PinedaLab

Prerequisites

Permission of the instructor AND a previous course in computer science OR computer programming experience. If you have never done any programming or if you have never used a command line on a unix workstation, you will find this course to be VERY challenging,  If this is the case, you may wish to register as an auditor or pass/fail instead of taking the course for a grade.

Homework and Grading Policy

Grades are based on four-five programming assignments and a final project. The programming assignments count for 70% of the grade, the final project counts for 30% of the grade. It is expected that each student will coordinate with the instructor to select a suitable project based on the student’s interest. The final project must be presented in class and working code must be demonstrated. Homework problems are generally awarded 2-5 points each. Programming assignments typically receive full credit if they produce correct results when run by the instructor on the cluster and are well documented. It is not sufficient that that the code runs on the student’s machine. Documentation and programming style are necessarily somewhat subjective. Note that not everything needed to complete the assignments will be presented in the lectures. Assignments will need material in the readings as well as the lectures.

Homework is accepted electronically as html formatted documents AND as working programs/scripts. No homework will be accepted via email or on paper. No late homework will be accepted. Once the due date and time has passed, it will be impossible to submit homework electronically. (We will check the timestamps on the files!). For programming assignments students may discuss ideas and approaches with others. However, programs and projects are to be completed independently and must be original work. The first block of comments in your Perl code should contain, at a minimum, the following items.

* Name of the program
* Your name and the date
* Assignment number
* Usage instructions for the program

Final Project

You should have a meeting with the instructor to decide on a final project no later than four weeks before the end of the course. A written proposal (a paragraph or two describing the project) which is put on your final project web page is due three weeks before the end of the course. I find that the best projects are those that come from active research projects. So it is best to consult with your advisor, or a faculty member in your department for potential projects. A suitable project should be about as much work as two or three homework assignments. The final project is graded on how well is shows mastery of the subject matter taught in the course. For example a project that makes effective use of modules, data structures (e.g. references), regular expressions or databases, will get more points than a program that uses just rudimentary perl. Documentation and maintainability is also important. Note: A project that solves an interesting and useful problem will also get more points than a problem that is just a homework exercise (This is graduate school after all). Here are some example projects from previous years: FinalProjects

Schedule