Instructor Information

Instructor:	Jon Sorenson
Office:	Fairbanks 158 (CSSE Department)
Phone/Voicemail:	940-9765
Home Phone:	280-1168 (before 9pm please)
E-Mail Address:	jsorenso@butler.edu
Home Page URL:	http://euclid.butler.edu/~sorenson/
Office Hours:	MTWRF 10:30-11:50, or by appointment

Course Goals

The British mathematician Alan Turing is perhaps best known for his work in breaking the Enigma cipher of the German military during World War II. He also developed a mathematical model of computation in the 1930s that is now called the Turing machine. Turing's work with this model laid a foundation for computer science, and today the Turing Award serves as the computer scientist's version of the Nobel Prize. Many credit Alan Turing with the invention of the computer as we know it today. He was also a pioneer in artificial intelligence. In spite of Turing's great work as a researcher, he was arrested for homosexuality in 1952 and forced to undergo hormone treatments; it is believed this led to his suicide by cyanide poisoning at the age of 42 in 1954, before his patriotic work during World War II was declassified.

In this course we will examine the many aspects of Turing's work and life.

Course Materials

There are five required books for this course:

Alan Turing, the Enigma by Andrew Hodges, Walker & Company, 2000. This has alot of information -- I don't expect you to read it cover-to-cover.
Turing (A Novel about Computation) by Christos Papadimitriou, MIT Press, 2003.
Enigma by Robert Harris, Ballantine Books, 1995.
(The book is much better than the movie, and has a different ending.)
The Code Book by Simon Singh, Anchor Books, 2000.
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, first published in 1950.
(Any edition/publication of these stories is fine. The recent movie has a completely different plot.)

There are also several online sources of information:

The Turing Home Page
The Turing Digital Archive
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Two of Alan Turing's most famous papers, On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem and Computing Machinery and Intelligence

Links to all of these online sources are on the button bar to the left.

I also have two videos, which I put on reserve in the science library: Breaking the Code starring Dereck Jacobi (about 90 minutes) and Station X: The Code Breakers of Bletchley Park, a four part documentary from England (about 200 minutes). There are a number of other books on Turing on reserve in the science library.

All handouts for this course will be made available through the world-wide-web (WWW) home page for this course. The URL is http://euclid.butler.edu/turing. We will discuss how to access this during the first day of class. If at any time you need a handout from the web, but are unable to print it, just ask me and I will print one for you. (Note that there is a "printer friendly" button at the bottom left.)

Grades

Due to the small size of this class, I am interested in us discussing how grades will be determined. Below is what we've done in previous years.

Your grade will be based on class participation & discussion, discussion leadership, a journal, and a paper as follows:

Class Participation & Attendence	50 points
Journal	50 points
Term Paper	100 points
Discussion Leadership	100 points
Total:	300 points

Details about the journal, term paper, and discussion leadership are available on the assignments page.

Note that all assignments must be typed and should should be turned in to me in hard copy (don't e-mail your assignments to me and make me print them).

Letter grades are assigned according to the following scale:

93%	90%	87%	83%	80%	77%	73%	70%	67%	63%	60%
A	A-	B+	B	B-	C+	C	C-	D+	D	D-

If the class average is low (say, below 70%), then I may curve slightly in your favor.

For a description of the grading criteria for writing assignments, see the Grading Criteria for Written Work page, which is also accessible as a button on the left.

Partners

You will work in pairs on leading class discussion; the rest of your work must be your own, although you are of course allowed to discuss ideas and proofread each other's writing.

Help

If you have questions or are confused, please feel free to come see me. I do not expect you to learn all the material the first time you see it; if you could do that, you wouldn't need me! You are welcome to visit me in my office anytime my door is open (which is most of the time). If you do not come during office hours, and I have work I need to do, I may ask you to come back later if you can. Don't take this personally. I enjoy teaching, and I like helping students, so don't think you are imposing on me by asking for help. This is my job.

Students with Disabilities

It is the policy and practice of Butler University to make reasonable accommodations for students with properly documented disabilities. Written notification from Student Disability Services is required. If you are eligible to receive an accommodation and would like to request it for this course, please discuss it with me and allow one week advance notice. Otherwise, it is not guaranteed that the accommodation can be received on a timely basis. Students who have questions about Student Disability Services or who have, or think they may have, a disability (psychiatric, attentional, learning, vision, hearing, physical, medical, etc.) are invited to contact Student Disability Services for a confidential discussion in Jordan Hall 136 or by phone at extension 9308.

I will be happy to comply with your needs as best as I am able.