Computing: Preparation Texts

If you get this book and completely understand everything in it you will be sorted for 1/8th of the first year. It's one of the books the admissions tutor recommends you get before coming to IC.

Reply 5

sir.jamesgreen

sunspoon

If you get this book and completely understand everything in it you will be sorted for 1/8th of the first year. It's one of the books the admissions tutor recommends you get before coming to IC.

Yes, if you feel you really HAVE to ruin the last fun summer you might ever have, that is a very good textbook to ruin it with...

Just remember, from here on in it's all internships, revising for resits, worrying about money and ultimately getting a job... Enjoy your final summer!

Reply 6

sir.jamesgreen

Yes, if you feel you really HAVE to ruin the last fun summer you might ever have, that is a very good textbook to ruin it with...

Just remember, from here on in it's all internships, revising for resits, worrying about money and ultimately getting a job... Enjoy your final summer!

LOL, the OP wanted to know, so I obliged :cool:

Reply 7

sunspoon

If you get this book and completely understand everything in it you will be sorted for 1/8th of the first year. It's one of the books the admissions tutor recommends you get before coming to IC.

Would you recommend buying it then, seeing as it's only £3.50 on Amazon Marketplace? I'm already going through one of the books recommended by Philippa Gardner's notes for Discrete Maths, which I got from my local university library, and plan on reading Tony Field's "Functional Programming" after that (boy isn't Haskell a fascinating language!). I'm actually quite keen on getting a bit of a head start, especially since we never did things like sequences, vectors and matrices at school so I've got a few gaps here and there (blame the Italian education system :mad:

).

Reply 8

Emc2

Would you recommend buying it then, seeing as it's only £3.50 on Amazon Marketplace? I'm already going through one of the books recommended by Philippa Gardner's notes for Discrete Maths, which I got from my local university library, and plan on reading Tony Field's "Functional Programming" after that (boy isn't Haskell a fascinating language!). I'm actually quite keen on getting a bit of a head start, especially since we never did things like sequences, vectors and matrices at school so I've got a few gaps here and there (blame the Italian education system :mad:

).

You will get taught all of this stuff when you come here. I've just bought that book on Mathematical Methods because I failed the exam for it and so need to revise over the summer in prep for the resit in September.

I have to admit, you seem to be intending on doing a ridiculous amount of work this summer, but if you really do have that much spare time on your hands you might as well get stuck into this too, which will cover you for another 1/4 of the first year. If you really do want to do all this work, go ahead, but as sir.jamesgreen said above, don't do too much. That being said if you want to familiarise yourself with the texts you will definitely be better off in the long run.

Reply 9

sunspoon

You will get taught all of this stuff when you come here. I've just bought that book on Mathematical Methods because I failed the exam for it and so need to revise over the summer in prep for the resit in September.

I have to admit, you seem to be intending on doing a ridiculous amount of work this summer, but if you really do have that much spare time on your hands you might as well get stuck into this too, which will cover you for another 1/4 of the first year. If you really do want to do all this work, go ahead, but as sir.jamesgreen said above, don't do too much. That being said if you want to familiarise yourself with the texts you will definitely be better off in the long run.

To be perfectly honest, I already got "Reasoned Programming" from my local uni library (University of Bologna) and I read the first few chapters of it in the last couple of days, but I find it a bit annoying that I'm getting taught a functional language (Miranda) that I'm never gonna use - maybe I should only focus on Part II (Logic)?

Don't worry, I'm not gonna spend my entire summer doing this. And yes, I do realise this is making me sound like a complete nerd, but I'm really not :biggrin:

As I said I'd just like to get a bit of a head start and familiarise myself with next year's syllabus. Oh and thanks for your help :smile:

Reply 10

Emc2

To be perfectly honest, I already got "Reasoned Programming" from my local uni library (University of Bologna) and I read the first few chapters of it in the last couple of days, but I find it a bit annoying that I'm getting taught a functional language (Miranda) that I'm never gonna use - maybe I should only focus on Part II (Logic)?

Don't worry, I'm not gonna spend my entire summer doing this. And yes, I do realise this is making me sound like a complete nerd, but I'm really not :biggrin:

As I said I'd just like to get a bit of a head start and familiarise myself with next year's syllabus. Oh and thanks for your help :smile:

Don't worry about Miranda, it's the bits on Logic, loop invariants, binary chop, the various induction methods (well founded, structural and multiple) that you need to worry about. It sounds like your going to be well on your way to getting a first this year before you even start the course...

Reply 11

mituozo

Hmmm, I think my method of drinking and spending a few months doing whatever I like will be more exciting than such preparation.. Maybe I'm just destined to fail though.. :P

Reply 12

ui9

OP

sir.jamesgreen

Yes, if you feel you really HAVE to ruin the last fun summer you might ever have, that is a very good textbook to ruin it with...

