Here you can find the course news, reproduced from the individual
outlines.
Friday, May 5, 2000:
- You can find the ``final'' version of code (when I receive it)
at
http://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~rebelsky/CS152/Project/Final/
- Are there questions on exam 3?
- Reminder: There was an additional question for you to think about
for today: How might we find the shortest path between two
nodes in a weighted, directed, graph?
Wednesday, May 3, 2000:
- In case you've forgotten, here's what's due for the project:
- Working, integrated, code
- A 3-5 page essay that discusses the design of your part (one per group)
- A 1 page reflective essay about what it was like to work on a big,
distributed project
- Optional: distribute 100 units of extra credit to fellow students.
:
- Mostly good presentations yesterday. I've heard some nice comments
from the faculty and students.
- However, the Grinnell ethos suggests that you should support
fellow students rather than tearing them down.
- I also have some general comments and questions.
- You are expected to have correctly working code by the end of
finals week.
- Are there questions on exam 3?
- I think I've fixed the formatting problem.
- I'm still working on the code for the first problem. It should
be ready tomorrow.
- How many people plan to hand it in on Friday?
- I'm still working on a new grading scheme.
Monday, May 1, 2000:
- Presentations today at lunch.
- Exam 3 distributed
- Due Monday
- Extra credit for those who turn it in by Friday.
- Sample code for part A not yet ready (probably by the end of today).
- We'll use today's class to work on parts of the presentation and
such.
- I may leave early to get pizza and ice.
Friday, April 28, 2000:
- Assignments:
- Exam 3 (due Friday, May 5, 2000)
Wednesday, April 26, 2000:
- Warning! Not all today's code is guaranteed to be correct.
- Please send me your stub classes and interfaces (if you have not
done so already).
- Please use interfaces whenever possible.
- Expect the exam on Friday.
- Don't forget to relay pizza prefs to Matt
Tuesday, April 25, 2000:
- Those of you looking into study abroad in the coming years might want
to check out the article on online resources at
http://chronicle.com/free/2000/04/2000042501t.htm
- New project files are available online at
http://www.math.grin.edu/~rebelsky/CS152/Project/Phase5/
- Your goal for next Monday:
- Stuff that really works (or appears to).
- 3-5 page essays on your part of the project (enough that your
colleagues could then write your part).
- Preparation for presentations.
- Some extensions (?), such as three-color Othello.
- We'll devote Friday's and Monday's classes to getting you ready.
- I need a volunteer to collect pizza orders. (Matt, Shiva?)
- The geneaology of theoritical computer science can be found at
http://sigact.acm.org/genealogy/
- A few of you asked what I'm teaching next year.
- In the fall, I'll be teaching CSC151 and CSC152.
- In the spring, I'll be teaching CSC151 and CSC362 (Compilers).
- If you want to take CSC362 in the spring, you'll need to take CSC213
in the fall.
Monday, April 24, 2000:
- I was hoping to grade assignment 5 over the weekend. Unfortunately, as
in all holiday weekends, the time evaporated.
- Are there project questions?
Friday, April 21, 2000:
- Today is the last day of prospective visits.
- HW5 is due today. That will be your last homework assignment. However,
I do expect you to continue thinking about the material in class.
- Make sure to turn in a printed copy.
- We'll spend most of today's class on the project.
- For Tuesday: Get your part of the project working (using stub classes
from the other parts).
- For the following Monday: Integrate; write a 3-5 page guide to your
part of the project; present.
- Team International has added stub classes. I hope the rest of you
will, too.
Wednesday, April 19, 2000:
Tuesday, April 18, 2000:
Monday, April 17, 2000:
- The MathLAN was down while I was prepping class, so I may not have things
as organized as I'd like.
- Because of the downtime, I did not have a chance to look over your project
components.
- Upcoming events:
- Monica Neagoy's talk tonight at 7:30 in Harris.
