COMPUTING FOR THE PROFESSION
Teaching provides notions related to the discipline of computer science with particular reference to the following topics: fundamentals of the discipline of computer science, spreadsheets, information management, the Internet and the Web. In addition, the teaching provides practical skills related to the main functionality of software tools belonging to the spreadsheet family (also called spreadsheets), with particular reference to the use of formulas, calculation functions and graph creation.
In the second part of the teaching, the functionality of excel as a useful support of the profession will be explored.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THE DISCIPLINE OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
- historical notions of the discipline of computer science,
- structure and organization of the computer,
- coding of information,
- units of information measurement,
- definitions of algorithm and program,
- digital representation of text, audio, images and video,
- classification of computer software,
- computer security and risks associated with the use of digital technologies. SPREADSHEETS
- definition and structure of a spreadsheet,
- calculation functions in the Microsoft Excel tool,
- statistical functions and charting in Microsoft Excel
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
- definition of data and information,
- databases,
- relational model of databases,
- database systems,
- similarities and differences between spreadsheets and relational databases,
- languages for databases,
- composition of queries,
- web-based databases.
INTERNET AND WEB
- notions of computer networks,
- standards and protocols of computer networks,
- history and structure of the Internet,
- web architecture,
- HTML language,
- structure and operation of search engines.
IN-DEPTH STUDY OF EXCEL
- coding and implementing data in an excel spreadsheet
- use of excel as a spreadsheet to calculate key descriptive statistics
- construction of simple frequency tables using pivot table ratio
- construction of double-entry tables using pivot table ratio
USE OF FUNCTIONS:
- to estimate statistical measures of position, dispersion and shape;
- to transform a continuous variable into one in classes;
- to determine the correlation coefficient;
- to estimate the simple regression line;
- use of the 'Data Analysis' add-on to determine descriptive statistics,
- the correlation coefficient and the regression line
- Construction of simple graphs, composed from the tables, and scatter-plot.
Organization, collection and cleaning of data in excel. Using excel functions of descriptive statistics: frequency distributions, position and scatter indices, correlation between two variables. Graphs. Use of excel and open-source web resources for statistical hypothesis testing: parametric and nonparametric tests to compare two or more continuous or discrete distributions (paired data and independent samples). Calculation and interpretation of p-value and confidence interval for means/proportions.