Overview

• Preliminaries.
  • Admin.
  • Upcoming Work.
  • Extra Credit.
  • Questions.
• The subject matter(s) of the course.
• Topics within each subject matter.
• Looking beyond the class.

Preliminaries

Admin

• Sit anywhere, but be prepared to work with the person next to you.
• If you can't be in class on Friday (e.g., two teams are traveling), please let me know and please try to fill out the evaluation form today.
  • Please hand write answers to the following two questions at the end of the form:
    • Q7: The one thing that most helped my learning was ...
    • Q8: One thing that would have helped my learning more is ...
  • Please fill out the RISC survey at https://survey.grinnell.edu/se.ashx?s=251137455F0C97CF
• Review session Thursday at 8pm. No daytime review sessions.
• I heard enough arguments that the misdeeds of a few should not cause harm to the class as a whole that I will be including grades for exam 2 in my computation of your grade in the course.

Upcoming Work

• Exam 4 and its epilogue (for those of you with extensions)
• Optional final.

Extra Credit Opportunities

Academic

• Thursday Technology Studies Extra: An Insider's Look at the Music Industry: What I Learned from my Internship on the Digital Team at an Artist Management Firm. 4:30, Science 3821.

Peer Support (Afternoon Section)

Miscellaneous

• SGA State of the College talk tonight, 8:30 p.m. in JRC 209.
• Open campus forum on ARH/Carnegie, Monday, 3:00-4:30 p.m. in Harris Concert Hall.

Other Good Things (no extra credit)

• Puppies and Pancakes on Sunday.
• If you have a mother or mother figure, please wish that person a happy mother's day on Sunday.

Questions

The subject matter(s) of the course

• Problem Solving.
• Computer Science: Algorithms and Data Structures.
• Scheme.
• Computational Image Making.
• Program and Software Design.
• General Thinking Skills.
• And Beyond.

Topics within each subject matter

Problem Solving

• Express the problem formally.
• Break problems into smaller problems.
• Use computers to do the heavy lifting.
• You can approach the same problem in multiple ways.
• Work through examples before trying to solve the general problem.

Computer Science: Algorithms and Data Structures

• The problem of sorting.
• Famous sorting routines: Selection, Insertion, Merge sort
• Six basic algorithm components.
  • Named values.
  • Sequencing.
  • Conditionals.
  • Repetition.
  • Subroutines.
  • Basic building blocks.
• Recursion - A way of thinking about repetition
• Higher-order programming: Functions as inputs to and outputs from other functions (map, compose, l-s)
• Ways to organize data: Lists, trees, vectors
• Searching and famous searching routines
• Analyze algorithms for efficiency

Scheme

• Vocabulary: A lot of different procedures
• Basic building blocks: Sam's weird irgb color model.
• Different models of procedures
  • Local vs. global
  • Anonymous vs. named
  • Anononyms with lambda, l-s, o, etc.
• Booleans and predicates
• Syntax! "Match parentheses"

Image Making

• Turtles!
• Gimp Tools
• Drawings as values (stretchable colorforms)
• image-compute: Images as functions from positions to colors
• image-set-pixel and image-get-pixel
• Different techniques are appropriate for different situations.

Program and Software Design

• Know your programming environment.
• Document! Helps other people understand what your code is supposed to do. Can make it clear who built the code. Preconditions provide a contract, making your life as programmer easier. Makes it easier to read your code later. Helps you think about the problem.
• Don't repeat identical expressions; it's inefficient
• Break things into smaller problems!
• Test!

General Thinking Skills

• Handling unexpected questions
• Cite! And general issues of academic honesty
• Ask for help!
• Incremental problem solving
• The importance of thinking about problems in different ways
• You can't get away from math
• Collaboration
• Dealing with hopelessness and worthlessness (better: "There are times to say 'more work on this isn't worth my time.'")
• Dealing with stress

And Beyond

• Care about the people around you
• Sometimes it is worth grinding it out.
• Be adaptable
• The ideal goal of a liberal arts education is to be able to bullshit compellingly and clearly about any topic
• Sometimes you need to step away from your work. "There's more to life than CS"
• Take an active role in your learning; don't rely on your professor to teach you everything
• Your classmates are awesome; celebrate what they do
• Have fun!
• Eat, bubula, eat

Looking beyond the class