<% dim title title = "CS2110 F09 Lecture Notes" %> <% dim rowParity rowParity = 1 %>

Course Info: Fall 2009

Lectures: TR 10:10AM - 11:00AM Olin Hall 155

CS 2110 (formerly 211; cross-listed as ENGRD 2100) is an intermediate-level programming course and an introduction to computer science. Topics include program design and development, debugging and testing, object-oriented programming, proofs of correctness and complexity analysis, recursion, and commonly used data structures and abstract data types. Java is the principal programming language.  The course syllabus can easily be extracted by looking at the link to lectures.

Please note that Professor Birman may change some of the slide sets prior to class, so if you print lecture notes out ahead of time, you may notice differences.  Just the same, the class will follow the same syllabus as was used in the fall one year ago, when Professor Kozen taught the class.

To take cs2110, you must have a working knowledge of basic programming and Java prior to taking this course. Official prerequisities are CS 1110 (formerly 100J), Introduction to Computing Using Java, or CS 1130 (formerly 101J), Transition to Object-Oriented Programming. To brush up, visit the CS 1130 web site.  We strongly recommend visiting the 1130 web site if you aren't completely sure you remember Java.

In CS 2110, you will learn about:

A complete listing of topics can be found on the lecture notes page.

Note: In the past, we offered an associated 1-credit project course CS 2111 (formerly 212).  In fact, prior to fall 2009, it (cs2111) was required for the Computer Science major. We no longer offer cs2111, and cs2110 now satisfies the requirements for the major all by itself.   This year's cs2110 project is different from the one in past years and can be thought of as if it included the material that used to be part of cs2111.  We do not expect to reintroduce cs2111 -- from now on, cs2110 will continue to cover that material.


Staff

Instructor

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NAME & INFO OFFICE HOURS
Ken Birman
ken [at] cs.cornell.edu
255-9199
4119B Upson
appt hours: M 10-11am
open hours: M 11am-12pm
appointments: email Bill Hogan


Teaching Assistants (TAs)

The TAs mainly teach recitation sections and assist with homework and exams. All TAs hold office hours, and we encourage you to attend them if you have difficulties.

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NAME & INFO OFFICE HOURS
Lonnie Princehouse
lonnie [at] cs.cornell.edu
Tuesday 2:30-3:30
Upson 328B
Robert Burgess
burgess [at] cs.cornell.edu
Thursday 2:30pm
Upson 328B
  Lei Du
ld283 [at] cornell.edu
Wednesday 11:00am-12:00pm
Upson 328B
  Najla Elmachtoub
ne48 [at] cornell.edu
Thursday 12:00-1:00pm
Upson 328B
  Jimmy Hartzell
jah259 [at] cornell.edu
Monday 10:15-11:15am
Upson 328B
  William Hui
wth4 [at] cs.cornell.edu
Friday 2:30-3:30pm
Upson 328B
  Josh Lee
jl658 [at] cornell.edu
Monday 5:30-6:30pm
Upson 328B
  Tian Li
tl268 [at] cornell.edu
Monday 1:25-2:25pm
Upson B7 Lab
Jeesung Na
jn93 [at] cs.cornell.edu
Monday 11:40-12:40pm
Wednesday 12:00-1:00pmCancelled 12/16
Upson 328B
Matthew Pearson
mjp64 [at] cs.cornell.edu
Friday 12:15-1:15pm
Upson 328B
Raghav Phadke
rkp39 [at] cornell.edu
Wednesday 3:45-4:45pm
Upson 328B
Mike Wacker
mew66 [at] cornell.edu
Tuesday 3:30-4:30
Upson 328B
Gregory Zecchini
gez3 [at] cornell.edu
Monday 3:30-4:30
Thursday 1:00-2:00pm
Upson 328B


Course Administrator (CA)

The CA provides clerical and logistical support for the course. Please notify the CA of any errors or discrepancies in the website.  Bill Hogan was playing this role, but has left to take an exciting new job in Germany; Maria Witlox will be covering temporarily until we hire a new permanent person.

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NAME & INFO OFFICE HOURS
Morgan Sheffield - Character ... Maria Witlox (mwitlox@cs.cornell.edu)
255-9197
4115 Upson
M-F 8:30am-4pm


Consultants

In addition to TAs, there are a number of consultants. These are are undergraduates who have excelled in their coursework and are employed as graders and tutors. See Consulting below.

