CS 1101 Aterm 06

Computer Science Department

CS 1101 A Term 2006
Introduction to Program Design

What this course is about

What drives someone to write a program? Once you have an idea for a program, what do you do next? What skills does it take to write useful programs? How does computer science interact with other disciplines? And what do computer scientists do besides programming anyway? CS 1101 introduces students to the worlds of computing and programming. Through a series of programming and information design exercises, students will learn how programmers view the world and how to turn problems into working programs. We'll study the various aspects of program design and write some fun programs along the way. This course assumes no prior programming background and is designed for both potential CS majors as well as curious students from other majors. Additional information about the course can be found in the WPI undergraduate catalog course description for CS 1101.

Course Objectives

CS 1101 is designed to help you identify problems that programs can solve and to learn how to design programs that solve problems. Program design involves a series of smaller skills, including information design, logic design, testing, and documentation. Improving your skills in these areas should help you with general problem solving even when you aren't programming.

Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, the student should be able to:

Write Scheme programs to process structs, lists, and trees
Develop data models for programming problems
Write programs to follow the structure of data models
Explain when state is needed in value-oriented programming
Develop test procedures for simple programs

Staff

Instructor: Glynis Hamel (GH)

Teaching Assistants: Amanda Jamin (AJ), Juan Li (JL), Fan Wu (FW), Zhe "Jeff" Zhou (ZZ)

Senior Assistants: Keith Craig (KC), Paul Sader (PS), Christopher Songer (CS), Bogomil Tselkov (BT)

Office Hour Schedule

(Note: TA/SA office hours are held in FL A22 (Fuller basement). Glynis Hamel's office hours are held in FL 132.)

Day/Time 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00

Monday GH CS FW FW BT AJ AJ

Tuesday GH FW FW KC

Wednesday JL JL BT BT CS KC

Thursday GH BT PS PS JL JL

Friday CS ZZ GH ZZ ZZ PS KC AJ AJ

CS 1101 Tutors

There are also tutors for CS 1101 available at the Academic Resource Center. Olga Petrova and Cosmin Tudor are the tutors for CS 1101. The tutoring schedule is available from the Academic Resource Center website.

Class Discussion Board and Email

A discussion board for CS 1101 has been set up on myWPI. You are responsible for all announcements and information posted on the myWPI site - check it on a daily basis.

If you have a question regarding your grades in the course, send email to cs1101-staff *at* cs.wpi.edu. Mail sent to this address goes to the instructor and to the TAs. Include your section number in all correspondence.

The instructor's email address is ghamel *at* cs.wpi.edu. Please restrict your use of my personal email address to issues of a confidential nature. You will get a quicker response if you post your questions to the class discussion board.

Lecture and Lab Times

Lectures meet MTRF from 9:00-9:50am (sections A01, A02, A03, A04) or 10:00-10:50am (sections A05, A06, A07, A08) in FL AUD (Perreault Lecture Hall).

Labs meet on Wednesdays according to the following schedule:

Section Time Location Lab Assistants

A01 8-8:50am AK 120d KC, CS

A02 9-9:50am AK 120d KC, CS

A03 10-10:50am AK 120d KC, CS

A04 11-11:50am AK 120d KC, CS

A05 12-12:50pm AK 120d PS, BT

A06 1-1:50pm AK 120d PS, BT

A06 2-2:50pm AK 120d PS, ZZ

A06 3-3:50pm AK 120d PS, BT

Textbook and Software

Textbook: The textbook for the course is How to Design Programs by Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, Matthew Flatt, and Shriram Krishnamurthi. MIT Press, 2001. You may use the online version or purchase a hard copy.

Software: We will use DrScheme, version 352 for all coding projects in the course. You must use DrScheme 352. No other Scheme implementation or version provides the libraries that we will use in this course. DrScheme is installed on CCC Unix and all CCC lab machines (On CCC Unix, DrScheme is at /usr/local/bin/drscheme). You can also download it to your own computer; it's free and supports the usual OS's (Unix, PC, Mac).

Grading

Exams (60%)

Three exams will be given. Exams are tentatively scheduled for Sept 11, Sept 26, and Oct 12. You must have a passing average on the exams in order to pass the course. (A passing average on the exams is usually around 60%. We may lower this threshold if the exam averages are low; the threshold will not be raised).

