Quiz 1: Answers...

If you have missed the previous articles of the Quiz,Please Read:

http://itsmyslife.blogspot.in/2012/10/quiz-1-introduction-to-computer-science.html

The answers for the quiz questions are below:

1) Why does 53 represent the number 5 in ASCII?
In this context, we're representing characters through numbers. As such, the number 53 links to the character '5'.

2) An ASCII Table is a large reference guide that show which numbers represent which characters.
True

3) Express this binary number as a decimal number: 10010110
A: 150

4) One algorithm has a run time of n/1000. Another algorithm has a run time of log(n). Considering that n is a very large number, which of these will complete first?
The log(n) algorithm

5) In David's phonebook example, if he turns one page at a time, it will take him log(n) steps to complete the search.
False

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Continued...

Happy Learning..Happy Programming :)

Day-1: What is the meaning of Dot(.) in Dot Net?????

Today is my first article on Dot Net.

I thought of starting my blog on "What is the meaning of Dot (.) in DotNet?"

According to Microsoft MSDN,Dot (.) in Dotnet means Accessors.

Dot (.) is used for accessing Properties,Classes and Methods within the .NET Framework class libraries.

This is an in-built mechanism of Dot Net Framework.

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Continued...

Happy Learning..Happy Programming :)

Quiz 1: Introduction to Computer Science and Programming

If you have missed the previous articles for the Quiz,Please Read:

http://itsmyslife.blogspot.in/2012/10/first-day-at-introduction-to-computer.html

http://itsmyslife.blogspot.in/2012/10/day-2-learn-introduction-to-computer.html

Today In this Article,I am posting 5 Quiz Questions..

These questions are with reference to Day-1 and Day-2 articles on 

"Introduction to Computer Science and Programming"

1) Why does 53 represent the number 5 in ASCII?

5 also represents 5 in ASCII. Either one will work

Numbers 1-47 actually represent negative numbers. 53 is the first positive number that links to 5 (going in order)

In this context, we're representing characters through numbers. As such, the number 53 links to the character '5'.

2) An ASCII Table is a large reference guide that show which numbers represent which characters.

True

False

3) Express this binary number as a decimal number: 10010110

4) One algorithm has a run time of n/1000. Another algorithm has a run time of log(n). Considering that n is a very large number, which of these will complete first?

The n/1000 algorithm

The log(n) algorithm

5) In David's phonebook example, if he turns one page at a time, it will take him log(n) steps to complete the search.

True

False

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If you want to solve this quiz,comment to the following questions.

Answers will be posted on Monday.

Continued...

Happy Learning..Happy Programming :)

Day 2 -- Learn Introduction to Computer Science and Programming

As we discussed in our earlier article about Basics of Computation,

If you have missed the Day-1: 

Please Visit: http://itsmyslife.blogspot.in/2012/10/first-day-at-introduction-to-computer.html

Today we discuss about, Problem Solving.

Q: What is computer science?

A: Most of them believe that Computer Science is nothing but Programming.

This is the most Common Misconception.

 

Q: What is Programming?

A: Programming is a tool of computer science, to analyze large amounts of data.

 

Example – Phone Book

In old days, Before Mobiles were not developed: All of us used to store the Phone Contacts in a Phone Book.

If we want to search for “Karthikeyan”, we have to flip each page and search until the Contact is found.

This is an inefficient method.

Now we can reduce our search time, by flipping to the middle of the Phone Book.

Let divide the problem into two.

We know ‘K’ doesn’t lie in the right part of the book, let’s throw away this part.

Now we start searching in the left part of the book and Now again flip to the middle of the Left Part of the Phone Book.

We know ‘K’ lies in the right part of this book; let’s throw away the left part.

So now we again start searching the right part.

As we continue tearing the book in half and throwing away part of it, we will eventually be left with a single page on which the name “Karthikeyan” appears.

Approach – To Solve a Problem

In the graph below, the first steep line (n in red) represents the approach of turning one page at a time.

The second steep line (n/2 in yellow) represents a slightly improved approach of turning two pages at a time.

The curve (log n in green) represents our “tear and throw away” approach. As the size of the problem grows, the time to solve that problem doesn’t grow nearly as fast.

 In the context of this problem, n is the number of pages in the phonebook. As we go from 500 to 1000 to 2000 pages in the phonebook, we need only tear the phonebook in half one or two more times.

Algorithm : Counting Number of Students in a class

Let’s solve this problem...

1. Everyone in the class should stand up and the first person should think of the number ‘1’
2. Now pair off with second person – (example: number - 2) standing beside to first person, add the first number with second and adopt the sum as the new number to the second person.
3. Now the first person should sit down, the second person should go back to step 2

With this algorithm, it’s very easy to break the problem into small pieces.

Binary Numbers

Everyone has studied in the schools, that computer deals with 0’s and 1’s.

These 0’s and 1’s comprise binary numbers system.

Binary means “Two”...Every solution to a problem represents in binary numbers.

In Real World, If the Switch of the Bulb is OFF – Then it represents 0 and

If the Switch of the Bulb is ON – Then it represents 1.

ASCII

As we have seen, Binary is used to represent the numbers.

We now represent the alphabetic characters in numbers.

ASCII is American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It is an encoding system.

For example, an uppercase “A” is represented by the number 65 and a lowercase “a” is represented by the number 97.

Byte

A byte is a sequence of 8 bits.

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Continued...

Happy Learning..Happy Programming :)

First Day : Python Online Training

Few days back I have enrolled to "Python" online training course by RICE University.

