Syllabus and Class Information
Computer Science 127
Fall 2016

Note: Remember to refresh your browser to see updates to this document. Rooms, office hours, and other details are subject to change!

Recording or photographing lectures is not allowed unless you have obtained explicit permission, in advance, from the instructor. Please turn off and put away your phone during class.

Meeting times

Lectures:

Labs:

The lab is the two-hour weekly meeting in Pearson. Note that the schedule below differs slightly from the information on the ISU schedule of classes.

Section 4	Wednesday 6:10 - 8:00 pm in Pearson 108
Section 6	Wednesday 6:10 - 8:00 pm in Pearson 158
New section	Thursday 4:10 - 6:00 pm in Pearson 158
Section 5	Friday 8:00 - 9:50 am in Pearson 158

Instructor

Office hours during final exam week:
Tuesday 11-12 and 1-3
Wednesday 12-1

Prerequisites and course content

Prerequisite: Math 140 (College Algebra) or equivalent

Major topics include:

• Problem solving strategies
• Survival skills for Com S 227
• Types, variables, arithmetic expressions and assignments
• Functions and modules
• Conditional statements, boolean logic
• Loops and iteration
• Lists and strings
• Input and output; files
• Unit testing, incremental development, modules/libraries
• Documentation, debugging
• How a simple CPU works; binary representation of data

Teaching Assistants

There are no TA office hours during final exam week

See top of page for Steve's office hours during exam week.

Name	ISU email	Office Hours	Lab Section
Tejaswini Gutti	tgutti	T 4:10 - 5:00	Lab: W 6:10 - 8:00 (Pearson 158)
Preeti Bhardwaj	preetibh	W 3:10 - 4:00	Lab: F 8:00 - 9:50 (Pearson 158)
Kate McClintock	katmc	F 3:10 - 4:00	Lab: W 6:10 - 8:00 (Pearson 108)
Ziyang Yu	yzy	M 5:10 - 6:00	Lab: R 4:10 - 6:00 (Pearson 158)

Attendance

We adhere to an Equal Opportunity Attendance Policy: If you miss lab or you miss an in-class quiz for any reason, it's a zero. You can oversleep, go to the beach, perform in the symphony, get the flu, attend a funeral, or fly to Afghanistan with the ISU Beef Team; we will not discriminate. Therefore you do not ever need to provide excuses when you miss class or lab.

• Ok, for a serious, extended illness or other unusual circumstances, exceptions may be made; please DO discuss the situation with your instructor.

We will drop the two lowest lab scores and the two lowest quiz scores, so you can get sick for a couple of days or go home for an emergency without a negative impact on your grade. Choose wisely.

If you miss the lecture, it is your responsibility to find out what was covered and study it on your own. Please do not ask the professor what happened in class, just consult the "topics" page. This page summarizes the topics covered, give relevant sections of the text, and include links to all code examples discussed in class. For links, see "Notes and sample code" in the pinned messages at the top of the Piazza Q & A.

Piazza and Blackboard

Turning off email notifications

1. Find your name in the upper-right corner of the Piazza screen
2. Click the drop-down menu and select "Account/email settings"
3. Under "Class and email settings", find Com S 127
4. Click on the link "Edit email notifications" in the small, blue font
5. Edit as you see fit, e.g. "No Email"

The Piazza Q & A

general	General questions about the course
python	Questions about the Python language
labs	Questions about the labs
hw1, hw2, etc.	Questions about the homework
exam1, exam2, final_exam	Questions about the exams

Blackboard

You can log into Blackboard with your ISU NetID and password at

https://bb.its.iastate.edu.

Textbook and Other Resources

1. There Are Eels in my Hovercraft. This is a set of notes written by the instructor. It is a work in progress that is currently being updated for Python 3 and posted in html format. See http://web.cs.iastate.edu/~smkautz/cs127f16/notes/ for current updates.
   • You can also take a look at the entire rough draft here as a giant pdf: http://web.cs.iastate.edu/~smkautz/cs127f15/notes/ (But remember, this older version uses Python 2. See below for a summary of the key differences between Python 2 and Python 3.)
2. The second textbook is a free, online interactive version of a book called How to Think Like a Computer Scientist that has been sort of an online classic for a while. See

   http://interactivepython.org/runestone/static/thinkcspy/index.html

   and take a look at the "ActiveCode" and "CodeLens" features. Click on the book title at the top of the page to get the whole table of contents. For now, don't worry about registering or logging in, you can still read and use the book.

Python 2 vs Python 3

We will be using Python 3 for this course. Many examples and books still use Python 2. The two versions are not compatible, but it is not hard to translate one to the other. The differences that will matter to us are:

• Use of print: Python 3 requires parentheses around the values to be printed.
• Behavior of the division operator:
  • In Python 3, the single slash / operator always performs floating-point division, and a double slash // is integer division.
    25 / 10 is 2.5
    25 // 10 is 2
  • In Python 2, the single slash is integer division if both operands are integers, and floating-point division if at least one operand is floating-point.
    25 / 10 is 2
    25 / 10.0 is 2.5
    25 // 10 is an error
• In Python 3, the input(...) function always returns a string. If you are reading numeric values, you need to explicitly convert from string to int or float using the int(...) or float(...) functions. There is no function raw_input as in Python 2.

