EBoard 03: Image and program decomposition

This class will be recorded! Its use is limited to members of the class. Please do not share with others.

Approximate overview

• Administrative stuff [~10 min]
• Q&A [~10 min]
• Quiz [~5 min]
• Reflection [~10 min]
• Lab [~50 min]
• Debrief [no time]

Administrative stuff

Notes and News

• Good morning! I hope you had a good weekend.
• The recordings are showing up in Teams.
  • I say “uh” and “um” a lot. I’ll try to get better.
  • Let me know if you have trouble accessing a recording. (Some folks said they could not access the first two recordings.)
  • I’ll run another Otter.ai transcript today. After that, I’ll only run transcripts if someone contacts me and asks me to do so.
• Evening tutoring will be available 3-5 p.m. Sundays and 8-10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays in the tutoring channel on the CS team. (I believe I’ve now added all of your to the CS team.)
  • They want to work. Give them work to do.
• Yes, we probably have class tomorrow and Wednesday. See the Notes and News from Friday’s class for details on how we are addressing the U.S. election in this class.
• Conversations that make Sam happy.
  • “Sam, I was going to ask you a question about the reading questions, but I talked to two classmates about it and now I get it.”
  • “Great. I hope you acknowledged them when submitting your response.”
  • “Of course.”

Notes on Teams

• When you start a new thread (e.g., in the Q&A), I’d like to see you title it.
• If you want to reach the course staff in Teams, use @staff. (No backticks.)
• When you want to reach the students (and staaff), use @students.

Upcoming activities

I will post details to the Announcements channel.

You can respond to recordings for the tokens, provided you do so within one week of the event. I would, however, prefer that you attend “live”.

• Noon, Monday: Community building in classes. (+1 token)
• Noon, Monday: Radical Inclusivity + Leadership = Radical Change (+1 token)
  • May require pre-registration
• Noon, Thursday: Convocation! (+1 token)
  • You’ll get my lecture about Convocation on Wednesday.
• 5pm, Thursday: Learn about the CS major (+1 token)

Upcoming work

I’ll try to include this list of upcoming work each day.

• Reading writeup for today (due 8:00 a.m. this morning; a few minutes ago!)
• Lab writeup for today (due Tuesday 8 a.m. on Gradescope; ideally before the end of class today)
• Readings for Tuesday (responses to questions due Tuesday 8 a.m. on Gradescope)
  • Procedures (aka writing your own subroutines)
  • Mental models of computation
• Mini-project 1 (due Wednesday at 10:30 p.m. CST)
• We will have a short (5 min) quiz today.
  • It will only cover material from Friday’s class.
  • You can use your own notes.
  • You can use the course Web site.
  • You can use DrRacket to check your answer.
  • You can ask questions in advance.
  • You may not use other people.
  • You may not discuss it in the Discord server.

Attendance

• Our wonderful mentors will take attendance by looking at the the list of also-wonderful people here.

Notes from Friday’s reading assignment

• You should have received this back on Sunday. Although I’ll often have graders respond to the reading assignments, I graded this one.
• When I grade, I try to do “blind grading” (not paying attention to whose assignment I am grading). When you explicitly put your name in your answers, that makes it much more difficult. (It’s fine to include them in labs; please don’t do so in quizzes.)
• About half of you decided that (- 1 (/ 1 2)) is -1/2. But that should be “one minus one/half”, which is traditionally positive 1/2.
  • You’ll get used to the notation.
• There was some confusion on the point of #3c. 3 - 4 * 5 - 6.
  • PEMDAS and left-to-right evaluation tell us that we should mulitply 4*5, then subtract from 3, then subtract 6.
  • If we didn’t have PEMDAS, we might say “Subtract 4 from 3, then multiply by 5, then subtract 6.”
  • We might also say “Subtract 6 from 5, multiply that by 4, then subtract from 3.”
  • And, in an ASMD world, we might subtract 4 from 3, subtract 6
    from 5, and then multiply the two of those together.

Notes on syllabus

What should you do to prepare for each class meeting?

Do the readings. Make a list of any questions you may have. Do the double-dagger problems and submit on Gradescope. Check on other work due. Review what you did in the previous class. Make sure that you finish the prior lab. Have note-taking materials ready. Have DrRacket up and running. Be prepared to participate. Chill.