- Thursday night's Africana studies conference
- May 1 at lunch: Demos!
- Are there questions on
assignment 5?
- I realize last week had an unpleasant workload. This week should be better.
- HW5 is shorter than HW4
- Project work is not due until next Tuesday.
- Since preregistration is fast approaching, I've been asked to discuss
Math and CS courses that you might consider. We'll spend a few
minutes on these subjects.
- More prospies on Friday!
Tuesday, May 2, 2000:
- Assignment 4 is due today.
- I received a few messages that assignment 4 was much longer than past
assignments. Unfortunately, I didn't get those messages until today,
which makes it hard for me to do anything about it.
- You can find all the files I received for the project
in the project site
- Expect comments on your parts of the project by Monday.
- If your part of the project doesn't seem to be there, get it to
me ASAP.
- Who is responsible for game state?
- Note: Some collaboration between the rules and the AI classes
might make it quicker to compute the ``value'' of a board.
- New assignment: assignment
5.
Wednesday, April 12, 2000:
Tuesday, April 11, 2000:
- I chatted with the airplane guy yesterday and he was certainly right about
a lot of things.
- Don't forget to come see me if you had difficulty on
exam 2
- Phase 4 of the project is due today. I'll try to get you comments by
Friday.
- Are there any questions on
assignment 4?
- Check out the very strange joke at
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2795.html
Monday, April 10, 2000:
- For tomorrow, do your best to get something close to working for
your part of the project.
- I don't expect it to be perfect, but I want to see some progress.
- Let me know if you have questions.
- For Friday, finish assignment
2.
- Are there questions on that assignment?
Friday, April 7, 2000:
- I've made some changes to
assignment 4, primarily
having to do with the addition of some Java code.
- Are there questions on that assignment?
- We may have prospective students in class today. Be prepared
to answer questions.
Wednesday, April 5, 2000:
- I've rearranged the past few outlines to better match what we
actually covered.
- I encourage those of you who are second year students (Ammar,
MnMs, Mustally, Mark, Elizabeth, Katt, Hisako) to
consider declaraing a computer science major.
- No matter what major you declare, you need to work out a four-year
plan and write a short essay on your version of the liberal arts
education.
- When you write the essay, be sure to reflect on the college's
statement about liberal arts education (found on pp. 31-33 of
the catalog).
- Assignment 4 is now
ready.
Tuesday, April 4, 2000:
Monday, April 3, 2000:
- Some of the animations from the Friday before break were pretty cool.
I'll give those who worked on them a few minutes to demo.
- Exam 2 returned.
- Some notes are available.
We'll go over some of them in class.
- Anyone who got less than 80 on the exam should talk to me ASAP.
You should, however, look over the
notes on the exam first.
- Expect new assignments tomorrow.
- Those of you who are second-year students need to declare a major
by next Monday. It takes some time to declare a major, so you should
start ASAP.
- If you might be interested in declaraing a CS major, please speak
with me.
Friday, March 17, 2000:
- Exam 2 is due in both printed
and electronic form at the start of class.
Wednesday, March 15, 2000:
- The college's Usenet news service has stopped providing news. Mr. Stone
has now identified an alternative Usenet supplier, Supernews
(
http://www.supernews.com/), which has agreed to a free trial
of its Usenet service, starting now and continuing through the coming
weekend. To connect, point your news reader at corp.supernet.com
(207.126.101.100). Please let Mr. Stone know what you think.
- Friday's class will be on doing simple animations in Java. It should
be mostly lab-based.
- Are there any final questions on
Exam 2?
- I should be around from about 2-4 tomorrow if you have other
questions.
Tuesday, March 14, 2000:
- Are there questions on
exam 3?
- Phase 3 is available.
- The expectation was that your part would include all the
appropriate interfaces and stub implementations
- Over the next few days, work to make sure that your stubs
work together
Monday, March 13, 2000:
- Phase 3 of the project is
due tomorrow. Are there questions? Do you want to use some
class time for discussion?
