Comp 363/460 Groundrules

Course Home Page:  http://www.cs.luc.edu/~anh/363

Groundrule Index:

Instructor:  Dr. Andrew Harrington

Prerequisites

Plus all of the above should give you some mathematical sophistication.  That is the hardest part, and many of you may need more.  Please see me when you have trouble.

Make sure you get the math pretest in the first class and turn it in at the beginning of the next class.  Read and follow the heading of the Pretest.

Comp 363 vs. 460

Comp 363 is a challenging introductory algorithms course required for most of the undergraduates.  Classroom time will almost entirely be used to provide a course appropriate for them.  Comp 460 students should also be expecting an introductory course, where they will be expected to do some more advanced homework and/or projects.  Problems marked extra credit  refer to 363.  Students in 460 are expected to do those problems, unless specially marked as extra credit for all.  

Textbook

Algorithms by Dasgupta et al., McGraw-Hill, 2008, ISBN 978-0-07-352340-8.  Also see the Text Errata  What one author refers to as the penultimate version of the book appears to be online at his web site, http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms/all.pdf.  It is not a perfect match: After a very quick check I see that the pagination is different.   Chapter 2 has two extra exercises in the actual text.  I stopped comparing then.  There is no guarantee how long the web version will be public this way.  It is also possible to buy electronic access to the final text through the book's web site.

This is a new text for me for the course.  It seems much more accessible than the previous text.  I have not timed its use, however, so the detailed course schedule will not be posted too far in advance.  We should cover Chapters 0, 2-6, 8, and more topics if there is time at the end.

E-mail

Blackboard sends email to your university email address.  If you do not want to look there, be sure to have your mail forwarded somewhere else.  In past semesters, I have used class email a number of times noting errors or other changes, plus I will use it to distribute quizzes.

Feedback and questions

Please let me know when you need something from the course that I have not thought to include, or not included in sufficient detail for you, or not presented from a point of view that you can follow.  We are in this together.  For me to succeed, I need you to succeed.

You are NOT graded on help you ask for or comments you make about what you need from the class.  Lots of people have lots of questions about this course.  It is my job to help guide your work.  Please let me know when you do not understand something, particularly after you have gone home and worked on it.  Please ask questions in class and see me in office hours and send me e-mail.

Expected Learning Outcomes

Foundation:
Understand important data structures such as
Understand important existing algorithms, such as:
Understand these algorithms at different levels (the central part): Understand how many algorithms fit into a larger class of algorithms with common properties and strategies, for example

Grading

I am not sure at the beginning exactly how much homework I will give, so until the total amount of homework is determined, a homework point cannot be translated directly into a percentage contribution to your final grade. 

I will enter your raw (not scaled) scores into the Blackboard gradebook for you to confirm.  I base your final grade on separate (possibly scaled in the case of exams) percentages.  I may scale the quizzes or homework as a group after they are all completed.  

I convert to course letter grades with the following minimum requirements:
A 93 A- 90 B+ 87 B 83 B- 80 C+ 77 C 73 C- 70 D+ 67  D 60.

It is hard to convert desired learning outcome straight into grades, with so many course components, but look at the boldface central outcome for different levels of understanding of algorithms:  Iif you consistently succeed at the levels up through one of the bottom three bullet points, then it should roughly correspond to a grade of C, B, or A.  

Homework

Most weeks there will be a written homework assignment for each student to work on individually and pass in on paper in class.  The homework will involve following and applying important algorithms introduced in class, writing algorithms for new situations, proving correctness and runtime bounds and equivalence of algorithms, and possibly some coding of demonstration programs.  There may be some individual or group projects.  Late homework will receive a 20% penalty and will not be accepted for a grade after the class period following the due date.  When an individual hands me a homework assignment, I will generally hand  the individual one set of my solutions.

Use my office hours!  A number of past students have indicated they considered the course to be really hard before they started taking advantage of office hours, and much more accessible with frequent contact.  Take advantage of office hours!  Let me know if the posted hours do not work for you.  I encourage you to engage with the homework between the class when it is introduced and Monday or Tuesday office hours the next week. Do what comes smoothly, and note what does not. Then come in and see where you could use some help breaking things into steps, or go over something that made sense when I did but is not when you do it, or  ....