Course Administration

Website

The course website is http://www.cs.cornell.edu/Courses/cs2110/2009fa/. Announcements will be posted on the home page. Check every day for new announcements.

Newsgroups

We have two newsgroups: <% rowParity = 1 %>
NEWSGROUP PURPOSE
cornell.class.2110 technical questions and discussions on topics relevant to the course material
cornell.class.2110.talk everything else

Instructions for accessing the newsgroups can be found here.

The course staff monitors the newsgroups and will respond to questions in a timely manner. This is often the most efficient method of interaction with the course staff and has the added advantage that others can benefit from your question.

If you know the answer to a question, feel free to post a reply yourself, but please avoid giving away any hints on the homework or posting any part of a solution. This will be considered a violation of Academic Integrity. Generally, rough algorithms or non-solution-specific code fragments are ok if you need them to illustrate a point.

Please reserve email for urgent or confidential matters only.

CMS

We are using the course management system CMS. Everyone who preregistered for the course is entered, but if you did not preregister, you are probably missing. Please login to http://cms.csuglab.cornell.edu/ and check whether you exist. There will be a list of courses you are registered for, and CS 2110 should be one of them. If not, please send your full name and Cornell netId to the Course Administrator so that you can be registered.

You can check your grades and submit homework in CMS. There is a help page with instructions.

Sources

Required Text

See also the Prentice Hall website for additional material.

Other Sources

These titles are on reserve in the Engineering library, Carpenter Hall.

Handouts

All handouts other than homework and exams will be available on the web in pdf, html, or plain text format on the lecture notes page associated with the appropriate lecture. Check often for new postings.

For viewing pdf files, we recommend Adobe Reader, available free of charge.

Lectures and Sections

Registration

Please plan to attend one section... There are two ways to register:

This is for clerical purposes only, there is no other difference.

In the table below, LEC=lecture, DIS=recitation section, OLH=Olin Hall, HLS=Hollister Hall, PHL=Phillips Hall, BRD = Bard Hall, SNE=Snee Hall, T=Tuesday, W=Wednesday.

Time and Place

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CS COURSE ID ENGRD COURSE ID SECTION DAY TIME ROOM INSTRUCTOR
5741 12329 DIS 201 T 12:20PM - 01:10PM HLS 110 Tian
5743 12331 DIS 202 T 01:25PM - 02:15PM HLS 306 Mike
Gregory
5745 12333 DIS 203 T 02:30PM - 03:20PM HLS 306 Robert
5747 12335 DIS 204 W 12:20PM - 01:10PM HLS 306 Lei
Raghav
5749 12337 DIS 205 W 01:25PM - 02:15PM HLS 306 Josh
Najla
5751 12339 DIS 206 W 02:30PM - 03:20PM BRD 140 Jimmy
5753 12341 DIS 207 T 12:20PM - 01:10PM SNE 1150 Lonnie
             

Attendance

Students are expected to attend all lectures and one recitation section per week. Section will cover some material not covered in lecture and provide an opportunity for questions on recent material, assignments, and exams. You must register for some specific section, but you may attend any section without reregistering. Just the same, once you decide which one to attend, we prefer that you stay with it.

Occasionally section instructors temporarily move their section to a computer lab. Pay attention to announcements to keep track of any room changes.

Notes

Lecture notes, corresponding readings, and examples will be made available on the lecture notes page, usually just before or just after lecture.

Notes and section will be posted occasionally on the lecture notes page as well, and section examples will appear in section examples.


Consulting

Consultants are available in Upson 360 most afternoons and evenings. They also hold hours in Robert Purcell Union (RPCC) on North Campus.

Consulting runs only when Cornell is in session. Consulting hours end at 6pm on a day following an assignment due date and 7pm on a prelim day. There are no consulting hours during official breaks. Consulting ends on the last shift on the last week of classes.

Consulting Hours

The last day of consulting is Thursday 12/3. TAs will continue to hold regularly scheduled office hours.

Note: Hours with a strike are cancelled for this week.

