CS110 Introduction to Computer Science

Bryn Mawr College
CS 110: Introduction to Computer Science
Fall 2004
Course Materials

Information

Texts

Important Dates

Assignments

Lectures

Grading

Links

General Information

Instructor: Geoffrey Towell , 246C Park Hall, 526-6503
E-Mail: gtowell at cs dot brynmawr dot edu
WWW: http://cs.brynmawr.edu/~gtowell

Lecture Hours: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 2:30 pm to 4:00 pm
Room: Park 243

Lab

Policy:

For the month of September you must attend one of my lab hours each week. After September I will be in the lab during these hours, but attendance is not required. In addition to me, there will be student assistants in the lab for about 16 hours each week. If you have problems or questions, they are in the lab to help you. If your academic schedule precludes attending any of my lab hours, please come to my office and we will try to work something out.

Lab Hours:

Monday 1:00 - 2:00 PM, Thursdays, 1:00 - 2:00PM, Tuesday 4:15-5:15

Lab Room:

PC Lab Room 231 (Science Building)

Availability:

The lab is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. During my hours, it is reserved for CS 110. There are times that the lab is reserved for other classes. To my knowledge, these times are:

Monday	7-9pm
Tuesday	11:30am - 1:00pm

During these times some computers may be available. Quiet work at available computers is allowed. However, instructors may make presentations in the lab at these times.

Laboratory Assistants:

Day	Time	Assistant name
Monday	10am - noon	Sara
Monday	2-4pm	Bumika
Tuesday	7:30-9:30 pm	Ioana
Wednesday	10am-noon	Sara
	2-4pm	Ioana
	8-10pm	Julia
Thursday	noon-1pm	Bumika
Friday	noon-1pm	Bumika
Saturday
Sunday	noon-2pm	Julia

Texts & Software

Textbooks:		Java for Students by Douglas Bell and Mike Parr, third edition 2002 (or later) from Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-032377-2.
		Turing (A Novel About Computation) by Christos H. Papadimitriou from The MIT Press. ISBN: 0262162180
		Getting Wired With Java: A Laboratory Manual for Introduction to Computer Science, by Deepak Kumar and Associates, Bryn Mawr College, Spring 2004. On-line.
Software:		We will be using the Java programming language for all laboratory exercises. The labs will use the Java SDK installed on the Computer Science Linux cluster in Room 231.

Important Dates

August 31: First lecture
October 7: Midterm Here are some sample questions.
December 9: Last lecture
Final: TBA

Assignments

Homework 0
Homework 1 assigned. Due 9/20 at Noon!
Click here to see my solution and the way in which this assignment was graded
Homework 2 assigned. Due 9/28! Here is my solution.
Homework 3 assigned. Due 10/5! Here is my solution.
Homework 4 assigned. Due 10/26! Here is my solution.
Homework 5 assigned. Here is my solution.
Homework 6 assigned. here is my solution.
Homework 7 assigned. Due Nov 16. here is my solution. Feel free to copy this for doing homework 8.
Homework 8 assigned. Due Nov 23. The assignment here is slightly different that I described in class. Here is my solution.
Homework 9 assigned. Due December 2. Here is my solution.
Homework 10 assigned. Due December 9. Here is my solution.

Getting Printouts of Assignments

Applets

For the assignments, when I ask for printed examples, the only option you have had is to print one example per page. This seems wasteful. So, instead do the following:

Make a copy of this html file. (I.e., go to this page then File menu, "Save Page as ...". I assume below that you saved it under the name printer.html
Start your applet by putting the command
appletviewer T.html &
into a terminal window. (I assume that T.html is the name of the html file contiing your applet.)
Get the applet looking line you want it for the first example.
Enter into the terminal window the command
import sample1.jpg
Enter exactly this command
click on the applet as per the norm when using display.
For additional images, use the names sample2.jpg, smaple3.jpg, sample4.jpg, ... up to sample6.jpg
In a browser, open the page printer.html
Print the html page.

Code

The printouts of code that result from hitting the print button in XEmacs are really ugly. So do not use the print button instead do the following:

In a terminal window, in the html directory, enter the following command:
enscript -2 -G -r -Ejava MyClass.java
where the name of MyClass.java is the name of the file that you want to print.

Grades on Assignments

Click here to see stats about homework grading

Lab Work

Week starting September 6	Here
Week starting September 13	Here
Week starting September 20	Here
Week starting September 27	Here
Week starting October 18	Here

