Computers and Computing

Fall 2006

News

[Dec 12th] We are hoping to return your Assignment 5 after the exam, so be sure to pick yours up before you leave the exam room. Note also that all the solutions to assignements 1-4 and the midterm are posted below.

[Dec 5th] Please note the special exam office hours: My office hours are cancelled this Thursday and Hiba's office hours are cancelled this Friday. On Monday of next week, Hiba will hold office hours from 2-3, on Tuesday I will hold office hours from 12-1, on Wednesday Albert will hold his office hour from 1-2 and then I will hold extra office hours 3-5 on Wednesday, all at the usual locations. Good luck on the exam! If I don't see you during office hours, happy holidays and thanks for all the hard work!

[Nov 14th] Please make sure to evaluate our course on-line starting this Thursday, November 16th by following links from Minerva. This is very important as data from student evaluations are used for merit and renewal decisions, as well as for identifying situations where a course or instructor needs help. I will also find any comments you have extremely valuable in helping me learn about teaching. All surveys are anonymous and results are not released to me until after the final grades have been submitted. You have until December 6th to complete the evaluation.

[Oct 31st] Quote of the day:
It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical? -- Alan Perlis, Epigrams in Programming :)

[Oct 27th] The JavaScript lecture slides now incorporate the corrections we made in class. If you are stuck and cannot figure out how to get your browser to execute JavaScript, make sure that you have enabled JavaScript (as per Lecture 11) in your browser. You should type your .html file in Notepad if you are using Windows, so that no extra invisible characters get added to your file. You should also allow all scripts to run, if your browser tells you it has blocked active content. However, if you still stuck after trying all these options, you could modify the code on the left side of this page and see the result on the right. Also see the end of Lecture 14 for tips on enabling debugging. Remember that you are eligible for Computer Science accounts in the Trottier building. To make one, go to the 3rd floor, go right and right as you exit the elevator into a big open lab area. Type 'newuser' as the user name and 'newuser' as your password and follow the instructions for making an account. Note that lab 3090 has Windows machines. Good luck!

[Oct 25th] The JavaScript workshop was held today. Here are the questions we were working on and the answers.

[Oct 23rd] There will be a workshop this Wednesday, October 25th on programming in JavaScript. It will be held from 4:00pm to 6:00pm in the Trottier building on the 3rd floor, room 3090. The workshop starts at 4:15, but if you would like to make a School of Computer Science computer account, come at 4:00 to receive instructions for how to make an account. You are strongly encouraged to attend the workshop. However, in case you are not able to make it, the materials will be posted here later, so be sure to check back to download them.

[Oct 16th] The solutions for the midterm have been posted. The average mark was 76%, which is very good. The midterms as well as homework 2 will be returned to you on Tuesday in class.

[Oct 6th] The solutions for homework 2 have been posted. Also, a revised version of the solutions to homework 1 is available. Finally, Happy Thanksgiving and good luck with studying. Remember that we agreed last class that my Tuesday office hours will be 11:00-12:30. The university scheduled lectures normally held next Monday on Tuesday, so our Tuesday class next week is cancelled.

[Oct 3rd] Please note that a revised version of the lecture slides for the Internet lecture has been posted. We will finish discussing the last slide on Thursday. Thursday is Midterm Review, so bring all your questions to class and share.

[Oct 2nd] The location of our Teaching Assistant Hiba Yamani's office hours is now McConnell Engineering, room 110A.

[Sept 20th] Due to popular demand, the lecture slides are now available before the lecture. Please don't read ahead during class because that will defeat the point of some of the discussions I plan to have. For this reason, I don't recommend that you print the slides before class, but now this option is available.

[Sept 20th] The office hours of our Teaching Assistant Albert will be held in McConnell Engineering, room 322, not 321.

[Sept 19th] If you cannot open the lecture slides, the assignment or the course outline, it might be that your computer doesn't have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed (to read .pdf files). Here is a link to the Adobe website where you can download this software. From 'Readers', choose 'Adobe Reader' and then 'Windows' if you are using Windows. Select 'Full Download'. Follow the installation steps.

