Overview

• Preliminaries.
  • Admin.
  • Questions.
• The subject matter(s) of the course.
• Course evaluation.
• Final comments.

Preliminaries

Admin

• Friday's class is optional. But I'll bring cookies.
• Permission forms.
• You should have received an evaluation of your project this morning.
  • Since I was unable to evaluate your proposals in a timely fashion, I've given you all fifteen points for the proposals.
  • You can challenge my comments.
  • Having your image vary in multiple ways is not a guarantee that you have 1000 different images.
    • 10 color schemes
    • 5 shapes
    • 10 background color blends
    • 4 starting positions
    • But: Each decided with (mod n _), so repeats itself every 20.
• Grading to go: Quizzes, lots of daily writeups, extra credit. Done tonight.

Extra Credit

• Chen talk, today, 4:15 pm, BCA 152: The Role of the Creatively Maladjusted.
• Orchestra, tonight, 7:30 pm.
• Pub quiz, tonight at 9 pm, the normal stuff.
• CS Table Friday: Informal chat.
• Improv at a time to be improvised.
• Neverland study break Tuesday the 13th at 9 or something.

Questions

The subject matter(s) of the course

Scheme

• Syntax of functions (lambdas)
• Vectors and how to use them.
• How to create images in Scheme
• Check your parentheses
• Lots and lots of Scheme syntax: lets, letrec, define, lambdas, loops, conditionals, data types, ...
• Lots and lots of functions
  • Standard: list-ref, vector-ref, car, cons
  • Class-specific: image-compute

Algorithms

• "The literature"
  • Binary search
  • Sequential search
  • Insertion sort
  • Selection sort
  • Merge sort
• Components of an algorithm
  • repetion (recursion or iteration)
• Remainder turns out to be fairly useful or important.
• There are techniques for analyzing the efficiency of an algorithm (and it's a good idea to apply)
  • There can be better ways to do things
• It's helpful to draw or write things out when problem solving.

Functional Problem Solving

• Anonymous procedures
• Higher order procedures - Look for patterns and generalize.
• Sectioning

More General CS Concepts

• Recursion - A way to write algorithms and to design/describe data
• Problem solving
• Look for patterns and generalize.
• Ways to organize data
  • Vectors
  • Pairs and trees
  • Lists
  • Collections of lists and such
• Storage of data. (E.g., ASCII and Unicode.)
• CS requires other skills (e.g., creativity)
• Objects
• You don't have to be a cold-hearted humanoid robot to do CS.
• Documenting is a good idea.

General Skills

• It's helpful to draw or write things out when problem solving.
• Thinking on your feet
• It's okay to say "I'm not sure, come back to me later."
• Teamwork and how to deal with different approaches to the same issue.
• Problem solving
  • And the corresponding trouble shooting
• You can write programs to do tedious work for you
• There's more than one way to solve a problem; Even if you've solved it once, you might look for better ways.
• Techniques for generalizing, and the habit of generalizing

And Beyond

• Computers are sentient and malicious. When things go wrong, it's not usually your fault.
  • And they will crash at the least convienient time possible, so save your work. (Note: The cloud goes down, too.)
• Snark is Sam's approach to life in general.
• Time management.
  • Break up large amounts of work into smaller parts.
  • Know when to stop.
• Don't be afraid of asking for help
• To think ouside of the box, you have to understand the box first
• Spelling is not optional
• Care about each other
• "There's more to life than CS" (or any academic pursuit)
• There are lots cool things on campus both academic and non-academic; take advantage of them.

Miscellaneous

• We can write programs that create images
• How to use Gimp. (There are legal free not as usable alternatives to photoshop)
• GitHub - We can save our data in the cloud and also save a log of our work.

Course evaluation

Final comments