Announcements

The final exam will be on Tuesday, December 7th, from 7pm-9pm on Zoom, use the link shortl.io/csci100-exam to join the exam. It will be 1 hour and 50 minutes long, and will be a comprehensive exam. If you have a conflict with this time, you must let me know by Saturday, December 4th at midnight by emailing akrentsel@csci100.org and cc-ing vijay.chaudhary@csci100.org. As before, the exam will be on Mimir and strictly closed-book.

As for the clobber policy, here are the details of how it will be implemented:

If you get a higher grade on the final exam than on either of your midterms, your final exam score will replace the lower of your two midterm scores. Note that this will be done taking into account the different buckets on each exam, rather than just using absolute percentages. Meaning if you score a high B on the final, that will replace your lowest midterm score (if it is below a high B) with a high B for that midterm. 

I’ve created the extra-credit filters gallery and put it up on the website. You can find it at https://csci100.org/filters/

Please take a look and then vote on your top 3 favorite filters at www.shortl.io/csci100-filter-vote by Friday, December 3rd at 11:59pm. The winners will receive some extra-extra credit.

Thanks to everyone who submitted filters. If you made a custom filter but didn’t send me before/after demo images, email me at akrentsel@csci100.org so I we can get your submission on the gallery page (and so I can give you extra credit).

Some students have been asking about how to get started on the project. I decided to put together 2 short videos showing the very first steps of how to read the instructions, how to understand the multiple files in the code, and how to get the code running. You can find those 2 videos here: Search Engine Getting Started Videos

Note though that a large part of this project is reading through the project instructions to understand how all parts of the project fit together. So in these videos, I have not told you everything you need to understand for the project. You will need to read the instructions and the comments in the code before you start coding, to understand how the project is structured and what helper functions there are that you should use.

Please ask away on Piazza if you have any questions.

The final project for the course has been released, and is available on Mimir. It is shared between CSCI100 and CSCI120 - you will need to do if it you are in either class. The project is made up of three parts, and part 1 is now available on Mimir. Part 2 will go up around the time when part 1 is due, and then part 3 will go up around when part 2 is due.

The course project requires implementing your very own search engine, using a simplified version of the same approach that Google uses to provide search results. There is a detailed instructions doc available in the assignment on Mimir.

Part 1 is due on 11/16/2021 at 11:59 AM (notice the AM! at noon).

Exam 2 is coming up on Monday, November 1st.

To help you prepare for Exam 2, we have put together a practice exam which you can take in order to find how you are doing. While this is optional, we highly encourage you to go through it as it will be a good way to prepare for the exam.

If you want to compare answers or ask any questions, please post publicly on Piazza so other students can see the questions and help answer. 

You can find the practice exam here: www.shortl.io/csci100-practice-exam-2

In addition to this, the best ways to prepare for the exam are:

Complete all classwork assignments (mostly from September 20th (Functions) to October 25th (Pass-by-reference vs Pass-by-value)) Review individual lecture videos on the topics you are rusty about Complete Project 1, HW 04, Lab 09 (at least Part I & II) (as they are due this week and their topics will appear on the exam)  Ask questions on topics or ideas that are not 100% clear to you. Don’t just blindly accept the answer to be something. Make sure you are comfortable with the following topics: 

• Functions
• Lists
• Mutability
• Input/Output
• Dictionaries
• 2D Lists
• Nested loops

Piazza is the place to ask questions - emails to me will take >24 hours to be replied to, on Piazza you can get a much quicker response (in fact, the average response time on Piazza currently is a blazing-fast 12 minutes).

Happy studying!

Project 1 is released this week! The project consists of implementing 6 image filters, and is broken up into 3 parts with separaate due dates:

• Part 1: Grayscale and Red Stripe: Due Thursday, 10/21
• Part 2: Invert Colors, Flip: Due Saturday, 10/23
• Part 3: Blur, Threshold: Due Monday, 10/25

There is additionally extra credit available on this project. For some extra credit, you can implement any cool filter that you want. We will then have a gallery of student-created filters, and students will vote on which filters are their favorites. The top few filters will receive more extra-credit.

The TAs have been hard at work grading, and have completed grading all ~170 of your exams. We have just released your grade to you on Mimir. Your exam score denominator is 106 points, not 61 as Mimir says. For example, if Mimir says your score is “50/61”, your actual score is “50/106”. This is because of how Mimir handles the code editor questions. 

Read on below to understand how you did on the exam, where to find solutions, how to request a regrade, and what you can do if you’re unhappy with your grade. 

Distribution

You can see the distribution of the exam by clicking here here.

To help you understand how you’re doing, we’ve come up with the following approximate buckets (out of 106). Note that these buckets are just guidance for what level you’re performing at. These are not your final grade, nor are they your midterm grade. Your midterm grade may be lower or higher, based on a variety of factors.

Solutions

Solutions to the 3 versions of the exam can be found at:

• www.shortl.io/rubric-v1
• www.shortl.io/rubric-v2
• www.shortl.io/rubric-v3

I encourage you to look through the solutions for your version of the exam. I also encourage you to come to office hours to talk through the solutions for any problem you missed. TAs can help give you hints on how to approach problems when you feel stuck.

