COMP1711 Triple M rocks Higher Comp 1A 2004 Session 1

School of Computer Science and Engineering The University of New South Wales Sydney Australia

Subject Information

version 1.01

This document is available on the web as http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1711/info.html.
These will be updated from time to time, check regularly for the latest version.

Contents

This subject consists of two strands: programming and general computer-science literacy.

The programming strand is further divided into two parts. For the first half of the subject we cover small scale programming, in the second half we cover programming in the large.

In the literacy strand we will cover Unix, and some topics drawn from: computing history, algorithms, WWW programming, ethics and law, cryptography and security, and other topics of general interest.

The two strands will be covered in an intermingled fashion.

A detailed list of topics is available in the subject schedule. This is likely to change somewhat from year to year to keep the coverage interesting and up-to-date. Computing is a rapidly evolving discipline.

My intention is make this a highly enjoyable subject. Computing is a great deal of fun with puzzles, cunning, craftsmanship, and a never ending supply of great stories. However it will not be an easy subject - I'll expect you to master the underlying theory *and* to be able to apply it to real world situations. That's a lot to learn. Furthermore you may find that my teaching style does not suit you. You should consider these factors carefully before deciding to take this subject rather than Comp 1011 (I've provided more information to help you assess these factors - follow this link).

[back to top]

We don't assume you know anything about computing.

Well, I guess we assume you know how to use a mouse and type on a keyboard but that is about it. In particular we don't assume you already know how to program. Many 1711 students will already know some programming and many will know nothing about programming. We'll teach assuming you are in the later category. If you happen to be in the former category you may find the first few weeks a bit easier than the rest of the subject - or you may not.

I'll assume you know a bit of maths, or are willing to learn.

[back to top]

After completing this subject, you should be able to:

• Design solutions for simple problems.
• Design solutions for larger problems using abstraction and interfaces
• Distinguish between well-written programs and poorly written programs.
• Write programs using good programming style.
• Test and debug programs.
• Work in a team to design and implement software.
• Use the Unix environment.
• Program in a declarative language.

[back to top]

Important notices related to this course will be displayed on the subject home page (http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1711/) from time to time. It is your responsibility to check this page regularly. In particular you should check it before each lecture, each tutorial, and frequently during the period between assignments being released and being due.

Sometimes urgent information may also be sent to you by email. Make sure you pay careful attention to any email you receive.

All official email will be sent to your cse email address. If you prefer to read your mail at some other address you can redirect your mail using mlalias. Ask your tutor if you need help doing this.

Additional information will be provided in the subject Forum/FAQ and elsewhere on the 1711 site as the session progresses.

You should explore the subject web site, read the stopPress and the forums, and check this page regularly for updates.

[back to top]

[back to top]

Ask your tutor in the first instance. They are your point of contact with the subject, and are there to help you.

Admin: If your tutor can't help you with an admin matter contact Mei Cheng (email cs1711@cse.unsw.edu.au, or meet her face to face at an admin consult). Admin matters include requests for extensions and special consideration.

Teaching: If you need additional help with the subject material attend a teaching consult, ask on the subject forum, or ask Richard after a lecture.

To contact Richard: use the subject forum. Please do not email Richard (or Mei Cheng) at their personal email address, such mail gets deleted automatically. Richard, the tutors, and your fellow students, all monitor the forum regularly and questions there usually get a prompt response. Richard will also stay back after lectures to answer questions.

For urgent issues: email cs1711@cse.unsw.edu.au and Mei Cheng will deal with it or pass it on to Richard as appropriate.

If wish to contact cs1711 by email you must:

1. Send your mail from your cse account (not from yahoo or bigpond or ...),
2. Include your student id and your full name, and
3. Give a descriptive and meaningful subject title to your mail.

   Here are some examples of good titles:

      problem submitting ass1
      need to change tutorial from wed15->thu15
      week 10 lecture notes not accessible
   

   and here are some bad titles:

      URGENT!
      question
      comp1711
   

[back to top]

Day	Time	Place	Notes
Wednesday	11-12	EELG1	Optional Lecture*
Wednesday	1-2	EELG1	Lecture #1
Thursday	11-12	EELG1	Lecture #2
Thursday	1-2	EELG1	Lecture #3

^*The optional lecture is just for fun. On non examinable topics or assignment help. It will not run every week. Details announced in lectures

In this subject the purpose of lectures is to introduce you to the concepts covered, to show where they fit in the overall scheme of things, and to provide motivating examples to help you understand them. You will need to do additional work outside of lecture time to master the subject.