Unless an assignment is specifically given as a group project, You may NOT work with other students on the assignments - see the section below on Academic Dishonesty.

Exams and quizzes

Tentative Exam Schedule  See the course schedule for updates:
For the quizzes and midterm you may prepare up to two 8.5 x 11" sides of notes.  For the final you may have up to four sides.  Takehome quizzes are posted to the internet by the previous Sunday morning.  You are to chose a chunk of time up to 2 hours long in which to do it before the next class, when it is due.  Quizzes are not cumulative (except as the material is naturally cumulative).  Exams are cumulative.  Exams and quizzes will not include material from the class immediately before the test.  Exams will generally cover through the last homework previously due.  For all homework you have passed in, you should have the solutions that I passed out, and for all but the most recently due homework you should have the graded results back.

Exam Grading : Do not write down things on exams that you can see are incomplete or incorrect without making some comment acknowledging this -- it is better to know you are wrong or incomplete than to be wrong and think you are right.

Missed Exams : If you must miss an exam, let me know well in advance. Then if you have a good reason we can possibly make other arrangements. I have little sympathy for people who inform me after the fact for no good reason. I may completely excuse you from an exam if you were sick or unable to attend for long enough. Most often if you cannot take an exam at the usual time, I will want you to take it a little later, BUT I WILL NOT LET ANYONE TAKE A LATE EXAM AFTER THE NEXT CLASS PERIOD. If you somehow fail to let me know in a timely fashion that you have an excuse and want to take the exam late, appear at my office hours before the NEXT class after the exam, and I may be able to give you the exam.

IMPORTANT POLICY:  If you have an excuse for not being prepared to take an exam, but decide to take it anyway, you don't get to change your mind after you see a poor grade. In certain circumstances I may allow you to delay an exam due to illness, but I will not let you be reexamined due to a poor grade.

Academic Dishonesty

The penalty for cheating may be anywhere from a 0 on an assignment to a grade of "F" in this course. The appropriate dean will be informed in writing of any cheating incidents.

Cheating consists of, but is not limited to:

Any collaboration among students on homework or on exams constitutes cheating for all of the students involved.  If I explicitly assign a group project, another person or student refers only to people outside your assigned group. 

Help from any source is fine concerning

I have needed to give out 0's on exams and homework in past semesters, with accompanying referrals to the students' deans.   

Campus Network, Rights and Responsibilities

As a user of the campus network, you should be aware of your rights and responsibilities in
  http://www.luc.edu/its/policy_acceptableuse_public.shtml

Course Materials

Private information between professor/TA and individual students will be handled through the University Blackboard system.  It will mostly be used for grades and possibly some homework submissions.  The public course materials will all be posted directly on the web under http://www.cs.luc.edu/~anh/363.

Class/study Approach

The class involves basic facts, processes, and analysis methods, plus creative combinations of solution ideas. 

I assume you are a reader, and can get many basic facts and process recipes from reading assignments before class.  I see the most fruitful use for our time together in overviews, supplimenting your reading, going over questions you raise in reading and homework, the analysis of problems, and creatively applying basic ideas you are learning to somewhat novel situations.  I am not trying to produce lecture notes in class that are a substitute for your reading.  I will try to produce notes from class.  I will try to have notes available before class to follow in class, and when class takes a different turn than I predicted, I will try to make updates to the notes after class.

Cell Phones

I assume that my class is not the most important thing in your life.  Only you know the relative importance of  any particular connection through your cell phone, and whether it is important for you to answer a call imediately rather than later.  I do want you to be respectful of my class and disrupt it as little as is practical.  If you get cell phone calls with fair frequency, be sure to have the ring muted before coming to class.  If you rarely get calls, you might not mute it ahead, and your cell phone may happen to ring.  Get rid of the noise as soon as possible, and do not get flustered.  I assume you will move outside the classroom for a conversation.  If you get fairly frequent calls that you are likely to consider important answering, sit in a place where your exit and re-entrance are as unobtrusive as possible.