Software

The labs in the basement of Pearson will all have this software available (rooms 108, 105/109, 113, and 158). Some of the labs are heavily booked during the day for classes, so check the schedule on the door of each lab first. Note: labs are still being updated as of the first day of classes, so the Python/Wing installation may not be available until later in the week.

If you wish, you can also install the software, which is all free, on your own computer. For Python, go to

https://www.python.org/downloads/

and download the Python 3 installer for your platform.

For Wing 101, see

http://wingware.com/downloads/wingide-101

Exams

*** You must bring your university ID to all exams. ***

If you cannot attend an exam, you must notify your instructor at least one week prior to the exam to make other arrangements. The instructors will normally adhere to ISU policies regarding exam conflicts.

The final exam will not be returned to you, but you may come to the instructor's office hours during the following semester to review it.

Grades

Letter grades will be based on an overall weighted average of the three exams, the homework, labs, and in-class quizzes or other exercises, with approximately the following weighting.

• Exam 1: 15%
• Exam 2: 15%
• Final Exam: 20%
• Homework Assignments: 35%
• Labs and other in-class exercises: 15%

exam1 = your Exam 1 score
exam2 = your Exam 2 score
final = (your final exam score) / 2
homework = 100 * (sum of your homework scores) / (total points for all homework)
labs = 100 * (sum of your lab points) / (total lab points)
overall = exam1 * .15 + exam2 * .15 + final * .20 + homework * .35 + labs * .15

Letter grades are not assigned until the end of the course. We can promise that your grade, determined by the overall weighted average described above, will be at least the grade given by a standard 10-point scale, that is,

90 and above	A-
80 and above	B-
70 and above	C-
60 and above	D-

In practice the grading scale may "curved" slightly (i.e. shifted down by couple of points). An approximate guideline is that the overall median score for students completing the course will be a B-.

Homework Assignments

Important note regarding dead week: The last programming assignment will normally be due during the last week of classes.

Programming assignments will be posted on Blackboard in the Homework section and announced on Piazza.

Submissions and feedback

Homework scores will be posted for you on Blackboard. For the assignments, additional feedback is normally provided in the form of attached text files indicating where points were taken off and showing the results of whatever functional tests we performed. To see the attached file or files, go to the "Review Submission" page on Blackboard for your latest assignment submission.

If you have questions about the grading or if you feel an error has been made in grading your assignment, first contact the TA that graded it, either during office hours or by email. In particular, requests for regrades must be made within one week of the date when the results were made available on Blackboard. If you are not satisfied with the response from the TA, please contact your instructor promptly. If necessary, your homework will be regraded. Note that a regrade may result in a lower score.

Correct submission of an assignment is your responsibility. Remember that when submitting an assignment via Blackboard, you can immediately check whether the submission was successful, and you can always download your submission and verify that it is what you intended. Don't forget that with Blackboard, it is NOT enough to just select the file to be submitted. You also have to remember to click the "Submit" button.

Labs

• Each lab is like a self-paced tutorial with things for you to do. There are occasional "checkpoints" which are tasks you have to show or explain to the TA. This is how we grade you in lab.
• We encourage you to collaborate and talk about things with the TA and the people around you, as long as you eventually complete the checkpoints yourself. If you are finishing the checkpoints outside of the lab period, collaboration is NOT allowed (of course, you can meet with any of the TAs during office hours for help).
• At the beginning of each lab period, you can find the lab writeup through the links on Piazza and start reading it. The TA will normally go over the new lab and help everyone get started as necessary.

Grading of lab work

• Attendance and participation in labs is required. "Attendance" means that you come at the beginning of your scheduled lab period and work on the lab material until either you finish the checkpoints or the period ends.
• If you do not attend your scheduled lab period for any reason, you get a zero for that lab.
• There will normally be 10 labs altogether, and we will drop your lowest two scores. This will allow you to get the flu, oversleep, or attend a funeral a couple of times without any negative impact on your grade.
  • If you have an extended illness or other unusual circumstances, please discuss the situation with your professor.
• If you aren't able to finish the checkpoints within the lab period, you have 6 days to finish it on your own. You can meet with any TA during office hours to have your checkpoints recorded or get additional help. Late checkpoints will not be recorded more than 6 days after your lab period. The deadline is the last TA or instructor office hour within those 6 days. Checkpoints will normally NOT be reviewed by email.
• Late checkpoints will not be recorded if you did not attend the lab in the first place.

Working ahead on labs

Academic Dishonesty Policy

What is academic dishonesty?

If you turn in work that was based on or copied from someone else's work, you have committed plagiarism, which is one form of academic dishonesty. However, you are also responsible for academic dishonesty if you allow someone else to copy your work or otherwise provide information.

Anyone found responsible in an academic dishonesty case will receive an automatic F in this course.

How to avoid academic dishonesty

A W-W-W-Warning

Disability Accommodation

Dead Week

Harassment and Discrimination

Religious Accommodation

Contact Information