CSC120H (StG, Fall 2018): Computer Science for the Sciences

Overview

Welcome to the course webpage for the Fall 2018 term of CSC120H, Computer Science for the Sciences, on the St. George campus!

This course teaches the basics of programming in Python, and then shows how it can be used in the context of the natural and social sciences, or any other discipline that works with quantative data.
Although we will look at scientific applications of Python, no specific knowledge of any particular science is required to take this course. The main aim of this course is to teach you how to program, and to give you a lot of opportunities to practise what you learn by writing your own code.

CSC120 assumes no prior programming experience, so if you already have a good amount of experience writing programs in any language, this course may not be for you.
Please see this page for information on other introductory CS courses.
Note that you can not take this course if you have taken a CSC course before, except for CSC104.

Course Components

Lectures: The course is delivered through three 1-hour lectures (MWF) a week:

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 12-1pm in LM 159

There is only one lecture section (L0101), taught by Mark.
We will have our first lecture on September 7th in LM 159. There is no lab on September 6th.

Labs: The practical sections take place Thursdays 1-3pm or 3-5pm in the Computer Science Teaching Labs at the Bahen Centre.

Outside of lecture and lab, all students will do exercises, assignments, a midterm, and a final exam, as described in the course information sheet.

Course Information Sheet

All the important information about the course can be found on the Course Information Sheet, including the marking scheme, important dates, the late work policy, and information on academic integrity.

It can be found here.

Getting Help

Have questions? Here's an overview of where to ask them (with more details in the Getting Help section, including the office hour calendar).

Source	Description
Discussion board: Piazza	Need clarification on a handout? Wondering about a lab? Have an Python style question? These are all excellent topics to post on the CSC120H Piazza discussion board because they will probably be useful to other students. Piazza is a little different than a regular discussion board. Each question has two possible responses: a student-edited one and and instructor-edited one. You can answer each other's questions. Anyone can edit any student answer. That means that you can add helpful information such as an example, and you can clean up grammatical and spelling errors. Students get to help each other out, and helping each other out is highly encouraged! Please do not post assignment or exercise solutions, or partial solutions, even if you know they are incorrect, to the discussion forums.
Office hours	Office hours are where you can ask any question you like about the course: get help related to lecture material, go over your assignment, ask for help with your marks. You don't need an appointment to attend these, you can just drop by. There are TA and Instructor office hours, displayed on the calendar here
Email	Use email to ask your instructor a personal question that is not related to the course. Use a descriptive subject line that includes "CSC120". Here is an example: "CSC120: issue with my partner on assignment 1".
Help Centre	CSC Help Centre: Held in BA 2230, this is a place where students can drop in and ask course or computer science related questions for 1st and 2nd year CSC courses. The help centre will be open all term, Monday to Friday 2-6pm, starting on (TBA).