Upson 360

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TIME SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT
1:25-2:30pm DR EY KM,SW EY,SB   KM SZ
2:30-3:35pm DR WH KM,MP WH   BB,YL SZ
3:35-4:40pm MP WH,JN,HR HS,MP,JN WH DR,SL BB,WH SZ
4:45-6pm MP JN HS,MP,JN HS,SW DR,SL   AZ
6-7pm AZ KJ DB KJ DB   AZ
7-8pm AZ WH,KJ DB KJ DB    
8-9pm   WH DB EY DB    
9-10pm     DB   DB    

RPCC

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TIME SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT
1:25-2:30pm HR            
2:30-3:35pm HR DA          
3:35-4:40pm HR DA          
4:45-6pm   DA          
6-7pm   DA BB        
7-8pm   SB          
8-9pm   SB          
9-10pm              

Consulting Policies

Want to Be a Consultant?

CS 2110 and many other CS courses are always looking for consultants. In general, CS 2110 is the launch pad for many courses. In addition, our best consultants can become undergraduate TAs. If you get at least an A- in CS 2110 and want to be a consultant, click here to find out how.


Programming Assignments

There will be five programming assignments. Click "Project Info" at the top of the page to see an overall project description.  Much more detailed materials for each specific assignment will be available on CMS. 

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ASSIGNMENT DUE DATE SUPERVISORS
A1 Wed 9/9 11:59pm
 
A2 Tue 9/22 11:59pm  
A3 Fri 10/9  11:59pm  
A4 Sun 11/8 11:59pm  
A5 Thu 12/3 11:59pm  

Due dates are subject to change.

Partners

You must follow the rules of Academic Integrity. In addition, you must follow these rules concerning partners, unless we post otherwise:

Submission

You must submit your work online via CMS. The staff will not accept files submitted by email. Follow the online instructions in CMS for submitting files.

You may upload as many times as you wish, and only the latest version of each file will be graded. Note however that if you upload both before and after the deadline, the one after the deadline will be taken, and you will be subject to a late penalty.

If you are working with a partner, you must coordinate with your partner well in advance of the due date and time. Unless we carry over partnerships from a previous assignment, you must register the partner relationship in CMS. One of the partners must invite the other, and the other must accept the invitation. See the CMS online help for details. Only one of the partners needs to submit the files.

Please be careful to submit the correct versions of your files. We will view the excuse "I accidentally submitted the wrong version" with extreme skepticism (we have heard it countless times).

More detailed instructions are available in the CMS online help.

Format Requirements

Interfaces

We test your code by linking it against a standard testing program (built using "junit" testing).  For this to work, you must respect our interface specifications; otherwise your code won't compile.  We can't debug your code for you -- what you hand in must work against the interface we specify, just as would be the case if you worked at Microsoft or Google as part of a big team.  If your code does not compile, you may receive a grade of zero.

Please refer to the assignment for the submission format.

Compilers and IDES

At the very least, you must submit code that compiles, even if it does not run properly. We will recompile all of your code before running it. You should test your code at the command line with the JDK on Windows in the labs to ensure that your program works. We will not debug non-working code even if the problem is minor.

Although we advocate the use of an IDE (namely, Eclipse), your code must always be able to compile and run at the command line with the required version of Java, because that is how we will be testing it. Refer to the resources page for information about the required version Java and how to run from the command line.

Style

Style counts! Follow accepted style conventions for code elements, layout, and commenting. For advice on Java style, see:

Place a comment block at the top of each file that you submit. The block must give the assignment number, due date, and the name(s), NetID(s), and CUID(s) of the creator(s). For example,

   /**********************************
    * Assignment 0: Example format
    * Date: 1/1/1111
    *
    * Tad Morose: tm10, 123456
    * Justin Tyme: jt33, 654321
    **********************************/
 

Late Policy

Submit your assignments on time. CMS tends to lag right near the deadline because too many students wait until the last minute to submit. You will get a very short grace period after the deadline during which you may submit without penalty, but we will not tell you how long (and don't ask). We typically grade the assignments the following evening.

Late submissions will be accepted until 5pm on the day following the due date. Until submissions are closed, you may submit your assignment late at a cost of 15% of your total score. If you submit only a portion of an assignment late, your entire assignment score will still be penalized.

Extensions will be granted only in exceptional circumstances, such as documented illness.

Exams

There are three scheduled exams, two prelims and a final.

