whale disguised as sushi CS 1110

Older Announcements

Fri May 15, 12:45am Ithaca time (CMS email subject line "[CS 1110] revised resub policies")

You can register to receive a new grade on a resubmission of one of A4 or A5; do so on the CMS "assignment" "SPECIAL: which resubmission?" by May 18th 11:59pm Ithaca time.
(If you don't want to resubmit either one, don't do anything.)
(We will not change the previously announced grade centers, so other people resubmitting will not affect your grade.)

On May 19th, we'll use the registration info to manually give an "extension" to you for one of "new" CMS assignments "A4resub" or "A5resub", which will allow you to upload your resubmission at the "new" assignment by May 20th 11:59pm Ithaca time. (No grace period this time; there's behind-the-scenes time pressure.)

A4resub/A5resub will be pre-populated with the groups from A4/A5, so you may NOT change groups for resubmission. You can work with your A4 partner on A4resub or your A5 partner on A5resub, but each individual can only get a single new grade, namely, on the assignment they registered for.

Examples for illustration:

  1. Students S1 & S2 partnered on A4, and both register for a new A4 grade.
    Either can upload to A4resub, and A4resub will show a joint new grade for the S1+S2 group.
    We will use the new grade for both S1 and S2 when doing final grade calculations.
  2. S1 & S2 partnered on A4 & A5; S1 registers for a new A4 grade, S2 registers for a new A5 grade.
    S1 and S2 are allowed to collaborate on both assignments, and I think technically CMS will allow either S1 or S2 to upload to A4resub and A5resub, and both resubs will show a joint grade for S1+S2 group;
    but we will only give the new A4 grade to S1 when doing grade calculations, and we will only give the new A5 grade to S2.
  3. S1 & S2 partnered on A4; S1 registers for a new A4 grade, S2 doesn't register for either.
    Again, I think technically CMS will allow either S1 or S2 to upload to A4resub, and the students can collaborate on A4,
    but we will only give the new A4 grade to S1 when doing grade calculations. S2 will not receive the new grade, even if S2 does the upload, and even if S2 didn't register for A5resub (i.e., didn't "use up" their resubmission chance).
  4. S1 & S2 were A4 partners, both register for a new A4 grade, S2 submits a new revision, but the score on the revision is lower than the original A4 grade.
    We will assign the new, lower A4 grade to both S1 and S2.
    (This scenario is unlikely, since we will be using the same grading rubric on the resubmissions. But understand that the resubmission grade over-writes the original grade --- you get the last grade of A4 and A4resub, not the best grade, and ditto for A5/A5resub.)

Tue May 12, 8:30pm Ithaca time (also sent as email via CMS, subject line "[CS 1110] A5 grades; approximate standings"):

A. A5 grades

The course staff put in a heroic, historic effort and graded the over 300 A5 submissions in under 36 hours, all while finishing up their last two days of classes and coursework. We faculty and students in the course all owe them a *tremendous* debt of gratitude.

The A5 grades and feedback [are now available on CMS]. See https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/resources/cms.html for how to see your grader's feedback comments.

Out of 100 points,
the rough center of the As: 98
of the Bs: 82
of the Cs: 70

Regrades may be requested on CMS until Wednesday May 13 [original email had a typo in the date], 11:59pm Ithaca time. This is a narrower window than usual so that we have time to get the regrades processed before resubmissions are due.

B. Regrades for A3 and A4 were de-prioritized in order to get the A4 and A5 grades out. We anticipate finishing these by the end of the weekend.

C. The procedure for resubmitting one of A4 or A5 is being finalized, but will involve a "new" assignment on CMS. Each individual student gets one grade change (so a team of two cannot each resubmit one of A4 and A5 and get raised grades for both assignments).

One-on-one appointments for help are available for signup through CMS.

D. We have created a Python script for you to compare your current assignment/ prelim scores against the A, B, C centers, so that you can have a rough idea of your standing in the course. Download
https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/resources/weighted_scores_vs_centers.py

Change line 6 to be YOUR scores (as ints or floats, NOT strings) (Right now the scores are set to the B centers).