Lecture notes as published on the web will only be in point form and will not contain much detail. They provide a framework for your note taking. As they only provide a sketchy outline of the material we cover, they are not a replacement for attending lectures or for making your own notes. You need to attend lectures and make your own detailed lecture notes to do this subject effectively.

I want those last points to be very clear. You will need to attend lectures, take notes, and do additional study in order to master this subject. You will NOT be able to skip lectures and print out the lecture slides during stuvac and be able to pass the subject.

Sometimes I'll amend the notes on the web *after* the lecture to clarify or elaborate something that I feel wasn't explained well in the lecture. I'll let you know when this has happened.

[back to top]

Practical programming competency is an important objective of this subject. The best way to learn programming skills is to practice programming - you do that in Tutorial-Labs and in your assignments.

Laboratories and tutorials are combined in this subject. The first hour will be conducted in a tutorial room discussing set tutorial questions and preparing for the lab exercises. This will be followed by 1.5 hours in a laboratory.

The tutorial component will give you a chance to clarify ideas mentioned in lectures and to practice your problem-solving skills in a small, more personal, class with the assistance of a tutor. Tutorials are designed to help you learn. They are your main forum for asking questions and getting personal assistance. You should make sure that you use them effectively by examining in advance the material to be covered, by asking questions, by offering suggestions and by generally participating.

In the laboratory component of the class you will work through set programming exercises. This will give you a chance to develop your programming skills on small, simple examples. The examples have been chosen to highlight particular aspects of programming, and are designed to assist you in your assignments. Your tutor will be there to assist you.

The tutorial questions and laboratory exercises relating to the work covered in lectures each week will be placed on the subject web page at the end of the week.

Book your tutorial-lab time online using myUNSW. Check your tutorial times in week 1 even if you selected a time when you enrolled since some tutorials have subsequently been cancelled and available times may have changed.

The assessable components of the subject for COMP1711 students are:

• 15 marks - Tutorial Attendance (5), Labs (5), and Presentation (5)
• 10 marks - Assignment 1
• 10 marks - Assignment 2
• 25 marks - Project
• 40 marks - Final exam

Where your assignment marks are significantly higher than your exam mark, your assignment marks will be reduced and you may be required to attend an interview to explain the difference.

Marks will be scaled to ensure that the Pass/Fail boundary and the Distinction/High Distinction boundary reflect a consistent standard from session to session.

[back to top]

Tutorials start Week 2. Week 0 lab exercises will be distributed in week 1 lectures and are due BEFORE your first tutorial.

There are 5 marks for tutorial participation, 5 marks for a presentation, and 5 marks for the completion of the laboratory exercises.

You must participate in 10 tutorials to get 5/5 for participation.

Tutorial presentations are explained on the tutorial presentation information page. Your tutor will allocate you a presentation partner and presentation day in the first tutorial.

The assessment of the laboratory exercises will be done in labs by your tutor. Each week's lab exercises will include a core section and many will include an extension section. Unless otherwise stated all questions are to be completed and marked during the lab in which they are given. Lab exercises must be marked face to face with your tutor during the lab, email submissions afterwards will not be accepted. The total lab mark is out of 20, ie 20 marks or greater is full marks. This means you can miss a few and still get full marks.

Extension exercises score brownie points. Brownie points are quite worthless and do not contribute towards your mark. We will probably use them to compute some sort of honor roll of the top 50 students. Last year we used them to determine who got to play with the lego.

[back to top]

The assignments are an extremely important part of the course. They are an essential way of learning the practical skills you need to acquire. Any plagiarism in assignments will result in an automatic Fail for the whole subject. Read the plagiarism warning below for more detail.

There are two programming "tasks" and one large project. Due dates are shown on the subject schedule. There will be an intermediate due date for the major project and some marks will be awarded by competition before the final due date.

The assignment specifications will be posted on the subject web page closer to their release date.

Unless advised otherwise assignments will be released midnight Monday in the release week and due 10am Monday in the due week.

