ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ АГЕНТСТВО ПО ОБРАЗОВАНИЮ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ ВЫСШЕГО ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ «ВОРОНЕЖСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ» COMPUTERS TODAY Учебно-методическое пособие для вузов Составитель: В. <...> Части пособия «Before you read» и «After you read» ставят целью предварить и, соответственно, подытожить работу с текстами и обеспечивают развитие навыков ведения беседы на профессиональные темы. <...> Judging by the headings, can you work out roughly what each text may be about? <...> Is there anything in the text that you find particularly interesting or new? <...> Opened up a new era These human computers The decisive step to a full-blown computing machine The so called Church-Turing thesis It comes from the Latin version 3. <...> Using them, write 2-3 sentences to expand the main topics of those paragraphs: abacus, sliding rule, the greatest common divisor, two numbers, Euclid’s algorithm. 4 Computers Computer is an electronic device that can receive a program and then carry out this program by calculating numerical information. <...> The modern world of high technology is possible mainly due to the development of the computer. <...> Computers have opened up a new era in manufacturing by means of automation, and they have enhanced modern communication systems. <...> During the war, new artillery weapons were developed at such a pace that the human computers were falling far behind in computing the necessary firing tables. <...> The decisive step to a full-blown computing machine was taken when the machines were made electronic, and with the capability of storing programs in their memories. <...> The electronic representation of data made it possible to change the contents of registers much faster than in the mechanical machines. <...> The idea of looking at computational procedures as data and of storing programs in memory made it possible and easy to change the function to be computed. <...> They were designed as technical devices to be fed with numbers and computational procedures. <...> They could compute according to prescribed procedures and deliver the computed results as output. 5 Classical computer science has linked human computing and machine computing in the so-called Church-Turing thesis: Everything that a human being can compute can be <...>
Computers_today.pdf
ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ АГЕНТСТВО ПО ОБРАЗОВАНИЮ
ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ
УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ
ВЫСШЕГО ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ
«ВОРОНЕЖСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ
УНИВЕРСИТЕТ»
COMPUTERS TODAY
Учебно-методическое пособие для вузов
Составитель:
В.И. Гурьянова
Издательско-полиграфический центр
Воронежского государственного университета
2009
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Введение
Предлагаемое учебное пособие предназначено для самостоятельной
работы студентов 1 курса факультета прикладной математики, информатики
и механики над литературой по специальности на английском языке. В
пособие включена подборка оригинальных текстов по профилю будущей
специальности, часть которой подвергнута незначительной обработке по
соображениям методического характера.
Тексты снабжены заданиями, направленными на формирование навыков
как быстрого информативного, так и изучающего чтения литературы
по специальности и умений аннотирования и реферирования. В пособие
включен список фраз-клише для составления аннотаций к текстам. Части
пособия «Before you read» и «After you read» ставят целью предварить и,
соответственно, подытожить работу с текстами и обеспечивают развитие
навыков ведения беседы на профессиональные темы. Пособие может быть
использовано для работы в аудитории.
Part I. Before you read
1. Do you use computers? Why do you use them? What do you like
about them and what do you not like? Do you think you are a computerliterate
person?
2. Here is Bill Gates’ opinion about computers. To what extent do
you agree with it? Is this true now? How can computers become even more
useful in future?
“Our computers will be our telephones, our post-office, our library
and our books”.
3. Why do you think so many men are keen on computers? Write a
few sentences about it.
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Classical computer science has linked human computing and machine
computing in the so-called Church-Turing thesis: Everything that a human being
can compute can be computed by a machine. According to this thesis, our intuitive
understanding of computation refers to the set of computations that can be
formally prescribed. Closely related to this idea is the concept of an algorithm.
An algorithm is a set of rules or instructions for getting a desired output from
a given input. The word “algorithm” originated in the Middle East. Curiously
enough it comes from the Latin version of the last name of the Persian scholar Abu
Jafar Mohammed ibn Musa al-Khowaresmi (Algorithmi) whose textbook on
arithmetic (825 A.D.) employed for the first time Hindu positional decimal notation
and gave birth to algebra as an independent branch of mathematics. It was translated
into Latin in the 12th century and had a great influence for many centuries on
the development of computing procedures. The name of the textbook’s author became
associated with computations in general and used as a term “algorithm”.
Personal computing is a partnership between the person and the computer.
Believe it or not, a personal computer is easier to operate than a car. It’s even
easier to operate than a telephone, which comes with no instructions at all. Suddenly,
personal computers invaded our world. It’s not surprising that it takes
most of us a while to get comfortable with a comparatively new technology that
so quickly arrived on the scene.
Text 2
1. Read the text “Using computers”. Do you think the style of the text is:
Serious and analytical?
Enthusiastic and persuasive?
Ironical and amusing?
Positive and optimistic?
Negative and critical?
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2. Here are some ideas in note form. Using information from the text
below expand them into a short paragraph. Begin with the sentence given:
There are various things that you can do using your computer
work with texts
study things
modify
combine
help and liberate
to be trained
effective tools
children
pilots
money
construction design
boring tasks
3. Some parts of the text are about problems computers cause. Find
these parts and translate them into Russian (in writing).
Using computers
Think of the first time you succeeded in making a computer do what you
intended it to do. Think of the feeling it gave you to be in control of a powerful
machine. Before getting too excited, don’t forget the times you had to struggle
to make the computer do what you wanted. You could not get the right result, or,
worse, there was no reaction at all. Remember the direct way in which mistakes
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or inconsistencies in your first programs were revealed and the difficulties you
sometimes had when you were trying to correct the programs? You knew that
something was wrong, but you had no idea what it was.
Computers are fascinating because they are fast, powerful, and extremely
versatile machines, and because they are programmable. They will obey our
most whimsical commands, provided they can interpret them. It is really magic:
They do exactly what we tell them to do. But, of course, we have to think and
express ourselves clearly; we have to be careful with our words.
We can use computers to play with texts and immediately see the consequences.
It is easy to reuse text and to experiment with different formulations
and the sequence in which we present our argument. There is no guarantee, of
course, that texts produced on computers are better in quality, or clearer and
richer. Nevertheless, computers are extremely effective tools for producing,
modifying, and combining texts, and they offer us fascinating opportunities to
play and to experiment, while we try to be convincing, clear or even poetic.
We can also use computers to explore the world without having to suffer
real-world consequences. Kids fight monsters without ever getting hurt. Pilots
are trained in flight simulators without the hazards and high costs. Investments
are evaluated without running the risk of losing fortunes. And bridges and highways
are designed and tested without the risk of collapses or the inconvenience
of traffic jams.
In general, we use computers to process, communicate, store, and keep
track of information. Computers also provide us with new and useful opportunities,
and they liberate us from many laborious and boring tasks.
It is not surprising that the development of computer systems raises difficult
questions. We use computers to automate administrative tasks and to
mechanize and automate production processes. But how can we make sure that
the good qualities of the traditional manual way of doing things are not lost?
And what about the people who lose their jobs because of the computer?
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