Then run Python on the script. You'll get a printout like the following:

(###  EXAMPLE printout  --- YOUR numbers will probably be different!!! ###
### This script [doesn't] account for labs or other factors!!! #### )

    A, B, C centers if P1 included: [0.961, 0.824, 0.677]
    My weighted score: 0.824

    A, B, C centers if P1 not included: [0.974, 0.837, 0.705]
    My weighted score: 0.837

We will not be able to provide more fine-grained grade-border information because making such determinations is a very time-consuming, sometimes multi-day process; we take many individual factors into account so strict numerical cut-offs are a bit misleading; we need to first finalize the details of the A4-or-A5 resubmission; we need to provide help to those students who are working on that; and we need to handle some potential violations of the academic integrity code.

But, while there are still miles to go before we sleep, congratulations on reaching the end of classes during this most, most unusual and difficult semester!

Fri May 8, 8:30pm Ithaca time (also sent as email via CMS, subject line "[CS 1110] Academic Integrity; A4 grades"):

1. The A4 grades and feedback [are now on CMS]. See https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/resources/cms.html for how to see your grader's feedback comments.

Out of 100 points,
the rough center of the As: 97
of the Bs: 85
of the Cs: 70

Regrades may be requested on CMS until Tuesday May 12, 11:59pm. This is a narrower window than usual so that we have time to get the regrades processed before resubmissions are due.

2. Reminder: please don't share your code with anyone outside your group or course staff, or look at someone else's code. If you somehow did look at another group's code, please acknowledge this in your code headers.

You have a chance to resubmit one of A4 or A5, and resubmissions will be due the 20th, which we hope we alleviate time pressure and thus make it easier to not make poor decisions.

I mention these points because we have had to initiate some academic integrity hearings for A4. ()The scores currently on CMS do not reflect any penalties for potential violations yet.)

3. We will announce details of how resubmission (of one of A4 or A5, and optional) will work after A5 is due.

Sun May 3, 10:15pm (also sent as email via CMS, subject line "[CS 1110] A5 clarifications and more help; grade i[nfo]"):

Hi CS1110, another one of our patented info-laden update emails!

Topics:

  1. A5 clarifications
  2. More help opportunities Fri-Sat May 8-9
  3. We'll [release] whatever grade info that we can before the grade-option choice deadline; but it's going to be tight

1. A5: The handout and zip file posted on the course website have been updated to clarify the Thought Question (Section 4.6) and the specification of the __init__ method for Month. See the handout's "page 0" for more info. (pdf, html)

2. The Staff/Office hours page, https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/staff/ , shows we've arranged for *28* extra office/consulting hours on Fri-Sat May 8-9!

Do note that each of the hours from 5pm Ithaca time Friday through all of Saturday can only be staffed by a SINGLE person. If demand is high, please be patient about waiting times.

Prof. Fan and I would like to make a special, by-name commendation of those staff who could make arrangements to be on-call Friday and Saturday. The devotion of this Last Weekend Brigade is truly fantastic!

Jenny Cao Vianca Hurtado Will Xiao
Jonathan Chai Jude Javillo Terence Hantian Zhang
Zoli Csaki Hannah Lee Ruiqi Zhu
Pooja Gokhale Jacob Levy  
Linda He Jesse Phillips  
Irene Hung Joy Thean  

3. Prof. Fan and I will release whatever grade information we can as soon as it becomes available, by email and website.

We are aware of the deadline for choosing S/U-vs-letter-vs-drop. We will get A4 graded roughly near the end of this week. But given the weight of A5, we simply can't say anything about course grades until we get A5 graded, and A5 is due Sun Mar 10 (plus grace period.)

We are throwing everything we can at trying to get A5 graded as soon as possible. To get all hands on deck for this grading effort, all office and consulting hours on Monday and Tuesday May 11 and 12 are canceled, and we expect to not be monitoring Piazza or email closely during that timeframe.

All the same, this will be tight, and I don't know if we can realistically make it: we would need to get the A5 grading done in under 48 hours, and many of the staff have other things due for their own coursework during the last two days of class. But we will try, and again, we will email/post grade info as soon as it is available.

To remind you of what you already know, grade-wise:

Fri May 1, 3:15am (also sent as email via CMS, subject line "[CS 1110] A5 released"):

A5 is released on CMS, with the handout posted to the "Schedule" webpage, due Sun May 10 11:59PM Ithaca time (but see handout for grace period). https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/schedule/

We will do our best to try to get A5 graded by sometime on May 12th, but we cannot guarantee we will be able to make that date.

We anticipate setting up an A5 partner service soon.