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EXAM DATE/TIME/LOC REVIEW SUPERVISORS STATS
Prelim 1 Thu, Oct 15      7:30 - 9:00 pm      
Prelim 2 Tue, Nov 17     7:30 - 9:00 pm      
Final Exam Wed, Dec  16   2:00 - 4:30 pm      

Conflicts

If you have a conflict with another exam or other university-sponsored event:

By University policy, courses are not obligated to provide makeup exams for students taking concurrent courses, and we will not do so in this course. The Courses of Study states: "Students are expected to be present throughout each semester at all meetings of courses for which they are registered."  The term "meetings" includes exams, even when scheduled in the evening.

Retrieving Exams

We distribute prelims in 360 Upson (M-F, 10am-12noon and 2-4pm) usually the day after the prelim. Bring your student ID card. Final exams may be reviewed the following semester, but may not be taken from the room.

Past Exams

Prelim 1

Prelim 2

Final


Quizzes

There will be occasional in-class quizzes. Quizzes are graded in a binary fashion:

Quizzes will count for a small percentage of your final grade.


Grading

All assignments and exams receive scores out of 100 points.

Your grader's comments will be posted on CMS. The grading guide will be posted as well, so you can see why points were deducted.

You may receive bonus points for exceptionally nice work. Bonus points do not count in the computation of your final score, but are accumulated separately in a single bonus score for the semester. In some cases this can affect your grade.

Weights

Your final numerical score will be a weighted combination of your scores for all required course work.

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ASSIGNMENTS
(45%)
QUIZZES
(4%)
EXAMS
(50%)
EVAL
(1%)
A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 Q P1 P2 F E
9 9 9 9 9 4 15 15 20 1

"EVAL" is the University course evaluation. We get a list of people who fill it out, but the university keeps your responses anonymous. We reserve the right to change the relative weights.

Grade Computation

We will determine your letter grade for the course using your final numerical score and predetermined grade cutoffs as given in the following table. These are numerical scores that will guarantee you at least a certain letter grade, regardless of how the rest of the class performs.

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A SCORE OF GUARANTEES AT LEAST
90 A
80 B
70 C
50 D

Note:


Regrades

For all graded work, you may request a regrade if you feel we have made an error in the grading or simply to request a clarification. To request a regrade, you need to explain in writing (not in a one-on-one meeting with Professor Birman or with a TA) what you feel is wrong or what you do not understand. For each assignment and exam, there is a deadline for regrade requests, normally one week after the grading guide and solutions have been posted. The assignment/exam supervisor will process the requests after the regrade deadline has passed. Regrade comments are either posted on CMS (usually for assignments) or returned in the consulting office (usually for prelims) as explained below.

Policies

Regrade Procedure

Assignments

Prelims

Final Exam

Advice

In regrades, the burden of proof is on you. You must adequately demonstrate how and why you deserve a higher grade.

We allow minor corrections to code in some cases. For example, if fixing a small piece of code demonstrates that your code really did work a lot better than we perceived, you might earn more points. However, we will usually apply a point deduction for such fixes, so only in some cases will you receive additional points.

Academic Integrity

The utmost level of academic integrity is expected of all students. Please read the following carefully.

Course-Specific AI Policies

You are responsible for understanding and abiding by these policies. It is no defense to say that you did not understand them, or that it was not done this way in another course. If you are ever in doubt about anything, ask.

If You Suspect a Violation...

...please contact a member of the course staff immediately. This is not a competition between students vs. faculty. We are all working together toward the same goal, to maximize the value of your educational experience. Violations of academic integrity only hinder this process. There is no honor in it, nor in protecting it. Your information will be held in the strictest confidence and you will not be asked to testify against your peers at an AI hearing.

Penalties

Penalties for violations are assessed on a case-by-case basis. The penalty will usually be a grade penalty. It may be a point deduction, a zero on the homework or exam, a grade reduction in the course, or failure in the course, depending on severity. Repeated offenses are automatically referred to the Academic Integrity Hearing Board and may result in suspension or expulsion from Cornell.

Special Needs

We provide appropriate academic accommodations for students with special needs and/or disabilities. Requests for academic accommodations are to be made during the first three weeks of the semester and must be accompanied by official documentation. Please register with Student Disability Services in 420 CCC to document your eligibility.