Instructor : Erdal Yilmaz, ey45
Teaching Assistant: Jyoti Pandey, jp833

This course provides an introduction to programming and problem solving using a high-level programming language. It is designed to increase your knowledge level to comfortably continue to courses CS111x. Our focus will be on generic programming concepts: variables, expressions, control structures, loops, arrays, functions, pseudocode and algorithms. You will learn how to analyze problems and convert your ideas into solutions interpretable by computers. We will use MATLAB; because it provides a productive environment, and it is widely used by all engineering communities.

MATLAB is already installed in many public computing labs on the campus. If you want to buy a personal copy, you can get it from MathWorks website or from the Cornell Store in DVD. There is also an open source alternative, Octave ,which is mostly compatible with MATLAB. Octave is sufficient for the level of our course coverage.

The website for the course is http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1109/2013su/ You can follow announcements and download course materials from this address. You will upload homework assignments to the Course Management System (CMS): http://cms.csuglab.cornell.edu/

Lectures will be held in classrooms at Upson Hall. Slides will be available on the course website after the lecture. Laboratory sessions will be held in a reserved computer lab. Unless otherwise announced, we will be alternating between lectures and labs: Lectures on Mondays and Wednesdays, and labs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For the lab sessions, we will temporarily relocate to Phillips 318 and Mann 112 during the second and fourth weeks respectively. for two weeks in July.

Both the instructor and the teaching assistant will hold office hours every week. In the first week of the class we will make a poll and try to select appropriate time slots and place. Office hours provide you a good opportunity for detailed questions, and to ask for clarifications on course material or assignments.

We will not follow a textbook; however, as needed we may refer you to readings from Insight Through Computing: A MATLAB Introduction to Computational Science and Engineering by Charles F. Van Loan and K -Y Daisy Fan. It is available online through Cornell Library: http://cornell.worldcat.org/oclc/694085666

Homeworks will have one or two multi-part, themed questions. You will be asked to write short scripts to accomplish subtasks of the solution. The submissions will be online to CMS. Homeworks will graded both on correctness and programming style (clarity, comments, indentation etc). Even in the case of auto-grading we will still read your code.

Every week there will be at least two quizes: one of them will be in class and the other will be online. Online quiz will consist of multiple choice questions or short answers. There won't be any time limits. The schedule for the online-quizes is available on the course Calendar. In-class quizes will be anytime during the lecture or lab sessions when we think it is necessary to assess your understanding.

Depending on the majority vote, we will either have a prelim and a final project (possibly in pairs), or just a final exam. We will refer the total points you get from it as the 'Final' in the Grading Policy.

This course is S/U (Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory) only. After normalizing to 100 and averaging homeworks and quizes, your total grade will be calculated as:

Total = (Final * 0.3) + (Homeworks * 0.5) + (Quizes * 0.2).

In order to get a passing grade your total points should be greater or equal to 75.

You can discuss homework problems with your friends, but make sure you acknowledge any help received at the beginning of your scripts. Unless we assign a group project, all submitted work has to be your own effort. IMPORTANT! Make sure you read Cornell University Code of Academic Integrity.

It is Cornell policy to provide reasonable accomodations to students who have a documented disability (e.g., physical, learning, psychiatric, vision, hearing, or systemic) that may effect their ability to participate in course activities or to meet course requirements. Students with disabilities are encouraged to contact Student Disability Services and their instructors for a confidential discussion of their individual need for academic accomodations. Student Disability Services is located in 420 CCC. Staff can be reached by calling 607.254.4545.