UMBC CMSC 202 Fall '00

Syllabus

Lecturers

Lecturer: Mr. James Kukla
Office: ECS 216
Office Hours: MW 4-5:30pm or by appointment
Telephone: 410-455-3967
E-mail: kukla@umbc.edu

Lecturer: Ms. Susan Mitchell
Office: ECS 225 L
Office Hours: MW 1:30-3:30pm Telephone: 410-455-3099
E-mail: smitchel@cs.umbc.edu

Lecture Times and Places

[1503] 0101 TuTh.......2:30pm- 3:45pm (LH2 ...) MITCHELL, S M..........4:00pm- 4:50pm (SS 103) DIS [1504] 0102 TuTh.......2:30pm- 3:45pm (LH2 ...) MITCHELL, S W..........4:00pm- 4:50pm (SS 204) DIS [1505] 0103 TuTh.......2:30pm- 3:45pm (LH2 ...) MITCHELL, S M..........4:00pm- 4:50pm (SS 204) DIS [1506] 0104 TuTh.......2:30pm- 3:45pm (LH2 ...) MITCHELL, S W..........4:00pm- 4:50pm (ACIV011) DIS [1507] 0201 MW.........5:30pm- 6:45pm (LH5 ...) KUKLA, J M..........7:00pm- 7:50pm (SS 110) DIS [1508] 0202 MW.........5:30pm- 6:45pm (LH5 ...) KUKLA, J W..........7:00pm- 7:50pm (SS 110) DIS [7627] 0203 MW.........5:30pm- 6:45pm (LH5 ...) KUKLA, J M..........7:00pm- 7:50pm (MP 103) DIS [7628] 0204 MW.........5:30pm- 6:45pm (LH5 ...) KUKLA, J W..........7:00pm- 7:50pm (SS 101) DIS

Textbook

C++ How To Program, Third Edition by Deitel and Deitel, Prentice Hall Publishing

Course Description

This course continues the development of programming and problem-solving skills, focusing on recursion, pointers, data abstraction, and procedural abstraction. Topics include: introduction to asymptotic notation; data structures including lists, stacks, queues, hash tables and elementary binary search trees; sorting and searching; and an introduction to the C++ language and to object-oriented programming. Programming projects for this course will use the C and C++ programming languages. This is the second course for students interested in pursuing further study in computer science. Prerequisites: CMSC 201 and MATH 151.

CMSC Gateway

For students who enrolled in college for the first time in Summer 1998 or later, you have two choices: pass both of CMSC 201 and CMSC 202 with a grade of B or better or don't graduate as a CMSC major. The registrar has very specific rules about repeating courses in sequence and if you were to have a C in 201 and then take and pass 202 expecting to retake 201, you can't. Since the classes form a sequence, you cannot retake an earlier class in the sequence once you've passed a later one.

Objectives

The objectives of this course are:

To learn and practice problem solving techniques
To learn to understand algorithm efficiency in terms of asymptotic analysis
To master some basic data structures, including: linked lists, stacks, queues and binary search trees.
To understand the fundamental programming concepts of abstract data types, recursion, memory allocation and functional parameters.
To gain familiarity with basic algorithms for searching and sorting, including: hashing, binary search, Merge Sort and Quicksort.
To learn programming in C++ and object-oriented programming.

Lectures and Readings

You are expected to attend all lectures and discussions for the section in which you are enrolled. Although both classes will cover the same general topics, you are responsible for the specifics given during your sections. You may attend the other instructor's lectures for review purposes, but this is not a substitute for attending your section.

You are expected to attend all lectures and your weekly discussion session. You are responsible for all material covered in the lecture, even if they are not in the textbook. You are responsible for the material in the readings, even if they are not covered during lecture. There will be some number of unannounced quizzes which may be given in either the lecture or the discussion, so you should keep up with the assigned readings during the semester.

Assignments and Grading

Projects

The critical programming skills cannot be learned simply by attending the lectures. You should budget enough time to work on the projects as well. Projects are due by midnight of the due date. If you fail to turn in a project on time, a late penalty will be assessed (even if it's only a few seconds late -- no excuses, no exceptions). Projects will be graded according to four equal parts: correctness, design, style, and documentation.

For details and an Important Warning , see Project Submission and Grading Policy.

There will be four (4) projects worth a total of 45%. The breakdown for the project portion of the grade is as follows:

Project 0 0% Project 1 10% Project 2 10% Project 3 10% Project 4 15% Project 0 is a mandatory ungraded project. The purpose of P0 is NOT to make sure you know how to use the submission system, but rather to make sure that the submission system is prepared to accept projects from your account. If you fail to submit P0, no future submissions will be possible.

In the event of network outages or computer failures that last less than two weeks, you are still responsible for submitting your projects on time. There are labs on campus even if your dialup or ResNet connections are down.

Exams

There will be three (3) exams (note that the last exam is during the scheduled final exam time for the class) weighted at 15% each. Make-ups for exams are given under only the most dire circumstances (almost never).

Exams are not cumulative. Note that you may be required to use skills from earlier in the semester while solving problems on an exam, but each exam will focus on material that has not been tested on previous exams.

Unless otherwise noted, all exams are closed-book, closed-notes.

Quizzes

There will be six (6) equally weighted quizzes totaling 5% of your final grade. The purpose of the quizzes is to help you make sure you're getting the right level of understanding from the required readings. Quizzes will cover only material from the text. You must take quizzes in your own discussion section.

Homework

There will be five (5) equally weighted homework assignments totaling 5% of your final grade.

Grading

Letter grades will be on the (fairly) standard curve: 0 <= F < 60 60 <= D < 70 70 <= C < 80 80 <= B < 90 90 <= A <= 100 Your grade is based on timely work accomplished during the semester; incomplete grades will only be given for medical illness or other such dire circumstances. Final grades will not be curved, so don't ask.

After each grade is returned, there is a grace period of one (1) week during which you may come speak to me about any problems you have with your grade. After that time, your grade stays where it is.

Email Etiquette:

Email is great -- much better than voice mail. If you need to contact your instructor about this class outside of lecture and office hours, email is much better than the telephone. You should, however, observe the following etiquette:

Do not include your programs unless requested. Email is good for lots of things, but it is horrible for debugging. You should use my office hours, the TAs' office hours or the Help Center for debugging help.
Use your real name. I get a lot of junk email (spam). Email from "Hot Stuff" gets deleted without being read.
Include a meaningful subject line, something like "CMSC 202 Project 2 question."
If you ask a good question by email, I will send your question and the reply to the entire class as well. If you do not want your question repeated to the entire class, please state so clearly in your message.
Know the difference between "reply" and "reply to all".
Know how to include a plain text file in an email message without sending it as an attachment. Attachments are really annoying. It is rare that a plain text file needs to be sent as an attachment.
You should also know that email is not secure. It is quite easy for someone to send mail to you pretending to be someone else. When I send important email messages (e.g. class cancellation notices, project extensions, grade reports), I will sign the message using a digital signature. You can then use the pgp utility to check that the message indeed came from me, rather than someone pretending to be me. Instructions on how to use pgp is available on the course web page.

In addition, due to the volume of student email during each semester, please note the following:

Do not expect responses during holidays or weekends or late in the evening.
Do not expect an immediate response to your mail. As a rule of thumb, expect two business days turnaround time. This means ask your project questions WELL BEFORE the due date, if you expect an answer in time to help you.