CS1631 - Fall 2008

Instructors:
Prof. M. Donyaee, Dunn 223, Office hours: Monday and Wednesday 1:30-2:30pm
Prof. R. Rosebrugh, Dunn 203, Office hours: Monday, Friday 2:30-3:30
Lab Instructor: Mr. Robert Allen, Dunn 103

General Information

The course prerequisite is a university preparatory level course in Mathematics. If in doubt, ask an Instructor.

Section A meets MWF at 9:30 in Dunn 108; Section B meets MWF at 10:30 in Dunn 108; the text-book is Invitation to Computer Science, Third Edition: Java Version, by G. Schneider and Judith Gersting, and we will also be using the Lab Manual. At the rate of about one chapter per week, we will cover approximately Chapters 1 to 6 (mostly before the Midterm Test), Chapter 8 and parts of other chapters. There will be assigned three hour labs held in the Computer Laboratory in Dunn 102. Labs start the week of September 15. There will be homework assigned from the text from which the quiz problems will be drawn.
An in-class Mid-term Test will be held on October 20.

For official detail see the Department Web Page.

Laboratories

Instructor:
Mr. Robert Allen, Dunn 103
Office hours: Monday-Thursday 10:00-11:00 and Tuesday 2:00-3:00

Laboratory attendance is mandatory. As noted above, you must complete 7 of the 8 labs to pass the course (unless excused).
Please contact Robert Allen rallen@mta.ca concerning lab absences.

The Lab Test will be held during labs between Nov. 24 and Nov. 27.

Course Ethics

You are expected to be familiar with and you must follow the Computing Services Department Policies . Note especially items 4, 5, 10 and 12.

By its nature, much of the work in Computer Science is done in collaborations. Indeed, in later courses in the subject students are often assigned to work on projects in small groups. Thus, it is important that students in CS1631 have a clear idea of what is appropriate collaboration and what is cheating.

You are encouraged to discuss any CS1631 topic, including lab assignments, with other students in the course but exchange of any code by any written or electronic means between CS1631 students is not acceptable. It is dishonest either to read someone else's solution or to provide a classmate with a copy of your work.

Penalties for cheating are severe and may result in a failing grade for the course. See Calendar Regulation 6.13.

Do not expect that small changes will avoid detection. If you cannot do the work yourself, it is extremely unlikely that you will succeed in disguising someone else's work.

Grades

Note: In order to pass the course: The final grade in the course will normally be assigned with approximately the following weighting:

Useful Links

A recent article in the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery about Computer Science as a discipline is
here, also in PDF .
Another article on the same topic is here.

Homework

Remember that quiz questions will be selected from these homework problems. Any question below may be on a quiz September 23 or later.

Chapter 1
Exercises: 3,4,7,8,13

Chapter 2:
Practice Problems: p45 3,5; p54 2,4; p66 2,3; p73 2,3 (answers at back of text).
Exercises: 1,3,7,8,14,19,23

Chapter 3:
Practice Problems: p84 3; p94 1; p105 2,4; p111 1,2; p113 1; p117 1,2 (answers at back of text)
Exercises: 2,5,7,10,11,14,20,25,28,31

Chapter 4:
Practice Problems: p.142 #1,2,4; p.150 #2; p.159 #1,3; p.169 #2,3; p.178 #1 (answers at back of text)
Exercises: 1, 7, 10, 15, 16, 17

Chapter 5:
Practice Problems: p.201 #1,2,4; p.207 #1,2,3; p.215 #1-5 (answers at back of text)
Exercises: 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16
(Note that most of the Exercises for this chapter are suitable for quiz problems.)

Chapter 6:
Practice Problems: p.252 #1,2,3; p.256 #1,3; p.261 #1-3 (answers at back of text)
Exercises: 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 15, 21
Three Important Homework Notes:

  1. If you wish to pass the course, it will not be enough to do only the listed problems.
  2. You should do all of the Practice Problems while you are reading the text. Read all of the exercises at the end of each chapter. Be sure to complete several of them.
  3. If you have questions about homework problems (or others) in the text-book be sure to ask about them in class.

Last updated: October 6, 2008.