Description

For Introduction to Computer Science courses.

Surveys the breadth of computer science—with the depth needed to explore concepts

Computer Science: An Overview is written for students of computer science as well as students from other disciplines. Its broad coverage and clear exposition are accessible to students from all backgrounds, encouraging a practical and realistic understanding of the subject. Written to provide students with a bottom-up, concrete-to-abstract foundation, this broad background exposes beginning computer science students to the breadth of the subject in which they are planning to major, and students from other disciplines to what they need to relate to the technical society in which they live.

Individual chapters are independent, and can be covered in an order that suits instructor course needs with selected content marked as optional for the introductory course. With a new full-color design, each chapter in the 13th Edition has seen revisions, updates, and corrections from the previous editions. The text also continues to use Python to provide programming tools for exploration and experimentation. More than 1,000 questions and exercises, Chapter Review Problems, and Social Issues questions reinforce core concepts. The text’s Companion Website extends resources to enhance the course.

Features

Develops a practical, realistic understanding of computer science

· This text follows a bottom-up arrangement of subjects that progresses from the concrete to the abstract—an order that results in a sound pedagogical presentation in which each topic leads to the next.

o Although the text follows this natural progression, the individual chapters and sections are independent and can usually be read as isolated units or rearranged to form alternative sequences of study.

· Ethical and legal aspects of areas such as Internet security, software engineering, and database technology bring to light what students should know to be safe and responsible users of technology.

· Uses Python code examples and Python-like pseudocode, due to its wide acceptance in other STEM fields, such as physics and biology, and as the language of choice for computational science applications.

· Each chapter includes a collection of questions called Social Issues that challenge students to think about the relationship between the material in the text and the society in which they live.

Reinforces core concepts

· New - full-color design:

o Many figures and diagrams are now rendered more descriptively.

o Syntax coloring is now used to better effect for clarifying code and pseudocode segments in the text.

o Reflects the use of color in most modern programming interfaces to aid the programmer’s understanding of code.

· Revised - Revisions, updates, and corrections from the previous editions in each chapter.

· Over 1,000 total problems in the 13th Edition that enhance student participation:

o Questions/Exercises at the end of each section (except for the introductory chapter) review the material just discussed, extend the previous discussion, or hint at related topics to be covered later. These questions are answered in Appendix F.

o Chapter Review Problems at the end of each chapter (except for the introductory chapter) serve as “homework” problems in that they cover the material from the entire chapter and are not answered in the text.

o Social Issues questions are designed for thought and discussion. Many can be used to launch research assignments culminating in short written or oral reports.

o Each chapter also ends with an Additional Reading list with references to other material relating to the subject of the chapter.

· Updated - Intersections with the new College Board Advanced Placement® Computer Science Principles (“CSP”) exam—While the primary audience for this book remains college-level introductory courses, this edition explicitly calls out many points of intersection with CSP content to better assist students and instructors either preparing for the AP® CSP exam, or taking a college-level course that is intended to correspond with the credit from that exam.

o Includes many of the big ideas and computational practices codified in the CSP framework

Prior editions of the book have been used in pilot versions of CSP courses, and as a professional development resource for educators preparing to teach the high school version of the course

New to this Edition

· New full-color design:

o Many figures and diagrams are now rendered more descriptively.

o Syntax coloring is now used to better effect for clarifying code and pseudocode segments in the text.

o Reflects the use of color in most modern programming interfaces to aid the programmer’s understanding of code.

· Revisions, updates, and corrections from the previous editions in each chapter.

· Intersections with the new College Board Advanced Placement® Computer Science Principles (“CSP”) exam—While the primary audience for this book remains college-level introductory courses, this edition explicitly calls out many points of intersection with CSP content to better assist students and instructors either preparing for the AP® CSP exam, or taking a college-level course that is intended to correspond with the credit from that exam.

o Includes many of the big ideas and computational practices codified in the CSP framework

o Prior editions of the book have been used in pilot versions of CSP courses, and as a professional development resource for educators preparing to teach the high school version of the course.

Check out the preface for a complete list of features and what's new in this edition.

Table of Contents