Introduction to Computation and Programming

This is an introductory programming course with an emphasis on abstractions and elementary algorithmic ideas. It uses the Python programming language. Topics include data types, selection, repetition, lists, tuples, strings, functions, files, exception handling, program efficiency, recursion, divide and conquer algorithms, recurrence relations, sorting and searching algorithms, binary search, merge sort, randomized quicksort, dictionaries, memoization, classes and object oriented programming, stacks and queues, applications, and selected topics. The course has a weekly lab.