- One group has sent me a draft of the
rules interface.
We'll walk through parts of it together.
- Are there questions on
exam 2?
- I will not be grading homework 3.
- I will, however, make sure that you turned something reasonable in.
- Some notes are
available online.
Friday, March 10, 2000:
Wednesday, March 8, 2000:
- Are there questions on
Assignment 3?
- Some of you asked about the questions from chapter 5. If you
see questions from chapter 5, you're using last semester's version
of the assignment.
- Are there questions on
Project, Phase 3?
- Reminder: I'll be gone from noon Wednesday until Sunday. I'll
be at the SIGCSE Symposium on Computer Science Education.
- Friday's class is optional. Vivek and Rachel will go over
Assignment 3
- Assignments:
- Exam 2 (due Friday, March 17, 2000)
Tuesday, March 7, 2000:
- Are there questions on
Assignment 3?
- Are there questions on
Project, Phase 3?
- Reminder: I'll be gone from noon Wednesday until Sunday. I'll
be at the SIGCSE Symposium on Computer Science Education.
Monday, March 6, 2000:
- Not to stifle your creativity, but I get a lot of email, and
when I'm looking for email from my students, I look under their names.
If possible, please set your name appropriately when you send email
to me. Thanks.
- Are there questions on
assignment 3?
- I will be out of town from Wednesday noon until late Sunday evening.
Make sure to talk to me about questions on the assignment before then.
- Vivek will have copies of an answer key to hand out on Friday.
- Assigned:
Friday, March 3, 2000:
- Please be careful about spelling. I've seen a lot of misspellings
of parameter (and a number of other words) lately.
- Today's outline is both intentionally and unintentionally sketchy.
Preparing assignment 3 took much longer than I'd expected.
- Note that I'll be distributing exam 2 next Wednesday. It will be
due just hours before spring break.
- Assigned:
- Prepare revised specifications, based on today's discussion. (Due
a week from Monday.) Formal description available this Monday.
- Assignment 3: Algorithm
design and analysis (when do you want this due: next Wednesday,
a week from Monday, or a week from Tuesday?)
Wednesday, March 1, 2000:
- Expect a homework assignment 3
tonight or tomorrow afternoon.
I'll post it to the assignments page when it's ready.
- I decided to change the way I presented today's class, so today's
outline is a somewhat sketchier than I'd like.
- Assignments:
- Go over the specifications for
discussion on Friday. Our goal will be to resolve differences.
Tuesday, February 29, 2000:
- The syllabus is quite screwed up
by the recent changes. Don't worry about due dates and readings except
as mentioned in each day's class.
- Reminders:
- Project, Phase 2 is due tomorrow. Are there questions on what you
need to get done?
- Assigned:
- Read Lab J6 for tomorrow's class.
Monday, February 28, 2000:
- Exam 1 returned. We'll spend
some time going over the exam.
- Thanks for your patience with me away. The news is basically good:
my mother does not have cancer. However, she's still having trouble
breathing and is still in the Respiratory ICU.
- I received over 200 email messages while I was away, so it will take
some time to get to any email you sent.
- I printed some handouts before I left. Unfortunately, the service
bureau left them in my office rather than in the department office,
so I assume you never got them. You'll get them today.
- Because of my absence, I need to revise the
syllabus somewhat.
Expect changes over the next few days.
- What did you think about the film?
- What did you learn last week?
- Assignments:
Sam was gone for week five, so there is no news.
Wednesday, February 16, 2000:
- Cool upcoming events:
- Convocation Thursday: Richard Guy on ``Mathematics 4000 Years Ago''
- CS Brown Bag Lunch Thursday: Growing a Language
- Math/CS Journal Club Thursday: Fun at IBM
- Project Teams are due today.
- Please don't just use a letter for your desired component. I have
no idea what letters we used yesterday.