Exams are closed-book, closed-notes. You may bring in one sheet of notes (one paper, 8.5" x 11.5", both sides) to each exam. You may not use any computers, calculators, cellphones, headphones, or other electronic devices during the exams.

There are no makeups for exams. Absence from an exam will be excused only for medical or emergency reasons. A note from your doctor or from the Office of Academic Advising will be required. In such cases your final grade will be recorded as Incomplete and you will be allowed to take a makeup exam the next time the course is offered (C-term 07).

Homework (30%)

Twelve homework assignments will be given. Except for Homework 1, homework assignments will be done in pairs. Most homework assignments will be due on Tuesday and Friday evenings at 11:59pm. No extra credit or makeup assignments will be given. Read Homework Expectations for details on how to prepare your homeworks.

Labs and In-class Group Work (10%)

Labs will be given during conference sections on Wednesdays. To get credit for a lab you must attend at your scheduled time, sign the attendance sheet, actively work on the assignment during the lab period, and use turnin to turn in your work at the end of the lab period. Each lab will be graded as either credit (1) or no credit (0). You will not get credit for a lab unless you attend the section for which you are registered. There are no makeups for labs.

Several times during the term we will take a few minutes of class time for in-class group work. This will consist of one or two questions related to recently-covered lecture material or homework problems. Each group assignment will be graded as either credit (1) or no credit (0). There are no makeups for group assignments.

The total of your best 10 lab grades/group assignment grades will be added to your final average to account for 10% of your final grade.

Academic Honesty Policy

Please read WPI's Academic Honesty Policy.

Labs and In-class group work

Collaboration is encouraged for labs and in-class group work.

Exams

Collaboration is prohibited on exams.

Homework

Collaboration is encouraged on homework assignments. You may discuss problems across pairs, but each pair is responsible for writing up their own solution from scratch.

As examples, each of the following scenarios would constitute cheating (this list is not exhaustive!):

Two different homework pairs share a solution to a single question on a homework assignment.
Students from different homework pairs sit side-by-side while writing up their solutions and one student copies down what the other student types up.
You send the code for a completed homework question to a friend in another homework pair "just so he can look at it to figure out how to do the problem".
You obtain a solution to a homework problem (or a problem similar to a homework problem) from on-line or from someone who took the course in a previous term.

In constrast, the following scenarios would not constitute cheating:

Students from two different homework pairs discuss a pair-assignment (its goal, what it is asking you to do, what the challenging parts are, or how to approach the problem).
You ask any member of the course staff (professor, TAs, or SAs) for help in understanding or completing an individual assignment.
Students from the same homework pair share code to a solution.
Students from one homework pair show their code to a student from a different pair and ask for help in understanding why their code is wrong. (This would become cheating if the non-pair student provided or dictated a reasonable amount of the solution to the original pair).

Cheating will not be tolerated. If you are unsure whether a given activity would constitute cheating, ask the instructor. Violations of the Academic Honesty Policy can result in an NR for the course, and violators will be subject to the procedures outlined in section 5 of the WPI Judicial Policy.

Late Policy

Late assignments will not be accepted without prior consent of the instructor (the TAs are not allowed to grant extensions). Extensions will be granted only in the event of unforseen and documentable emergencies, or extenuating circumstances that you discuss with the professor well in advance. One pair member forgetting to turn in an assignment will not be considered an acceptable excuse for an extension. No extra credit or makeup homework assignments will be given.

Homework Submission Policy

Homework must be submitted using the web-based turnin program. Homework submitted by any other means (paper, CD, email, etc.) will receive a grade of zero.

Students with Disabilities

Students with disabilities who believe that they may need accomodations in this class are encouraged to contact the Disability Services Office (DSO) as soon as possible to ensure that such accomodations are implemented in a timely fashion. The DSO is located in Daniels Hall.

Schedule & Assignments

Note: the instructor reserves the right to change the order of topics or the dates of the exams, if necessary.

