs and allen. Tucker: computer science is the study of algorithms, especially their (1) mathematical properties (2) hardware realizations (3) software realizations (4) applications to other disciplines. Items (1), (2), and (3) constitute a rough outline of this course. We will not cover item (4), which is vast. Informal definition: a step-by-step procedure which solves (all instances of) some specific problem. Some simple examples are: a cake recipe, instructions for balancing your checkbook, instructions for filling out your tax return. Example consider the problem of adding two 3-digit numbers. More generally we consider the problem of adding two m-digit numbers, where. 0 mi < do 4-10 a i ic c and b b m. 10: if c i, carry, else, carry.