Every Week, They have two sets of video Lectures with
• Concepts and Examples
• Two Quizes ( each quiz for a set)
• 1 Mini Project

This Course duration is 8 Weeks (Oct -15 to Dec - 10)

Today was my first class.

Here are some Concepts which i learnt:

1. Comments: 

Comments are Non-computational parts of the program that describe the behavior of the program to you and others.

Comments begin with #, everything after the hash symbol is ignored by Python.

# Hello,This is my first program in Python.

2. Print:

To return the values,we use print.

Example 1: 

# Hello,This is my first program in Python.

Print "Hello World"

Execute: The Output shows:

Line 3: SyntaxError: bad input on line 3 (''Hello world'')

Due to Case-Sensitiveness, In the statement : 'P' in Print should be in Lower-Case.

Example 2: 

# Hello,This is my first program in Python.

print "Hello World"

Execute: The Output shows:

Hello world 

3. Strings :

Sequence of characters enclosed by a pair of single or double quotes is called as Strings.

Example 1: 

# Hello,This is my first program in Python.

print "Hello World"

Execute: The Output shows:  Hello world 

 In this, "Hello world" / 'Hello World' results to same output.

Strings are one of the data types: They are denoted by 'str'.

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Continued...

Happy Learning..Happy Programming :)

Received "Power Searching with google" Certificate from Google.

Today I received the mail from Google.

Congratulations! Here is the certificate you earned through your participation
in Power Searching with Google. Below are your assessment scores.

Mid-class assessment score:  80%
Post-class assessment score:  95%

You can print out the attached certificate and hang it on your wall.  We hope you enjoyed the class!
Cheers,
Power Searching with Google course staff.

First Day at Introduction to Computer Science and Programming

Few days back I have enrolled to "Introduction to Computer Science and Programming" online training course.

In this course Every Week,They have video Lectures with slides and
• Finger exercises
• Problem sets 

After Week 5,There is a  Midterm exam 1 
and After Week 10,There is a Midterm exam 2.
Finally after Week 14 - There is a Final exam.

 Today I started with my course with Week 1 out of 14.

Week One Comprises:

Lecture 1 – Introduction to Computation
Lecture 2 – Core elements of programs
Finger Exercises
Problem Set - 1

Lecture 1 – Introduction to Computation

Basics of Computation:

Goal of this course is,

• Become skillful at making a computer do what you want it to do.
• Learn computational modes of thinking.
• Master the art of computational problem solving.

Q: What does Computer do?
A: It does only TWO things only. i.e., Performs the calculations and Remembers the results that we can reuse.

Q:What Calculations can a Computer can perform?
A: There are two calculations:

•  Simple Set of Primitive calculations that we can built -- Built in Primitives
• Creating our own methods of calculating

Q: Is that all the Computer does?
A:  The Computer can perform A billion calculations per second and
       The Computer can store 100s of gigabytes of data

Note: Every Element of the storage is called Byte.

Q: What all can Computers can perform other than simple calculations?
A:  The computer can perform many things:

• Searching the World Wide Web
• Playing chess

Q: If you have a computer program to look ahead 6 moves, 3 moves by you and 3 moves by your Opponent..How many different options are there,if there are 35 moves each..? (Tricky Question)
A: 1.8 Billion sets of chess boards.

Q: How many different games are there in Chess ? (Interesting Question)
A: Experts say 10^123 different chess games are possible.

Q: Does computer have limitations?
A: There are some problems that are too complex, as we dont have enough speed/storage
Example: Predicting Weather at very local scale

and another is: Modern Cryptography -- The way in which the information is securely transmitted and Cracking Encryption schemes (Breaking the code).

Some problems are fundamentally impossible to compute
•Predicting whether a piece of code will always halt with an answer for any input.

Q: Do u know about "Turing's Halting Problem?"
A: “Does there exist an effective procedure (computable function) for deciding, for every pair (e(M),x); does M halt for x?”

If we write a piece of code and then write another piece of code to check the first piece of code will always works and it will always stop and it will give us answer.

This turns out to not be possible to solve and this is known as "Turing's Halting Problem"

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Continued...

Happy Learning..Happy Programming :)

Power Searching with Google - Course Completed

Finally,After Attending 6 classes, doing Activities and with mid-class and Final Post-Class Assessment...I am finally done with the course.

I completed my course with 90% and i got to see lots of learnings from this by the end of the course.

Thanks to Google and Daniel M.Russell,Senior Research Scientist from Google for teaching us "Google-Inside Search:Power Searching with Google" 

Remembering Steve Jobs - A Visionary Leader

Steve Jobs died one year ago today.

Website: http://www.apple.com/

Born: February 24, 1955

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs was an American entrepreneur. 

He is best known as the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc.

Died: October 5, 2011

Microsoft ZoomIt v4.31...

Introduction

ZoomIt is a screen zoom and annotation tool for technical presentations that include application demonstrations. 

ZoomIt is very convenient to use,simple windows-aid tool used in presentations.

It’s free, portable, and compatible with all versions of Windows.

ZoomIt runs unobtrusively in the tray and activates with customizable hotkeys to zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and draw on the zoomed image.

Using ZoomIt

We can use this tool to Zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and/or write on the desktop (with or without zooming) using a pen color and width of your choice. 

It does not require any additional windows to open or close, and even includes a customizable break timer that will blank your screen with a countdown when activated and allows you to return to the timer window by clicking on the ZoomIt tray icon.

Cheat Sheet

http://www.scribd.com/doc/108867364

Developed By

Microsoft Corporation

Price

Free of Cost

Download

Download ZoomIt (280 KB)

Website

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897434.aspx

Mac Website (Price: $0.99)

http://www.zoomitapp.com/