Regrade Requests

TAs are humans too, and make mistakes while grading (albeit rarely). After reviewing your exam and the solutions/rubric, you can use the form at www.shortl.io/csci100-exam1-regrade to request a regrade on any question where you believe there was a mistake in grading. Please submit one re-grade request *per question* that you feel was graded incorrectly.

If you’re unhappy with your grade

• This of this exam as a wakeup call. You can absolutely still get your grade up higher (even all the way up to an A), based on how points are structured in this course and with the clobber policy (details below).
• Come get help. We are offering ~30 hours of office hours a week, hosted by our large team of TAs. Come to office hours and ask a TA to look over your exam with you. We are here to help you succeed.

Clobber Policy:

• If you didn’t do as well as you had wanted on Midterm 1, we will be offering a way for you to recover points on midterm 1 based on your final exam score. More details to come later in the semester. 

Best, CSCI100 Course Staff

This week’s announcement is made up of 3 mini-announcements:

STEP Internship Application The STEP internship application opened 9/14, and is a rolling application. I highly encourage you to apply as soon as possible - ideally by the end of the week. Click here to go to the application page.

Assignment Late Policy Reminder on the late policy for this class: all labs and homeworks can be turned in up to 5 days late. You will only lose 10% per day that the assignment is late (e.g. an assignment 2 days late can get up to 80% credit). We will also be dropping the lowest lab grade at the end of the semester. So if you can’t finish an assignment by the due date, it’s okay - keep working on it and submit it late for partial credit!

Exam Grading We are in the process of grading your exam, and hope to have the exam graded for you by next Monday.

Exam 1 is coming up this coming Wednesday, 9/22. It will cover all of the content up through the end of last week: binary, variables, expressions, string functions, conditionals, while loops, and for loops.

The course staff has put together a practice exam for you in the same format as the actual exam. It has more questions than the actual exam, but the same kinds of questions. You can find the practice exam here: www.shortl.io/csci100-practice-exam1.

In addition to this, the best ways to prepare for the exam are:

• Complete all classwork assignments
• Review individual lecture videos on the topics you are rusty about
• Complete lab3 and lab4 (as they are due on Wednesday and their topics will be on the exam)
• Ask questions on topics or ideas that are not 100% clear to you. Don’t just blindly accept the answer to be something - make sure you understand why an expression evaluates to what it does, or why to use a for loop over a while loop or vice versa.

Good luck!

Classes are officially back on, starting Monday, September 13th. We will continue with lectures, with our schedule pushed back by 1 lecture.

We will tentatively have our Exam 1 next Wednesday, covering all of the content up through functions on the schedule. The exam will consistent of a few knowledge questions and some code writing questions. More info on how we will take the test will come soon.

Hi everyone,

As this cybersecurity situation continues to evolve, I have a few updates for you on the class schedule for this week. 

1. Lecture on Wednesday (tomorrow) is converted to an office hour. You are not required to attend, but if you do, Vijay, the TAs, and I will be available to answer questions and help with assignments.
2. You are still expected to watch the lectures videos on your phone for this week. If you have no wifi, please watch them on your phone with your data plan. I have used large fonts so they are watchable on your phone. If you are unable to watch them on your phones, please post on Piazza so we can help find alternative ideas for you to watch them.
3. Starting this week, I have added many more additional Office Hours to the class calendar thanks to the Google TAs. Please drop by with any questions on classwork, homework, labwork, or computer science in general.

The situation for Thursday’s lab is still unclear. As of now, assume we will have lab unless the university says otherwise. We will follow university guidance - if they cancel class on Thursday, we will convert the lab class into office hours. If they do not cancel class, we will have lab as scheduled on Thursday. If we have lab, then I will answer questions about the lecture videos for the first 20 minutes of class, then we will work as usual on a shorter lab for the remainder of the class. 

Finally, Mimir’s IDE seems to be down currently. Because of this, I’ve extended the due date for Lab 2 by two days to this Friday at midnight. If Mimir continues to be down through tomorrow, I’ll extend the deadline further. In the meantime, you can use replit.com to write code and submit the files that you code via the green submit button on the assignment page. Replit is another cloud-based IDE, just like the Mimir IDE, but provided by a different company. You can follow the instructions in my answer in https://piazza.com/class/ksjaetb15k147d?cid=71 to get signed up and start coding. Please ask on Piazza if you have any problems setting it up.

Hope to see you all soon!

A couple small announcement bundled into one:

1. Homework 2 is out now, and will be due Sunday, September 12th at midnight.
2. The quiz policy will be that I will drop the lowest 2 quiz grades of the semester. If your internet quality prevented you from completing the quiz last week, make sure to find somewhere with stronger internet this week. You can either find a workspace on campus, like the Google space, or you can hotspot or use the internet on your phone. Future quizzes will have coding questions in class, so you will likely want to do them on your computer.
3. I’ve updated the course schedule page to use Google Calendar, which will be easier to keep in sync and updated each week.

Per department request, all class lectures and labs will be virtual, at least for the first few weeks of class, then we will re-evaluate.

Please join the class Piazza by following the sign-up instructions you received by email. If you did not receive them, or are joining the class late, click https://piazza.com/howard/fall2021/csci100 to sign up directly. If you have any questions, please ask there rather than emailing me directly.

Office hours will be offered in person and virtually, please see the schedule tab for up-to-date times and locations for office hours.

Welcome to CSCI 100! If you’re thinking about enrolling but are not sure, please reach out to me at akrentsel@csci100.org.