Planned Syllabus

Week Topic

1 Introduction: Linux, emacs, HTML, Appendix C, GWJL Ch 0, 1, 2

2 Intro to Java; Discuss Ch. 1 & 2; Homework 0

3 Discuss Ch. 3, 4; Project 1

4 Discuss Ch. 5, 6; Project 2

5 Ch. 7, 8 Textbook; Project 3

6 Review, Midterm Exam

7 FALL BREAK!

8 review exam, discuss Ch. 9, 11, project 5

9 Discuss Objects and arrays, Discuss chapter 13, project 6

10 Two dimension arrays, Discuss ch 14, project 7

11 Discuss Ch 17, GWJL ch 3-10, Project 8

12 Discuss Turing, What is computer science?, Daleks, Project 9

13 More discussion of Turing, What is computer science? Daleks, Project 9 due

14 ch 10, 12, 15, 16; Project 10

15 Review, Project 11 (the full game of Daleks)

Week	Topic
1	Introduction: Linux, emacs, HTML, Appendix C, GWJL Ch 0, 1, 2
2	Intro to Java; Discuss Ch. 1 & 2; Homework 0
3	Discuss Ch. 3, 4; Project 1
4	Discuss Ch. 5, 6; Project 2
5	Ch. 7, 8 Textbook; Project 3
6	Review, Midterm Exam
7	FALL BREAK!
8	review exam, discuss Ch. 9, 11, project 5
9	Discuss Objects and arrays, Discuss chapter 13, project 6
10 Two dimension arrays, Discuss ch 14, project 7
11	Discuss Ch 17, GWJL ch 3-10, Project 8
12	Discuss Turing, What is computer science?, Daleks, Project 9
13	More discussion of Turing, What is computer science? Daleks, Project 9 due
14	ch 10, 12, 15, 16; Project 10
15	Review, Project 11 (the full game of Daleks)

Lectures

Week 1 (August 31, September 2)
August 31: Introduction and general discussion of computers
September 2: Homework 0, HTML, the web, Bell Appendix C
Week 2 (September 7, 9)
September 7: A first applet click here to see

September 9: A pie chart Applet Click here to see
Topics from chapters 3, 4, and 5 of Bell.
Homework 1 assigned. Due 9/20 at noon!
Week 3 (September 14, 16)
September 14: Reworking of the pie chart applet
September 16: An applet that draws a Mondrian print
Week 4 (September 21, 23)
September 21: widgets and events in Chapter 6 of Bell. Here is a cleaned up verion of the applet we wrote in class
September 23: Review of widgets and events from chaper 6 of Bell and Parr. Introduction of writing brand new methods and 'private' instead of 'public. The Twilight Zone Hallway applet
Week 5 (September 28, 30)
September 28: Chapters 7 and 8 from Bell and Parr. Including: boolean variables, if-then-else statements, iterative constructs (while, for, and do-while)
September 30: Introduced the TextField and Button widgets. Wrote an example program using both of these widgets, for loops, while loops, if statements and boolean variables.
Week 6 (October 5, 7)
October 5: See my notes from the review session
October 7: Exam 1 is today.
Week 7 (October 12, 14)
No classes, Fall Break!!
Week 8 (October 19, 21)
October 19: Two programs showing examples of the use of for loops. Do not read chapters 9 and 11 of textbook.
October 21: Review Midterm. Click here to see the entire midterm with answers. Click here to see distribution of scores on the midterm. Also, a short program showing the use of Polar coordinates, translating Polar to Cartesian coordiantes and for loops with non-standard increments.
Week 9 (October 26, 28)
October 26: Introduce arrays. Rework the Pie chart of September 9, but this time using arrays.
October 28: Examples of the use of arrays, including a little calendar application and a reworking of the MoveHome applet. Introduce the "switch" statement as an easy way to have an "if" statement with lots of possible values. Also, in some cases switch is more natural than using an array. Rework the calendar using switch.
Week 10 (November 2, 4)
November 2: Introduce 2-d arrays and keyboard listeners (Note keyboard listeners are not discussed in the text). Worked on a grid-walking applet that showed the use of both 2-d arrays and keyboard listeners.
November 4: Working with 2-d arrays. Adapted the grid-walker to play a "seeds" game which follows closely on Conway's "game of life". Click here to see the applet.
Week 11 (November 9, 11)
November 9: Work though several examples of calculating "who are the people in your neighborhood". Here is the applet.
November 11: More work with arrays. An applet that counts keystrokes.
Week 12 (November 16, 18)
November 16: Discussion of paradoxes and what computers can and canot do taken from "Turing" pages 1-130.
November 18: An applet calculating probabilities from the filling boxes homework and a reworking of the keystroke counter to move the most typed key to the first position in the array.
Week 13 (November 23, 25)
November 23: The calculator applet. This applet introduces topics including exception handling, dealing with user input, and manipulating strings.
November 25: No class. Happy Thanksgiving!!
Week 14 (November 30, December 2)
November 30: Discuss the second half of Turing This discussion included touching topics about what computers can do -- including: Cryptography (https), NP-complete probelms, resource allocation problems, Chaos theory, and Data Mining.
December 2: The last in-class applet with anything new. This applet shows more about manipulating strings and introduces the idea of creating more complex GUIs (Graphical User Interfaces) by putting widgets into Panels wich can have different layout rules than the applets and which can themeselves be added to the applet.

September 9:	A pie chart Applet Click here to see
Topics from chapters 3, 4, and 5 of Bell.
Homework 1 assigned. Due 9/20 at noon!

Week 15 (December 7, 9)
December 7: Review Session 1. December 9: Review Session 2. Click here for lecture notes from the review sessions.

Grading

All graded work will receive a score out of 100. Guidelines of letter grades corresponding to lab/exam score levels will be given during the semester. At the end of the semester, a total score (to which the corresponding final grade is assigned) will be calculated from a weighted average of all scores according to the following weights:

	Midterm	16%
	Final:	24%
	Labs:	54%
	Classroom Participation:	6%
	Total:	100%