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Introduction to Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for Non-Specialists

Category
Level
Beginner

“Computational Thinking“ refers to a mindset or set of tools used by computational or ICT specialists to describe their work. This course is intended for people outside of the ICT field to allow students to understand the way that computer specialists analyse problems and to introduce students to the basic terminology of the field.
Several topics are covered in this course, including complexity measures, computability, numerical analysis, software engineering, data management, electronics and chip design, and the ethical considerations involved in ICT. This course was part of the Human Brain Project curriculum: Interdisciplinary Brain Science / ICT for Non-Specialists. 

Course Features
Videos
Lectures
Slides
Lessons of this Course
1
1
Duration:
27:33
Speaker:

This lecture focuses on computational complexity, a concept which lies at the heart of computer science thinking. In short, it is a way to quickly gauge an approximation to the computational resource required to perform a task.

2
2
Duration:
36:56
Speaker:

Computer arithmetic is necessarily performed using approximations to the real numbers they are intended to represent, and consequently it is possible for the discrepancies between the actual solution and the approximate solutions to diverge, i.e. to become increasingly different. This lecture focuses on how this happens and techniques for reducing the effects of these phenomena and discuss systems which are chaotic.

3
3
Duration:
28:28
Speaker:

This lecture will addresses what it means for a problem to have a computable solution, methods for combining computability results to analyse more complicated problems, and finally look in detail at one particular problem which has no computable solution: the halting problem.

4
4
Duration:
32:59
Speaker:

This lecture provides an introductory overview of some of the most important concepts in software engineering.

5
5
Duration:
43:21
Speaker:

In this lesson, you will learn about hardware for computing for non-ICT specialists.

6
6
Duration:
35:10

This lecture provides a history of data management, recent developments data management, and a brief description of scientific data management.