IT for the Life Sciences

Readings due before class

Required

• Chapter 2 R for Data Science: Introduction (1 page long)

Recommended

• Try to understand
  • Antikythera Mechanism
  • Napier’s Bones and
  • Jacquard Loom
  • The Sun Shadow Board

Fun Reading

• Computers over Time
• Computer Science: some of its flavours:
  • Algorithms
  • Cryptography
  • Computational Complexity
  • Databases
  • Compilers
• Read on-line resources with some passing familarity with computer developments in the 20th century.
• The Turing Award
• Suggested readings: The Enigma, or at least the movie The Imitation Game
• War Games, the best movie ever.

Action items

• Try to get up and running with RStudio Cloud.
• Work through the examples in {}
• Are Antikythera, Napier’s Bones, Jacquard Loom, and the Sun Shadow Board computers?