- Assignment 2 returned.
- Some Preliminary notes
are available.
- We'll spend some time going over those in class.
- I've written "makeup" on a few assignments because you seem
to have misunderstood the assignment.
- I don't seem to have assignments from all of you. If you didn't
get an assignment back, please speak to me. (It's as likely my
problem as yours.)
- I'll make some updates to the sample solution late this
afternoon.
- Are there any final questions on the
exam?
- I should be in my office much of tomorrow if you find that you
have other questions.
- No reading for Friday!
Tuesday, February 15, 2000:
- This Thursday's convocation is Mathematics 4,000 Years Ago
and will be given by Noyce Visiting Professor Richard Guy. I expect
that it will be a lot of fun.
- On Thursday afternoon, Pete Broadwell will be giving a talk about his
internship at IBM. I also expect that this talk will be a lot of fun.
- A few of you have asked about my grading policies on exams. They are not
the same as for homeworks. On exams, you start with 100 and I take off
for incorrect parts of your answers. (I also give a few points of extra
credit here and there when I see something particularly nice.)
- Even though I worked until 11 p.m. last night, I was not able to get your
homeworks graded. I hope to return them tomorrow morning.
- Don't forget to turn in project teams tomorrow.
- I'd appreciate it if you'd indicate the amount of time you spend on each
problem (or subproblem) of the exam.
- Are there other questions on exam 1?
Monday, February 14, 2000:
- I've rearranged the schedule for this week slightly.
- The version of ``When Things Go Wrong'' that I was thinking of
is by Robin Lane and the Chartbusters, a great Boston band of the
late 70's/early 80's (Ms. Lane still records as a solo artist).
The single was in the
Village Voice top singles list of 1979. It also made it to
87 on the Billboard charts.
- Are there questions on exam 1?
- I've updated
Fraction.java
so that it contains a toString method.
- I tried to bring in my copy of Othello, but it seems to have
disappeared. The local WalMart doesn't carry it. I'll keep
trying.
- Assignments:
- Read Lab G2 for Tuesday.
- Decide on your project team (3 or 4 people per team) for Wednesday.
- You should also indicate which subprojects you'd prefer to work
on. (I'll decide who works on what subproject, but I will pay
some attention to your preferences.)
- To encourage you to work with different students, I will require
that homework groups not overlap project groups. That is, if you
work with someone on the project, you can't work with him or her
on group homework assignments.
Friday, February 11, 2000:
- Today's class will mostly involve discussion/recitation rather than
laboratory work.
- Assignments:
- Exam 1 (due Friday, February 18, 2000)
Wednesday, February 9, 2000:
- CS152 at a glance lists a homework as
being due this Friday (or did until today). No homework will be due this
Friday (or even next week).
- I should be distributing the first exam this Friday. It will be due the
following Friday.
- In case I hadn't made it clear, I expect to post some of your work to the
World Wide Web. If you have difficulties with this policy, please let me
know as soon as possible.
- Read lab X3 for Friday.
Tuesday, February 8, 2000:
- As some of you have noted, I don't always repond to email promptly.
My reading time is often limited (I believe I had about fifteen
minutes to read email yesterday). Hence, I try to prioritize.
When an assignment is due, messages that seem to have a title that
suggests that the assignment is being submitted get left to the
end. To get help, give your message a title like "HELP!" (but
also include what you want help on).
- I did not receive email on games from:
Ammar Bandukwala, Matt Charnetski, Shiva Kabra, and
Hisako Watanabe. They should send those stories as soon as possible.
- Assignments:
Monday, February 7, 2000:
- Are there any final questions on
Homework 2?
- My time was limited this weekend, so today's outline is sketchier than
normal. I apologize for the deficiency.
- Returned:
- Assignment 1: Lab J2
(I only graded the first three parts; some notes will be available tomorrow)
- Assigned:
Friday, February 4, 2000:
- Are there questions on
assignment 2?
