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This is an introductory computer half-course offered in the Fall and Winter terms by the School of Computing at Queen's University. It surveys many fields of computing science, presents case studies of fascinating examples of computers in use in diverse areas, and discusses the possibilities, limitations, and risks of computers. Particular attention is given to issues of security, privacy and ethics.

Weekly Schedule

LectureMonday10:30 am11:20 amJeffery 155/157
Lecture/Lab*Wednesday9:30 am10:20 amJeffery 155/157
Lecture/Lab/Quiz*Friday8:30 am9:20 amJeffery 155/157

*There will be twelve labs during the term of which only ten will be counted. In most cases, labs will be held during the Friday meeting, excepting in Weeks 3, 6, 9 and 12, which are quiz weeks, and in Week 11, owing to the Good Friday holiday, when labs will take place during the Wednesday meetings. This schedule is subject to change with minimal notice! Check the CISC P81 News section of this page, below, frequently for such announcements.

CISC P81 News

Look here frequently for important announcements and items of interest. More recent entries are at the top.

  • 2018-03-12

    My bad: TCP port numbers are sent in binary (of course)

    I'll blame the time change. In today's class, I mentioned that the 16-bit port numbers passed in TCP packets are in hex, but like all other data that travels over a wire, they're not: they're binary values. On the rare occasions where a port number may have to be written by a human, and we'll see such an occasion in week 10 when we talk about URLs, they are written in decimal. This is NOT something you'll be asked about on Quiz 3, but I thought I should mention it for the keeners who might have committed my error to memory.

  • 2018-01-31

    Quicksort example

    You can download an Excel spreadsheet containing and example of how a Quicksort might be performed on a list of 13 numbers here, http://sites.cs.queensu.ca/courses/ciscp81/Quicksort_example.xlsx. In this example, the pivot value is chosen (arbitrarily) as the first element in the original list and in any smaller lists created thereafter.

  • 2018-01-23

    Get your CISC P81 grades

    There is a link now on the Notes page that will let you get your CISC P81 grades to date.

  • 2018-01-02

    Watch This Space!

    Check this page frequently for course-related announcements.