[Sept 13th] Please note that the Teaching Assistants for this course have been assigned. Albert will not be holding his office hour today, but Hiba will hold her office hour on Friday. In the coming weeks, their office hours will be as stated here, unless something changes, in which case I will let you know. Also, the tentative schedule has been posted below. New feature: 4 PowerPoint slides per page for your paper-efficient printing needs coming as an alternative.

[Sept 12th] Oops!!! I realize now that you have seen today's material already last Thursday when you were supposed to be learning about the history of computation. We will see the history of computation next class (Sept 14th) when we look at hardware. Hopefully the review didn't hurt. Sorry about that.

Links

Course Outline
School of Computer Science

Course Lecturer:

Svetlana Stolpner

Office Hours: Tue 11:30-12:30 and Thu 11:30-12:30, or by appointment.
Location: McConnell Engineering, 408. As you exit the elevator on the 4th floor, go towards the big triangular post and then go into the left corridor and then into the left door just past the stairwell. You should find it easily. Looking forward to your visits!

Teaching Assistants:

Albert Bachand
abacha AT cs DOT mcgill DOT ca
Office Hours: Wednesday 1 - 2 pm
Location: McConnell Engineering, 322

Hiba Yamani
hiba DOT yamani AT mcgill DOT ca
Office Hours: Friday 2 - 3 pm
Location: McConnell Engineering, 110A

Course Information

Tutorials

Assignments and Midterm

Assignments are to be done individually. Assignments are due at the start of class. Late assignments are deducted 20% per day (Saturday and Sunday included).

Assignment 1 Due: September 21st, 8:35am Solutions
Assignment 2 Part 1 Part 2 Due: October 5th, 8:35am Solutions
Midterm Solutions
Assignment 3 Due: November 2nd, 8:35am Solutions
Assignment 4 Due: November 16th, 8:35am Solutions: 1 2 3 4
Assignment 5 Due: December 5th, 8:35am

Lecture	Date	Description	Notes
Lecture 1: print	Sept 3rd	Introduction and Motivation	Course Outline
Lectures 2 & 3: print	Sept 12th	Number Representation	Assignment 1 handed out
Lecture 4: print	Sept 14th	Computer Hardware: Past and Present
Lecture 5: print	Sept 19th	Storage and File Formats
Lecture 6: print	Sept 21st	Audio and Video File Formats	Assignment 1 due, Solutions
Lecture 7: print	Sept 26th	Computer Networks	Assignment 2, part 1 handed out
Peer2Peer: print Lecture 8: print	Sept 28th	Networking/Internet	Assignment 2, part 2 handed out
Lecture 9: print	Oct 3rd	Internet
Lecture 10: print	Oct 5th	Midterm Review	Assignment 2 due
	Oct 12th	Midterm
Lecture 11: print	Oct 17th	Low-Level to High-Level Programming, Programming on the Web	Midterm and Homework 2 returned
Lecture 12: print	Oct 19th	Javascript	Assignment 3 handed out
Lecture 13: print	Oct 24th	Javascript	Building on the lecture notes from last class...
Lecture 14: print	Oct 26th	Javascript
Lecture 15: print	Oct 31st	Javascript
Lecture 16: print	Nov 2nd	Algorithm Design: Sorting and Searching	Assignment 3 due
Lecture 17: print	Nov 7th	Algorithm Design: Graphs	Assignment 4 handed out
Lecture 18: print	Nov 9th	Algorithm Design: Huffman Codes
Lecture 19: print	Nov 14th	Algorithm Design: Computational Geometry
Lecture 20: print	Nov 16th	Software Distribution Policies Social Impact of Computers	Assignment 4 due
Lecture 21: print	Nov 21st	Social Impact of Computers	Assignment 5 handed out
Lecture 22: print	Nov 23rd	Future of Computer Science: Artificial Intelligence
Lecture 23: print	Nov 28th	Artificial Intelligence
Lecture 24: print	Nov 30th	Limitations to Computation
Lecture 25: print	Dec 5th	Exam Review