PIC 15: Introduction to LISP and Symbolic Computation |
Catalog descriptionPIC 15. Introduction to LISP and Symbolic Computation (5 units). Lecture, three hours; discussion, two hours; laboratory, eight hours. Enforced requisite: course 10A. P/NP or letter grading. Introduction to symbolic computation using LISP programming language. Basics: list structure, recursion, function abstraction. Advanced topics: knowledge representation, higher-order function, problem-solving algorithms and heuristics. Comment: This course offers an introduction to the fundamental principles of program design and to different programming paradigms, with emphasis on the design of abstract data types and recursive algorithms. This course teaches students how to think as a computer scientist, by teaching the process of building abstractions to hide implementation details, of decomposing problems into simpler problems, and of controlling the intellectual complexity of designing large programs. PIC 15 should be of particular interest to students of cognitive science and students who enjoy programming and mathematics; however, the reasoning and abstraction skills needed for designing algorithms and programs are potentially valuable to all students. Course offering
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