LSA Course Guide

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Class Detail:
FA 2012 Honors Program HONORS 352 - Honors Introduction to Research in the Natural Sciences Section 001 Cyberscience: Computational Science and the Rise of the Fourth Paradigm
Credits:	3
Requirements & Distribution:	BS, NS
Other:	Honors
Waitlist Capacity:	99
BS:	This course counts toward the 60 credits of math/science required for a Bachelor of Science degree.
Repeatability:	May not be repeated for credit.
Primary Instructor:	Evrard,August
	(real time availability for all sections)

First-year students should not be scared away by the 300-level number. Engineering students are welcome. The role of computation in the sciences is rapidly growing, driven by advances in silicon-based processors, fiber-optic networks, powerful numerical algorithms, and standards for exchanging and processing data. The fruits of these digital technologies now permeate everyday life, through industries dedicated to social networking, search, e-commerce, on-line gaming, and more. Building on these and emerging technologies, the 21st century is poised to unleash a new, data-intensive paradigm of scientific discovery that will dramatically enhance the scope and scale of data capture, curation, and analysis. In this new (4th) paradigm, cures for diseases might be found by the collective investigations of scientific agents computing semi-autonomously "in the cloud". This course will invite students to explore the social and technical development of computing for the sciences, from the ENIAC through the top-500 list of supercomputers and on to Amazon's EC2. Through a selection of readings, discussions with invited guests, and first-hand experimentation, students in the course will learn about an assortment of technologies that underlie modern scientific inquiry, investigate their use by U-M cyber-scientists, and gain an appreciation of the fiscal, political and social challenges imposed by this growing area of scholarship. Textbook (not ordered through bookstores): The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery [Paperback] Eds., Tony Hey, Stewart Tansley, Kristin Tolle The book is available for free download at www.fourthparadigm.org and it can be purchased in paperback from Amazon for $39, or $0.99 for the Kindle reader version. Publisher: Microsoft Research (October 16, 2009) ISBN-10: 0982544200 ISBN-13: 978-0982544204 There will be additional readings made available as pdf's. For more information, contact Prof. August (Gus) Evrard, evrard@umich.edu. Course Requirements: Grades will be based on the following set of activities: Class Participation — 15%; Quizzes — 20%; Essays/Blog Posts — 35%; Group Project — 30%. Intended Audience: Any student whose career interests may involve data analysis, especially of large quantities of data from disparate sources. Informatics majors interested in grid and cloud computing will learn how these technologies are applied in the sciences. Curiosity is more important than past experience in computation. Class Format: No data submitted

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