Give at least three ways you can figure out what work you have due for an upcoming class.

Check the course schedule.

Check the last eboard.

Check your notes.

Ask a classmate.

Ask on Teams or Discord. I’m told that the Discord server even has a channel for upcoming assignments. (I’m happy for you to choose to use Discord; please cite any assistance you share on Discord; due dates do not count as assistance.)

Check on Gradescope. However, Gradescope won’t list readings.

Ask one of the course staff directly.

When can you work with other students in the course and when should you avoid working with other students?

You can work with others in most studying, in reviewing readings, and on labs.

You can consult other students on mini-projects.

You should not work with other students on quizzes or learning assessments.

It’s always good to check the policies of a particular assignment.

How can you get help from SamR?

Ask questions during class. Preferred. You’re likely not the only one with a question.

Ask on Teams. Preferred. At any point; just don’t always expect a quick response.

Ask via email.

Set up a meeting. Not only during office hours.

Text him. Only during reasonable hours (7am-10pm Grinnell time).

Call him. Only during reasonable hours.

Sam will not join your Discord server.

Who else can you rely on for help in this course?

Class mentors.

Evening tutors.

Classmates (in many situations).

Individual tutors.

Random CS majors.

Other CS faculty.

Strangers on the Interweb bearing candy. (or maybe not)

Suppose you get everything correct on a mini-project?. What grade will you likely receive?

This one represented the most confusion.

M Everything correct meets expectations.

An E goes beyond just correctness. It shows particular attention to detail, style, and creativity.

Q&A

Can we revise mini-projects?

Yes.

Wihen are the revisions due?

When the next mini-project is due. Sam will add to schedule.

Can you show something that is correct but not excellent.

Correct/M: + is a procedure that takes two numbers as input and adds them up.

Excellent/M: + is a procedure that takes zero or more numbers as input and adds them up. If you give + zero inputs, it will return zero. If at least one of the numbers is complex, the result will be complex, unless the imaginary part is 0.

Note: Most of the time in Racket, you use a procedure with (proc input input input).

Tell us about the late submission policy.

It changed this semester and I was not uniform in fixing things.

Late assignments: Cost you one token per day. Sometimes Sam will only allow one day late.

No tokens needed for first few assignments.

If you have no tokens … no late assignment.

Will there be a prize for the person with the most tokens left at the end of othe term?

Probably.

Should we just do a brain dump on our mini-projects for the chance of extra credit or an E?

No. You may dump incorrect material, too.

How do I fix my DrRacket?

Ask a mentor or Sam during lab time.

Can you demo the smiley face?

Sure! I’ve started.

Why are you editing raw markdown?

I like raw markdown.

Do we have to read raw markdown?

It seems pretty clear. Let me know if you can’t read what I type.

Can we show you works-in-progress on the project, particularly on the second part?

Start with the final work, but can include a section of your work in progress to show off things you’ve done.

Quiz

Bring up readings in your browser.

Open DrRacket so you’re ready.

Five minutes (more or less).

Debrief

We’re going to skip this part so you have enough time for lab.

We will debrief in small groups. If not everyone joins immediately, start with the folks who are present in your small group.

What did you learn in Friday’s lab?

Alternately, what should you remember from Friday’s lab?

How did you make the smile for the reading assignment?

Note: You were not asked to submit the smile.

What did you take as the key points from today’s readings?

Lab

New pairs! Let’s hope Sam can get the code to run.

1. Sam (well, Sam using a computer program he wrote) assigns groups.

2. First person in the group goes to the Lab Sessions channel, clicks the camera (or something equivalent) and then “Meet Now”

3. Add a subject. “Group # (Names)”, such as “Group 1 (SamR & JohnG)”

4. Click “Meet Now”.

5. Invite the other members of the group.

6. Other members of the group join. (Today, you can start discussions once you have two in the group. Generally, you’ll wait until everyone is there.)

7. Discuss/work/whatever.

There are four problems. You should submit at least the first three by the end of class. Sam will warn you when there are ten minutes left in class so that you can decide whether to submit the first three problems or try to do all four together.

Debrief

We won’t have time, but I like to leave the potential there.