- Assigned:
- Read labs O2 and O3.
- Phase 1 of the project:
Short narratives (Due Monday)
Wednesday, February 2, 2000:
- On Friday, we'll discuss object-oriented design, possibly using
potential class projects as our problem to model. Think a little
about what objects naturally form part of your project.
- I expect to have your assignments read over by Friday.
- Assigned:
- Assignment 2: Design and
Implement a Student Information Class. (Bring questions on Friday.)
- Read Lab O1 for Friday.
Tuesday, February 1, 2000:
- Are there questions on Lab J2?
- Reminder: Please buy the lab manual. My publisher says that I can
only keep stuff available online if students buy the lab manual.
- We'll spend both today and tomorrow on
Lab J3
- It's worth a few minutes at the start of class to discuss potential
projects.
Monday, January 31, 2000:
- When a link doesn't work on the course Web, please drop me a link.
Some are generated automatically, and the program that generates
them doesn't always work correctly.
- The exotic programming languages study group has just started.
This semester, they're studying, Python, a ``hot'' Web language.
Talk to Mr. Stone about details.
- Don't forget today's CS brown bag lunch.
- I won't be there because I need to prepare my afternoon classes.
- I've made minor changes to the syllabus for this week.
- I managed to injure my foot over the weekend, and should be
hobbling around for the rest of the week.
- I may be behind in class prep.
- Assigned:
- Read Lab J3
- HW1 is still due tomorrow.
Friday, January 28, 2000:
- Monday at noon in Science 2413, the Computer Science Bag Lunch
Film festival will resume with ``The Future of Computing: Seizing
the Future We Want''. You may find it interesting to attend.
- Workload check: How much time did it take to complete lab J1?
- Assigned:
- Assignment 1:
Complete and turn in lab J2
(due Tuesday). [The due date is incorrect in the ``At a Glance''
handout you received.]
- Start reading Lab J3
Wednesday, January 26, 2000:
- Some more responses
to the introductory survey are
now available.
- Final reminder: I'm holding a meeting on
summer opportunities in computer science at noon on Thursday in
Science 2424 (down the hall). There is a good chance that I will
take at least one first year student from this class (assuming,
of course, that some of you apply and indicate an interest in
majoring in computer science).
- Assigned:
Tuesday, January 25, 2000:
- Not all of you seem to have filled in the
introductory survey. Please
do so as soon as possible.
- Initial responses
are now available.
- No, I am not really a mean grader. I just have high
standards. One of my standards is that ``correct is
satistfactory and satisfactory deserves a B''. Students still
find ways to get As in my classes. (Last semester, only one student
earned a C in CS152 and no one earned below a C. Soemthing like 9
students earned A's or A-'s.)
- Yes, it will be a lot of work. Let me know when it gets overwhelming.
- If you feel you've missed something, let me know. Someone else has
probably missed it too, and I'd be happy to go back and go over it.
- I forgot to mention yesterday that I'm holding a meeting on
summer opportunities in computer science at noon on Thursday in
Science 2424 (down the hall). There is a good chance that I will
take at least one first year student from this class (assuming,
of course, that some of you apply and indicate an interest in
majoring in computer science).
- Assignments:
Monday, January 24, 2000:
- Assignments:
- Make sure to complete the
Introductory survey
for Tuesday's class! (A few students always seem to miss this.)
- At noon on Thursday, January 27 in Science 2424 I'll be giving a presentation
on summer opportunities in computing and computer science. Some
opportunities are available for non-majors, and there's a chance
that I'll take a first-year student for my research team, so
feel free to come.
- Last-minute update (after the packet was printed): My co-authors and I have
decided to rearrange Java Plus Data Structures. There will no
longer be a Chapter 3 on Object-Oriented Programming. The various list
chapters may also be combined into one.
- Another last-minute update: The dates on the long syllabus may be
incorrect. (My date generation program thought it was last year.)