Acknowledgment: Many thanks to Prof. Kathi Fisler, who helped me immensely in the preparation of this course.

http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~cs1101/a06/index.html

Section	Time	Location	Lab Assistants
A01	8-8:50am	AK 120d	KC, CS
A02	9-9:50am	AK 120d	KC, CS
A03	10-10:50am	AK 120d	KC, CS
A04	11-11:50am	AK 120d	KC, CS
A05	12-12:50pm	AK 120d	PS, BT
A06	1-1:50pm	AK 120d	PS, BT
A06	2-2:50pm	AK 120d	PS, ZZ
A06	3-3:50pm	AK 120d	PS, BT

Week	Reading	Topics	Assignments	Extra Notes
Aug 24-25	HTDP Chapter 1 HTDP Chapter 2	Intro to Programming and Scheme Expressions, Images, and Functions	Homework 0 (due: Friday, Aug 25) Homework 1 (due: Sunday, Aug 27) A solution to Homework 1 Homework 2 (due: Tuesday, Aug 29)	Lecture 1 objectives Lecture 2 objectives Using Images Creating Operators
Aug 28 - Sept 1	HTDP Chapter 3 HTDP Chapter 4 HTDP Chapter 5 HTDP Chapter 6	Function Composition Conditionals Symbols and strings Structures Nested structs	Lab 1, Wed Aug 30 Homework 3 (due: Friday, Sept 1) Homework 4 (due: Wednesday, Sept 6)	Lecture 3 objectives Lecture 4 objectives Lecture 5 objectives Lecture 6 objectives Symbols and Strings Study Guide on Functions Creating helpers (pen code)
Sept 5 - 8	HTDP Chapter 7 HTDP Chapter 9	Mixed data and the Design Recipe Lists	Lab 2,Wed 9/6 Homework 5 (due: Friday, Sept 8) Homework 6 (due: Tuesday, Sept 12)	Lecture 7 objectives Lecture 8 objectives Lecture 9 objectives Exam preparation Guidelines Sample Exam 1 [pdf] Study Guide on Structures Data Definitions and Templates for Structs[pdf] Design Recipe Worksheet[pdf] Data Definition and Template for Lists[pdf] When to Think While Programming contains-milk? code from Friday's class
Sept 11 - 15	HTDP Chapter 10.1 HTDP Chapter 10.2	Exam 1, Monday, Sept 11 Producing lists Sorting Lists of Structs	Lab 3, Wed 9/13 Homework 7 (due: Friday, Sept 15) Homework 8 (due: Tuesday, Sept 19)	Lecture 10 - Exam 1 Lecture 11 objectives Lecture 12 objectives Lecture 13 objectives Set of answers to Exam 1 Data Definition and Template for List of Struct[pdf] Solutions and additional problems from Lecture 13
Sept 18 - 22	HTDP Chapter 14.1 HTDP Chapter 15.1 HTDP Chapter 15.2	Trees Hierarchies	Lab 4, Wed 9/20 Homework 9 (due: Friday, Sept 22)	Lecture 14 objectives Lecture 15 objectives Lecture 16 objectives Lecture 17 objectives Answers to Lecture 14 class problems (.scm file) Additional problems from Lecture 15 Exam preparation Guidelines Sample Exam 2 [pdf] Tree Data Definitions (.pdf) On filling in templates Solutions to Friday's lecture problems
Sept 25 - 29	HTDP Chapter 34 HTDP Chapter 35 HTDP Chapter 36 HTDP Chapter 37.1	More on hierarchies Exam 2, Tuesday, Sept 26 Introduction to set! Program design with set!	Lab 5, Wed 9/27 Homework 10 (due: Friday, Sept 29)	Lecture 18 objectives Lecture 19 - Exam 2 Lecture 20 objectives Lecture 21 objectives Problems from Monday's lecture Solutions to Exam 2 Class notes - Thursday's lecture Code for Vending machine
Oct 2 - 6	HTDP Chapter 40.3 HTDP Chapter 40.5 HTDP Chapter 41 HTDP Chapter 31	Changing struct contents More on set with structures Counting cycles Accumulating data	Homework 11 (due: Friday, Oct 6) Homework 12 (due: Tuesday, Oct 10) Lab 6, Wed 10/4	Lecture 22 objectives Lecture 23 objectives Lecture 24 objectives Lecture 25 objectives Notes from lecture 22 Code from Lecture 24
Oct 9 - 12	HTDP Chapter 11	Functions on natural numbers Wrap-up, course evaluations Exam 3, Thursday, Oct 12		Lecture 26 objectives Lecture 27 objectives Lecture 28 - Exam 3 Sample Exam 3 [pdf]

CS 1101 A Term 2006 Introduction to Program Design