Computer Science 501
Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis

Fall 2014, The College of Saint Rose

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Instructor and Course Information

Instructor:

Dr. James D. Teresco, Albertus Hall 400-2, (518) 485-3755
Electronic mail: terescoj AT strose.edu (best contact method)
Twitter: @JTeresco_StR_CS
Class URL: [Link]
Class hour: Tuesday 6:00-8:30, Albertus 205
Office hours: Monday 2:00-3:30, Tuesday 2:30-4:00, Wednesday 1:30-2:30, before and after class, and by appointment

Texts

The text for the course is Java Structures: Data Structures in Java for the Principled Programmer, "Root 7" Edition (a free online textbook) by Duane Bailey. So there are no books to buy! You may print or view the text in Portable Document Format. Other readings will also be assigned from freely available sources.

Course News

Submission Guidelines

Your submissions for lab assignments will include several types of items. Different requirements apply to each, as described below. It is important that you adhere to file format and naming requirements to facilitate grading. Submissions that do not meet these requirements will not be accepted.

Lab Questions
The answers to all "lab questions" for a particular lab should be included within a single plain-text or PDF file named labn.txt or labn.pdf, as appropriate, where n is the lab number. The file should start with your name and the lab number. If you use plain text, your file should be appropriately line-wrapped for easy reading in a window or on a printed page with a width of 80 characters.

Note: for lab questions that ask you to draw a memory diagram, you have a few options. You may attempt to represent the memory with plain text, but that is difficult to construct and read. Ideally, you would use a drawing program and submit in your PDF file, but you are also permitted to draw the diagram on paper and submit a scan or photograph, as long as the diagram is legible in that form.

Practice Programs
Your submissions for practice programs are graded primarily on correctness, but you will be required to include your name at the top of the program, and you must use the file name specified. You will normally demonstrate practice programs and submit them electronically, but no printout needs to be submitted.

You are of course encouraged to practice good documentation, formatting, and style for these programs, but the grade will depend only on correctness (and having your name in a properly-named file).

Programming Assignments
These are the most formal submissions and will be graded on design, documentation, style, correctness, and efficiency (where appropriate). A good design will use an appropriate algorithm, data structures, and language constructs to solve the problem. A well-documented program will include a comment at the top of each file that includes your name, the assignment, and a description of the contents of the file. There should also be comments for each constructor or method definition (including a brief description of the method's purpose, its parameters, and return value), each variable or group of related variables, and any section of code whose purpose and/or behavior is not obvious from context or the code itself. Style requirements include appropriate formatting (sufficient and consistent indentation, spacing, and punctuation, wrapping long lines of code), good use of named constants, and meaningful and appropriate names for variables, methods, constants, and parameters. Correctness, of course, requires the expected output be produced for a set of test inputs (which will normally not be provided in advance). Efficiency will be more important in some assignments than others, and requires that the program does not do any unnecessary computation or use any more memory than needed. And, of course, you must use the file name(s) specified. You will normally be required to demonstrate programming assignments, submit your source code electronically, and submit a printout of your program.

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