IR2000/MO2000/CS1000 Book Questions

I found a list of CS books, but there are no recommended texts for CS1005. My brother did that module last year, and the lecture notes seemed to suffice. There are a couple of essays to do in the module, there are relevant books in the library, but you won't know what you need until you start the module as they don't give out the titles until a bit of a way in the course.

List of CS textbooks:
http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/textbooks-all

I can't find anything useful for history, but I do know you get a source book from the department. Not sure if they charge for it or not though. Same on IR, although it does say that they will post the textbooks on the website but I don't see it.

If no-one else can come up with anything better, I'd recommend emailing the module co-ordinator for each of the modules, they should have a list of texts.

I did CS1005 this year. You need no books for the module. Lecture notes give you everything for the exam (of which 50% is multiple choice)
You will be required to do 2 2000-word essays for the coursework (where a little bit of research will be needed, but is not difficult), and one unspecified-length essay in the exam. Near the beginning of the module, you'll be giving a list of essay titles, one for each topic. You'll need to pick 2 to do as coursework, and for the exam essay, you'll be given different essay titles, but you can't do a topic you did for coursework.

I'd recommend it, since it's an easy 20 credits, and it's interesting to boot! You don't have to be a computer science person to enjoy it!

Here's a list of the topics we covered:

How Google works (and including their PageRank algorithm)
Study skills - it was one lecture on how to write an essay (which was actually really useful, since it explains the difference between what was expected from your essays at school, and what's expected at university)
Amazon and E-Commerce
Online Banking (which was mostly about security)
Wireless communications
How the school works (basically about networking rather than anything else)
Video Games (best topic of the lot! Ian is a complete video game history geek! Awesome lectures, and most of the retro consoles he talks about either he or the school owns, and they are great fun to play with!)
Peer-to-Peer (explains things like Bittorrent and Napster)
MP3 Players (basically about DRM, and how audio compression works)
Digital Photography (basically how digital cameras work, image compression, and bizarrely how to take a good picture... It's quite a useful skill though)

I did CS1005 this year. You need no books for the module. Lecture notes give you everything for the exam (of which 50% is multiple choice)
You will be required to do 2 2000-word essays for the coursework (where a little bit of research will be needed, but is not difficult), and one unspecified-length essay in the exam. Near the beginning of the module, you'll be giving a list of essay titles, one for each topic. You'll need to pick 2 to do as coursework, and for the exam essay, you'll be given different essay titles, but you can't do a topic you did for coursework.

I'd recommend it, since it's an easy 20 credits, and it's interesting to boot! You don't have to be a computer science person to enjoy it!

Here's a list of the topics we covered:

How Google works (and including their PageRank algorithm)
Study skills - it was one lecture on how to write an essay (which was actually really useful, since it explains the difference between what was expected from your essays at school, and what's expected at university)
Amazon and E-Commerce
Online Banking (which was mostly about security)
Wireless communications
How the school works (basically about networking rather than anything else)
Video Games (best topic of the lot! Ian is a complete video game history geek! Awesome lectures, and most of the retro consoles he talks about either he or the school owns, and they are great fun to play with!)
Peer-to-Peer (explains things like Bittorrent and Napster)
MP3 Players (basically about DRM, and how audio compression works)
Digital Photography (basically how digital cameras work, image compression, and bizarrely how to take a good picture... It's quite a useful skill though)