In cases where a "beta" specification is provided before the official release you are welcome to start the assignment early - but be aware that the official release specification may differ from the beta specification and marking will be on the basis of the official specification. A rapid completion ("earlybird") bonus of 1 mark will be awarded to assignment submissions made before the official assignment release and within 36 hours of the beta specification being provided.

Past students advise that assignments take far longer to complete than you at first estimate, so make sure you start them promptly and allow plenty of time. You cannot complete a computing assignment in one week.

Assignment work can be completed on the workstations at Uni or on a PC at home. Your assignment must be able to run on the computers at Uni so test them here if you develop them at home. Unless otherwise stated assignments must be submitted on-line from a school terminal using the give command. It is in your best interest to make regular backup copies of your work and (because of machine loads on deadline days, for example) to complete assignments well before their deadlines.

If you wish to submit an assignment late, you may do so but unless otherwise stated the maximum available mark for a late assignment is reduced by 10% if it is one day late, by 25% if it is 2 days late and by 50% if it is 3 days late. Assignments that are late 4 days or more will be awarded zero marks. So if your assignment is worth 88% and you submit it one day late you still get 88%, but if you submit it two days late you get 75%, three days late 50%, and four days late zero.

Assignment extensions are only awarded for serious and unforeseeable events. Having the flu for a few days, deleting your assignment by mistake, going on holiday, work commitments, etc do not qualify. Therefore aim to complete your assignments before the due date in case of last minute illness, and make regular backups of your work.

[back to top]

All work submitted for assessment must be entirely your own work. We regard copying of assignments, in whole or part, as an extremely serious offence.

In this subject unacknowledged submission of any work derived from another person, or jointly written with someone else will, at the very least, result in automatic failure for the subject and a mark of zero for the subject.

Do not provide or show your assignment work to any other person. Allowing another student to copy from you will, at the very least, result in zero for your assignment. If you knowingly provide or show your assignment work to another person for any reason, and work derived from it is submitted you will be penalized, even if the work was submitted without your knowledge or consent. This will apply even if your work is submitted by a third party unknown to you.

Copying without consent, severe, or second offences will result in automatic failure, exclusion from the university, and possibly other academic discipline.

These are not idle threats, we search the internet and use plagiarism detection software to hunt for non-original work.

See also the latest version of the Unix Primer and the Yellow Form, and the faculty and university plagiarism policies for additional information. If the penalties set out on this page, the Unix Primer, the Yellow Form, the school, faculty, or university plagiarism policies differ for any situation, the more severe penalty applies.

Note that we have experienced cases of plagiarism where the code has been copied from printouts or floppy disks/CDs/USB sticks that have been lost in the lab or stolen from the computer or printer. It is your responsibility to prevent other students from accessing your files. If you lose a printout or floppy disk/CD/USB stick, inform Mei Cheng immediately.

[back to top]

In this subject assignment assessment is intended to be formative (to help students learn material) rather than summative (give an objective benchmark measuring what has been learned)

When marking assignments we want tutors to build up an intimate model of what each student is up to, their strengths and weaknesses.

For this reason assignments are not marked anonymously. If you have concerns about non-anonymous assignment marking come to an admin consultation and discuss them with us in advance.

[back to top]

Copyright of any material you submit will belong to us. Submitting means you accept this condition. We give you a non exclusive licence granting you in every way possible the rights you had before submitting the material.

One of the reasons we require this is so we can use your work as an example to students in future sessions. With programming assignments we typically do this to demonstrate poor style and common mistakes.

We usually try to keep student material anonymous unless we are praising it. However if you would like to be identified as the author of a file even if we are not praising it, then include the following line in a comment at the very top of the file:

   Please identify me as the author whenever referring to this.

In particular in this subject we may make video and/or audio recordings of some lectures or other subject activities. We may distribute and share the presentation resource material you produce. All copyright and intellectual property arising from these belongs to us.

Submitting material includes posting material on the subject forum and sending email to the teaching staff or class account.

[back to top]

The final examination in this subject will be held during the Mid Year examination period; you may be examined any any material covered in lectures (excluding the optional lectures), seminars, assignments, tutorial exercises, presentations, and any readings you have been given.

[back to top]

Students whose exam performance is affected by serious and un-foreseeable events outside their control can apply at the student centre for special consideration. Special considerations will only be given when each and every other component of the course (eg assignments, tutes, presentation, seminar) has been passed and satisfactorily completed.

