How much Maths in good Comp Sci BSc?

Metro10

I have heard it said that for a Computer Science degree to be a "good" Comp Sci degree it has to have a certain amount of mathematics contained in it.

I'm wondering what amount of mathematics should be contained in a good Comp Sci degree? Or which mathematical topics should be covered?

If a Computer Science BSc contained the following two modules, Computation Theory and Computer Algebra, would this be considered a good amount of maths? Or should even more maths be contained?

I've shown the module descriptions below.

Computation Theory

Regular and context-free grammars; Finite state machines; Turing Machines; computability; recursive functions; lambda calculus; functional programming languages; correctness of imperative and functional programs.

To give an insight into what can be computed and how algorithms can be described and proven.

Computer Algebra

Introduction to the use of Computer Algebra software in Pure Mathematics and other disciplines. Students are taught to use Mathematica to solve a wide variety of problems.

It is intended that students shall, on successful completion of the module, be able to: perform routine calculations using Mathematica and examine the results critically, modifying Mathematica's default settings if necessary to obtain correct results; use Mathematica to assist in the investigation of realistic mathematical problems, possibly using features from several different areas of Mathematica.

ShatterProof

The more maths the better.......

Well really what I'm saying is the more you can think logically the better

ED E

CS, all computing, is maths. Learning Java for example, first thing you do is "Hello World", then you start solving basic maths problems.

This being the case, in a way you could say all modules are maths modules. Just because one course has two modules that have maths in the title and another has one, doesnt mean that the latter has less maths.



What I'd look for is the general trend of theoretical or practical, and decide which type of course you want.

Metro10

Thank you.

I'm wondering are there specific mathematical topics that I should be looking for which are embedded in the modules of a good Computer Science degree?

Metro10

I forgot, there's also this module:

Data Structures and Algorithms

Data Structures; cartesian products, discriminated unions, sets, sequences, trees and graphs; sequential and indexed sequential file models; recursive backtracking; sparse and recursive data structures

To enable the identification and design of appropriate data abstractions and their related operations and to develop an efficient implementation in a nominated programming language.

Metro10

I think these modules also appear to be quite mathematical. What do you think?

Does there appear to be a reasonable amount of maths in the modules I've shown here to potentially give good grounding in Computer Science?

With the modules shown, would you class this as a quantitative degree?


Formal Methods

A rigorous approach to software development. Logical foundations. Specification of data types. Implicit and direct specification of functions and operations. Reasoning about specifications, refinement, axiomatic semantics.

To present a scientific approach to the construction of software systems.

Artificial Intelligence

Course Contents

Module introduction: artificial intelligence - definition, scope, successes and limitations. Logic, propositional calculus, predicate calculus, inference; fuzzy logic; logical programming, PROLOG. Expert Systems, knowledge, domains, rules, inference engine, forward and backward chaining, tree searching, probability and certainty, combining fuzzy facts, apriori probability, applications. Information retrieval and disambiguation. Introduction to pattern recognition and neural networks. Linguistics, grammar, surface structure, deep structure, structure representations, transformations, lexical decomposition, n-gram models, classification, domains. Speech recognition.

Knowledge and understanding of techniques and selected software relevant to the field of artificial intelligence. Ability to identify techniques relevant to particular problems in artificial intelligence. Ability to discuss and provide proofs for basic rules used in artificial intelligence. Ability to identify opportunities for software solutions. Ability to interrogate a knowledge base in PROLOG. Ability to understand and use natural language grammars. Ability to solve specific problems using the rules of artificial intelligence e.g. in pattern recognition.

ED E

Its a year since I read them, but is this perhaps TCD?

Metro10

Lethal_Bullet wrote: »

Its a year since I read them, but is this perhaps TCD?

QUB