Contents:

1. (10 points)
   Read Lab 1.3 (p. 19 [DH]). This lab has you search the Internet to find ten historical facts about computers, computing or the people involved in advancing the discipline. For this assignment, you need only find five such facts.

   In writing up your assignment, please adhere to the following standards:

   For clarity, please number the facts from 1 to 5
   With each fact, please include the URL which you used as a source.
   Each of the five facts should be something which is not included in the required reading.
   Each fact can be as short as one or two sentences (please do, however, state your facts in complete sentences). You are free to paraphrase your source. If you choose to give a direct quote from your source, that statement should be enclosed in quotation marks.

   Some additional web sites of interest, though not mentioned by the book include:

   www.computerhistory.org/
   www.computer.org/history/
   You might also want to browse some of the links which were used in the notes for lecture 01.

2. (5 points)
   Algorithms appear in many aspects of our daily lives, often described in written instructions (e.g., preparing food, setting the clock on the microwave, ordering a product from a catalog). For this problem, your goal is to look around your daily life for an interesting example of such an algorithm description. An "interesting" example would be one which includes optional steps, repeated steps, or other such features. (a less interesting example is one which is a single sequence of steps, such as 'step1...step2...step3...stop')

   For your submission, please type these written instructions, as they appear.

   Furthermore, consider the definition of an algorithm, as given in Figure 4.1 on page 169 of the Brookshear text. Evaluate whether or not you feel that the instructions constitute an "algorithm" by this definition, explaining your thoughts.

3. (5 points)
   If I ask you to turn to page such-and-such of the text, what process do you use? (I'm pretty sure that you do not start turning pages one at a time)

   Please try to give a formal description of your "algorithm" for finding the page, in a way which satisfies the definition given in Figure 4.1 of [Br] (which, by the way, is on page 169).

It's great to gather information from the Internet, but important to cite your source of information so that others can judge its credibility. You should have already included a URL with each fact.

For extra credit, rely on a different source for each of the five facts and identify the person or organization who provided the content on the given web site.