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CS111, Wellesley College, Spring 2001 CS111 Home Page: Computer Programming and Problem Solving

Announcements

Note: future announcements will normally appear in the Announcements folder in the CS111 conference on FirstClass.

• Please fill out the course questionnaire by 5:00 on Wednesday, January 31. We need the information from your questionnaires to determine who is in the class, to schedule labs, and to create CS111 file server accounts.
• Please read the documentation on the CS111 server. Also, browse the documentation page to familiarize yourself with other documentation for the course. In particular, you should familiarize yourself with the documentation for Netscape, Fetch, FirstClass, and backing up your floppy disk.

Instructors

You may go to any of the instructors for help. Note that faculty meetings and seminars sometimes conflict with the above-listed office hours. We will keep you informed each week about any changes in our office hours.

Class Times

Teaching Assistants

Some hints on drop-in teaching assistants:

• Drop-in teaching assistants tend to get the most questions near the end of the of their time slot. Try to arrive in E101 early so that you can ask questions in the first part of their shift.
• Just like you, drop-in teaching assistants have lots of work and very tight schedules. It is not reasonable to expect them to help you after their official tutoring hours are over.
• Teaching assistants tend to see less traffic far in advance of the problem set due date. Start your work early so that you can take advantage of the Thursday teaching assistant.
• Please sign the log book every time you get help from the teaching assistant. The log book is a record of how much demand there is for teaching assistants, and affects how many teaching assistants we can have in future semesters.

Course Overview

In this course, you will learn "big ideas" about solving problems, developing algorithms, and organizing programs. These ideas include:

• problem solving strategies: divide-and-conquer, recursion, iteration;
• abstraction: capturing common patterns and hiding information;
• modularity: expressing programs as the composition of mix-and-match parts;
• programming language components: primitives, means of combination, means of abstraction.

This semester we will be using the Java programming language as our main tool for exploring the above ideas. Although you will learn a significant amount about Java along the way, the focus of the course will be on the big ideas, not on the details of Java programming.

See the Course Syllabus for more detailed topic information and schedules.

Prerequisites

Is This the Right Course for Me?

• want an in-depth introduction to programming and problem solving;
• plan to take more advanced computer science courses, particularly students who plan to major or minor in computer science.

If you are not interested in computer science, but want to learn how to use the Internet and various software applications to do you work, you should take CS100: Introduction to Internet Research and Resources. Contact Pattie Orr for more information. For learning particular applications, be on the lookout for ITS mini-courses that teach how to use these applications.

If you already have substantial programming experience, consider taking CS230: Data Structures. Contact Ellen Hildreth for more information. CS230 is taught in Java.

Information about choosing an introductory computer science course may also be found by following this link.

Classes

Textbooks/Notes

E101 Library: The CS department has purchased a collection of books relevant to CS111 and CS110 that will be kept in the bookshelves near the front door of E101. See the E101 library page for a listing of the holdings and the rules for borrowing from the collection.

Science Center Library: A number of Java programming books are on reserve in the Science Center. You may borrow them for use within the library.

Computers

We will be programming in the Symantec Cafe Java development environment for the Macintosh. This semester we will begin testing Metrowerks CodeWarrior, an alternative Java development environment for Macs and PC's. The Learning Edition of CodeWarrior is available in the bookstore. Students who have a stromg preference for working on a PC are invited to try out CodeWarrior, with the understanding that we cannot yet officially support this new platform.
Throughout the course, you will need to use standard applications like Netscape, Fetch,and FirstClass. The Documentation has pointers to documentation for all the software packages used in CS111.

Each CS111 student will be given a password-protected account on the CS111 file server (cs111.wellesley.edu). You will have a limited amount of space on the cs111 server to store your course-related files.

You are also expected to keep copies of all your course work on floppy disks or zip disks. Removable disks are a frail medium that you should handle carefully.Store and transport them in suitable protected containers. Do not subject them to temperature extremes, put them near magnetic fields, store them unprotected in your pockets, etc. Even if you handle floppy and zip disks carefully, they are still prone to failure. For this reason, you should regularly back up your floppy or zip disks!

Every time you insert a disk into a computer, you may be transmitting a computer virus! Viruses are nasty software fragments that can erase information on your computer or cause other malfunctioning. In order to reduce the spread of computer viruses, make sure that any personal computers you use have appropriate virus protection software installed.

Assignments

Assignment Policy

Many of the assignments will be challenging. Keep in mind that programming often consumes more time than you think it will. Start your problem sets early! This will give you time to think about the problems and ask questions if you hit an impasse. Waiting until the last minute to begin a problem set is a recipe for disaster.

