CS History
In 1947, engineers working on the Harvard Mark II computer found a real insect stuck in a relay, inspiring this now-common term for a software error.
What is a bug?
In Python, this keyword is used to define a function.
What is def?
Who is the current professor for Intro to CS 1?
Who is Professor Toups?
This branch of computing uses qubits instead of bits and exploits superposition and entanglement to perform computations.
What is quantum computing?
What is the number 0110 1001 in base 10?
What is 105?
This British mathematician developed the concept of a theoretical “machine” that could simulate any computation, laying the groundwork for modern computer science.
Who is Alan Turing?
This is the general syntax of a list comprehension.
What is [expression for item in iterable]?
What is the former name of Tulane's premier CS Club, Tulane Google Developer Group?
This term refers to bias that arises when an AI system reflects prejudices or imbalances present in its training data.
What is algorithmic bias?
This notation expresses how the runtime or space requirements of an algorithm grow with input size.
What is Big O notation?
Developed in the 1950s, this language became one of the first high-level programming languages and was created by John Backus at IBM.
What is FORTRAN?
The language was named after this British comedy group, not a snake.
What is Monty Python?
What is the name of the framework used to create a game in Introduction to CS II?
What is Camelot?
This concept, central to AI safety, focuses on aligning an AI system’s goals and behavior with human values and intentions.
What is the alignment problem?
This foundational suite of communication protocols defines how data is packaged, addressed, transmitted, and received across the Internet — combining a reliable transport layer and an internetworking layer.
What is TCP/IP?
Invented by Douglas Engelbart in the 1960s, this handheld device revolutionized how humans interact with computers.
What is the computer mouse?
Given the code below, what will be printed?
nums = [1, 2, 3]
print(nums * 2)
What is [1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3]?
Who is the chair of the CS department?
Who is Professor Carola Wenk?
Proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, this test measures a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from a human.
What is the Turing Test?
This software acts as an intermediary between computer hardware and user programs, managing resources like memory, processes, and input/output devices.
What is an operating system?
This pioneering programmer wrote the first algorithm intended for a machine — long before modern computers existed.
Who is Ada Lovelace?
def append_to(element, to=[]):
to.append(element)
return to
print(append_to(1))
print(append_to(2))
print(append_to(3, []))
print(append_to(4))
[1]
[1, 2]
[3]
[1, 2, 4]
What department was Tulane Computer Science formerly a part of (before 2005)?
Hint: This department no longer exists either!
Hint 2: This field is commonly associated with CS
What is Electrical Engineering and Computer Science?
or What is Electrical Engineering?
In quantum computing, this algorithm by Peter Shor can factor large integers exponentially faster than classical algorithms.
What is Shor’s algorithm?
What is the time complexity of the following algorithm for locating a number in a list of lists:
for row in nums:
for val in row:
if val == target:
return True
return False
Bonus +300 pts for any team that can give the name of the correct O(logn) algorithm
What is O(n^2)?
Bonus: What is binary search?