Objectives of course

1. Adopt a new mindset -- that of bioinformatics
"Introduction to Bioinformatics"... You've no doubt taken many courses called Introduction to X where you've learned the basic concepts of X, enabling you to move on to Advanced X. You have a pretty good idea what X is going into the course, perhaps through colleagues who are X majors or a high school X course or perhaps even a hard-hitting TV show with a dashing Xologist as the main character.

That's fine when X is a mature field with a well-defined body of knowledge.
X is not bioinformatics.

Some courses focus on how to use state-of-the-art (also known as soon-to-be-extinct) tools.
Not this one.

Some focus on the timeless precepts behind bioinformatic tools.
That's a different course.

We will focus instead on something you can take away and use now and twenty years from now: the viewpoint of bioinformatics. The only way I know to help you grasp that viewpoint is to put you in a situation where you're using that viewpoint through problem-solving and within an actual scientific project. So that's what we'll do.

Much of the first half of the course will be devoted to getting you to a position where you can work productively on the Project, which will occupy most of your time the second half of the course.

2. Absorb computer programming, bioinformatics' most basic tool
Without understanding how the psychologist's contraption works, a dog paws the lever (or maybe paws the air), hoping for a reward. Without understanding how computer programming works, biologists paw glitzy applications, hoping for a result. Without the ability to program the computer to do what you want it to do (rather than allow it to program you), you're pretty much stuck on the sidelines to cheer.

Those of you who have become comfortable in programming a computer will find it as difficult to imagine not being able to do so as to imagine not being able to do long division. Those of you who have never programmed will be delighted to discover that learning long division is the more difficult task. You who do not know a programming language will know one (BioBIKE) by the end of the course.

The combination of a digital computer and a creative human can do things that neither could do alone. In particular, it makes possible the exploration of massive amounts of information, which is at the heart of bioinformatics.