While planning your computer usage, keep in mind that computers do break down and Wellesley's are no exception. Also remember that outside of laboratory hours, you may have to compete with other students for a machine.

Instructions for turning in an assignment will be included with that assignment.

Laboratory

Collaboration Policy

Unless otherwise instructed, feel free to discuss problem sets with other students and exchange ideas about how to solve them. However, there is a thin line between collaboration and plagiarizing the work of others. Therefore, we require that you must compose your own solution to each assignment. In particular, while you may discuss strategies for approaching the programming assignments with your classmates and may receive debugging help from them, you are required to write all of your own code. It is unacceptable (1) to write a program together and turn in two copies of the same program or (2) to copy code written by your classmates. However, it is OK to borrow code from the textbooks, from materials discussed in class, and from other sources as long as you give proper credit.

In keeping with the standards of the scientific community, you must give credit where credit is due. If you make use of an idea that was developed by (or jointly with) others, please reference them appropriately in your work. E.g., if person X gets a key idea for solving a problem from person Y, person X's solution should begin with a note that says "I worked with Y on this problem" and should say "The main idea (due to Y) is ...'' in the appropriate places. It is unacceptable for students to work together but not to acknowledge each other in their write-ups.

When working on homework problems, it is perfectly reasonable to consult public literature (books, articles, etc.) for hints, techniques, and even solutions. However, you must reference any sources that contribute to your solution. Assignments and solutions from previous terms of CS111 are not considered to be part of the "public'' literature. You must refrain from looking at any solutions from previous terms of CS111 (unless, of course, we explicitly tell you it's OK to do so). It is our policy that consulting problem set solutions from previous terms constitutes a violation of the Honor Code.

Exams

1. An in-class exam on Friday, March 2.
2. An in-class exam on Friday, April 20.
3. A self-scheduled final exam during the regular exam period.

Grading Policy

All problem sets assignments are weighted equally. Assignments account for the largest percentage of the grade. If you do not do these assignments, you will not pass the course! The time needed to complete assignments depends on a variety of factors. However, you can expect to spend 10 hours or more working on each assignment.

For each assignment, one of the instructors or teaching assistants will grade the assignments for all the students in both sections. We will select at least one of the problems at random to be graded. If time permits, more than one problem may be graded. Any remaining problems will simply be checked off as completed (note, you must complete all problems on the assignment in order to be able to receive full credit). You should check your solutions to these problems for correctness using the detailed solutions that we provide for each assignment. If you have questions about the solutions, please see Sergio, Sohie or one of the teaching assistants for clarification. If you have questions about your grade on an assignment, you should first contact the person in charge of grading that particular assignment. If you have further questions about your grade, please contact Sergio or Sohie.

Often students would like to know how we assign final letter grades for the course based on the numerical average that you earn. What we usually do is: >= 93.33 is an A, >= 90.00 is an A-, >= 86.67 is a B+, >= 83.33 is a B, >= 80.00 is a B-. >= 76.67 is a C+, >= 73.33 is a C, >= 70.00 is a C-, >= 60.00 is a D and < 60.00 is an F. Note - We may certainly curve this such that you earn an A with a grade lower than a 93.33 (for example). This decision will be based on the overall performance of the class. We will never curve in the opposite direction.

Course Directory

From Fetch or Winsock-FTP, the CS111 directory can be accessed by connecting to cs111.wellesley.edu and navigating to /usr/users/cs111.

Course Folder on FirstClass

Announcements concerning the course will be posted on the CS111 home page. You should check this page regularly for important course information.

Finding Help

Simple questions can often be answered via the class folder or email. Questions of general interest (e.g. clarifying ambiguities in an assignment, wondering why posted programs don't work as expected) should be posted to the CS111 folder.

If you have a complex question or need help in understanding the material, you are encouraged to see us or a CS111 teaching assistant. The best time to see us in person is during our scheduled office hours (listed at the top of this document). If these times are not convenient, we can schedule an appointment for some other time. You can schedule an appointment in person, via phone, or via email.

Drop-in teaching assistants are available to answer your questions during certain hours. The names and schedules of the drop-in teaching assistants are given above. If you are having trouble with the course, you can request a one-on-one tutor from the Learning and Teaching Center (LTC) . This service is confidential and free of charge; please take advantage of it if you need some extra help! Contact us or LTC for more information about this service.

Finally, when looking for help, don't overlook other students --- not only those who have taken the course in the past, but your classmates as well. Get to know your classmates early in the term so that you can help each other out!

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Students with Special Needs

Mathematical Modeling Distribution