Just remember, from here on in it's all internships, revising for resits, worrying about money and ultimately getting a job... Enjoy your final summer!

The thing is I'm on a gap year and I just want to re-familiarise myself with the essential bits of what I studied last year. Further, like Emc2, I too haven't given my A Levels, so I want to fill in any gaps in syllabus, if any do exist.

I don't plan to spend my entire summer (it's the monsoon season here) studying...just a part of it -
tbh, though, I've wasted quite a lot of time over the last year.

Emc2

I'm already going through one of the books recommended by Philippa Gardner's notes for Discrete Maths, which I got from my local university library, and plan on reading Tony Field's "Functional Programming" after that (boy isn't Haskell a fascinating language!).

I'm actually slightly more concerned about the hardware side...so I've just started going through 'The Evolution of Physics' - which, although largely irrelevant, does cover bits of electronics. And it's a lot of fun :biggrin:

Reply 13

AccidentProne

When I went visiting, I asked the same question and I was strongly advised to revise maths (but bear in mind that I studied the 70% of the syllabus relevant to the course by myself, so maths is definitely not my strongest point). They also suggested to buy some books: Mathematical Methods by Stephenson and Engineering Mathematics by Stroud.
That is pretty much all.
Oh I also told them that I learnt Java and Python and they said that it was fine but advised against learning any other programming language because I could "pick up bad habits". However I plan to look around Haskell a bit to have an idea of how it works.

I hope that helps. :smile:

Reply 14

rikkuhitsu

Emc2

To be perfectly honest, I already got "Reasoned Programming" from my local uni library (University of Bologna) and I read the first few chapters of it in the last couple of days, but I find it a bit annoying that I'm getting taught a functional language (Miranda) that I'm never gonna use - maybe I should only focus on Part II (Logic)?

Don't worry, I'm not gonna spend my entire summer doing this. And yes, I do realise this is making me sound like a complete nerd, but I'm really not :biggrin:

As I said I'd just like to get a bit of a head start and familiarise myself with next year's syllabus. Oh and thanks for your help :smile:

Sounds like you are working so hard, it makes me feel like I have wasted the first 2 weeks of my summer! But it is good to get used to all those maths and computing stuff before uni starts :smile:

Good luck!

Reply 15

ui9

OP

AccidentProne

When I went visiting, I asked the same question and I was strongly advised to revise maths (but bear in mind that I studied the 70% of the syllabus relevant to the course by myself, so maths is definitely not my strongest point). They also suggested to buy some books: Mathematical Methods by Stephenson and Engineering Mathematics by Stroud.
That is pretty much all.
Oh I also told them that I learnt Java and Python and they said that it was fine but advised against learning any other programming language because I could "pick up bad habits". However I plan to look around Haskell a bit to have an idea of how it works.

I hope that helps. :smile:

Thank you..

Reply 16

ui9

I'm actually slightly more concerned about the hardware side...so I've just started going through 'The Evolution of Physics' - which, although largely irrelevant, does cover bits of electronics. And it's a lot of fun :biggrin:

You may want to have a look at the lecture notes and tutorials for the first year Hardware course here, I got to lecture 5 before it all stopped making sense, and I also did tutorial 1, 2, and 3. Very interesting stuff but I feel like I'm lacking the Physics knowledge to go any further than lecture 5, which is a shame :frown:

Reply 17

AccidentProne

Oh I also told them that I learnt Java and Python and they said that it was fine but advised against learning any other programming language because I could "pick up bad habits". However I plan to look around Haskell a bit to have an idea of how it works.

Haskell is very interesting :smile:

Coming from years of imperative languages, I had no idea that functional languages could be so powerful and I think I have a much firmer grasp of recursive programming now. The lecture notes for the Haskell course are quite good, however I suggest you look at some sort of introduction to functional programming before you delve into Haskell itself, otherwise it's not gonna make much sense.

I thought the way Tony Field explained the difference between imperative and functional programming in the first chapters of his 1987 book "Functional Programming" was very good; however he then goes on to teach the subtleties of the Hope programming language, which is a bit of a waste of time if Haskell is what you're really interested in. I'm sure there are plenty of Haskell books out there that will do equally as well (if not better), but unfortunately my uni library doesn't have any of them :frown:

Reply 18

Emc2

You may want to have a look at the lecture notes and tutorials for the first year Hardware course here, I got to lecture 5 before it all stopped making sense, and I also did tutorial 1, 2, and 3. Very interesting stuff but I feel like I'm lacking the Physics knowledge to go any further than lecture 5, which is a shame :frown:

You can carry on tbh, you don't have to learn anything about the capacitor stuff and the bit from lectures 4 and 5 where it says 'This is for the more physically minded' or words to that effect. Tbh you could just skip to lecture 6 and it woudln't affect you. You really don't need to know any Physics for the hardware course.

Reply 19