The "yellow form" sets out the general criteria applied to all special consideration for CSE subjects. Read it carefully. In this subject if you apply to sit a supplementary final exam I consider the following additional factors:

• you must have submitted a fully documented request for Special Consideration within 7 days of the exam; and
• the medical or other evidence is clearly of a nature to affect your performance seriously (minor ailments like a cold, a headache - unless chronic, or severe enough to require prescribed medication - feeling 'unwell', etc do not qualify); and
• your performance in ALL other assessment items for the subject must have been of satisfactory standard. Tutorial attendance and assignment, presentation, and laboratory marks DO carry much weight in determining whether further assessment is warranted; and
• either you did not attend the exam, or you attended the exam but were forced to leave through illness.

In particular, make up your mind whether your are ill before the exam. If you have sat the exam, it is very unlikely a supplementary exam will be granted. Depending on student numbers, supplementary exams may be oral. You will be notified by email if you are to sit an oral exam. Oral exams will be conducted on either the day before, the day of, or the day after the date for written supplementary exams. If you are awarded an oral exam you must contact the school office to find the date of the exam.

Supplementary examinations will be held soon after the results have been released. If you think that you may be eligible for a Supplementary Examination, make sure you are available around that time. Be careful not to plan any overseas travel at that time. If you can't attend the sup exam you will not be offered a second chance.

It is your responsibility to check your email, the CSE website, and contact the CSE school office for details of Supplementary Examinations. If you think there is any chance you might be eligible for a Supplementary Exam then you should prepare for it. Requests such as "I didn't find out until the day before the sup exam that I could sit the sup exam, so I need more time to study" will not be granted.

[back to top]

You can inspect the current state of your mark record by using the command

classrun -sturec

All marks must be finalised by the end of week 15. If you think there is a problem with any of your marks (tutorial attendance, presentation, assignments) then you need to advise us by emailing cs1711@cse.unsw.edu.au within two weeks of the mark being released, and, in all cases before the end of week 15. No marks will be changed after the end of week 15.

[back to top]

[back to top]

See the list and comments on the subject readings page

We'll discuss textbooks and recommended reading in week one lectures and I'll bring copies of some books from the list in for you to browse.

All the books on the list would be a sensible addition to your professional library. They are the primary sources I have used in setting this subject.

The university bookshop will sell you any of the books listed on the subject readings page at the GST discounted price. A printout of that page should be sufficient evidence that the books are recommended for this subject and hence eligible for the GST discount. Anton at the bookshop has previously confirmed this. Let me know if you have problems getting the discount.

No single book covers the entire subject well. You will need to refer to some of the other books in this list to fill any gaps in the textbook(s) you have purchased. Most are available in the UNSW Library, so I suggest you hold back a while to find out which topics you enjoy and which you need help with.

[back to top]

If you are ever concerned about your safety at university contact security on 9385 6666, Free call1-800-626-003, or just 56666 from any internal phone. They are very nice, and very protective of students. They have hotlines to police, ambulance, fire, and emergency response so call them first. You can even call them from the phones in lifts. You need to memorize those phone numbers. Read more about security@unsw.

University Security is responsible for:

• All Security related issues on campus, Tel: 9385 6000.
• Parking Tel: 9385 6415.
• Lost property Tel: 9385 6742
• After hours access and ID cards Tel: 9385 5999 (or 9385 5994)
• UNIBEAT Program, including Cycle Escorts and Security Shuttle Bus

When walking on campus after dark, remember to:

• Keep to well lit areas such as University Walk which is patrolled by Security Officers.
• Try to walk in groups or pairs; arrange to walk home with friends.
• Contact Unibeat for a security escort: 9385 6000 or Freecall 1-800-626-003. Escorts are available 24 hours, every day of the year.
• Report any lights which are not functioning to University Security.
• Use the free Security Shuttle Bus Service which operates on weeknights between 6pm and 11.15pm in session.

Using computers for extended periods can be bad for your health. You should make sure you take frequent breaks.

Infomation about ergonomics and your occupational health and safty obligations can be found on the subject webpage.

[back to top]

[back to top]

last modified 15 March 2004 | maintained by richard buckland