Help opportunities: in addition to the regularly scheduled events,

Wed Apr 29, 3:15am (also sent as email via CMS, subject line "[CS 1110] A3 grades"):

The A3 grades and feedback [are now on CMS]. See https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/resources/cms.html for how to see your grader's feedback comments. Note that some graders put feedback for both parts of A3 in only one of A3tests or A3fns.

Out of 100 points for the sum of the two A3 parts (test cases and functions),
The rough center of the As: 96 out of 100
Of the Bs: 88 out of 100
Of the Cs: 82 out of 100.

The functions were worth 80 of the 100 points. If we were considering just the functions themselves, the rough A/B/C centers would be 78/72/68.

Regrades may be requested on CMS until Thursday May 7, 11:59pm Ithaca time. Recall that the a3_todo.py solutions are posted on the course "Schedule" webpage.

Some interesting insights into your classmates' lives can perhaps be extracted from the names of Tasks that students added for their test cases. The most common Task names were (prefix = # of occurrences):

166 "sleep" 52 "study" 49 "eat" 32 "breakfast" 31 "homework" 30 "task1" 28 "work" 27 "dinner" 23 "lunch" 22 "party" 20 "nap" 20 "eat breakfast" 19 "eat lunch" 17 "watch tv" 17 "coffee" 15 "task 1" 15 "study for prelim" 15 "classes" 14 "task2" 14 "task 2"
The longest Task names were:
1 "recover from watching the mgmt kids music video" 1 "stay up watching tiktoks instead of sleeping" 1 "i guess i'll save the kid in the tree again" 1 "try and get the reporter to fall for me" 1 "steal the mayor's car and the groundhog" 1 "go to sleep at what feels like midnight" 1 "do my best at completing the assignment" 1 "create a version for electric field(haha 1 "drive with the groundhog off the cliff" 1 'clean the mayonaize out of my socks' 1 "wake up and great ready for the day" 1 "third task for space_available_day" 1 "task that will take multiple hours" 1 "practice throwing cards into a hat" 1 "drive back from a place 24hrs away" 2 "contemplating the meaning of life" 1 "realize that it's happening again" 1 "go to work shift at tatkon center" 1 "sneak the army to the river side" 1 "go to work shift at olin library" 1 "watch honey we shrunk ourselves" 1 "guide the army across the river" 1 "cornell fight team! ha! ha! ha!" 2 "go to wisconsin for conference" 2 "carrying my existential burden" 1 "this event overlaps with first" 1 "give up and eat more junk food" 1 "destroy some folk at mariokart"
See the full list.

Mon Apr 27, 2:10pm (also sent as email via CMS, subject line "[CS 1110] lab9 == last; section == A4 office hours"): Lab 9, on classes, is now posted on the course Schedule page. Traditionally, students have enjoyed this one, because one develops a working Blackjack game at the end. Direct link: https://cs1110.cs.cornell.edu/py/labs/cs1110/lab9

Because of A4/A5/study-week timing:

If you had the time and inclination to practice on the labs that were cut, optional extra practice can be obtained by Spring 2018 lab 11 and the coding part of lab 12, posted at https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2018sp/labs/ . (No lab server setup is available.)

Sat Apr 25, 6:45pm (also sent as email via CMS, subject line "[CS 1110] indentlines' spec's 3rd example typo"): There is a stray 'd' in a4.py's indentline's specification's 3rd example. The contents of the online zip file and the A4 handout have been corrected, but we suggest you just hand-correct the line if you've already started working on a4.py: if you see an 'abdc' in the answer of the third example, change it to 'abc'.
Thanks to the student who pointed this out!

Tue Apr 22, 1pm (also sent as email via CMS, subject line "[CS 1110] A4 example corrected"): We've fixed copy-paste errors in the example in the specification for todo_list_to_string in a4.py. The updates have been made in the code (in the zip file) and the handout, and page 6 of the handout shows in orange what was changed. Thanks to the student who pointed the problem out!
https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/assignments/assignment4/a4.pdf
https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/assignments/assignment4/a4.html

Mon Apr 21, 1:45pm (also sent as email via CMS, subject line "[CS 1110] A4 out; resubmission of one of A4/A5")

A4 is released, with the handout posted to the "Schedule" webpage, due Thu April 30 11:59PM Ithaca time (but see handout for grace period). https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/schedule/

We will allow (optional) resubmission after grading feedback for one of A4 or A5, with a resubmission deadline probably around Wed Apr 20. See the A4 handout for longer justification and watch for later announcements of the details.

Mon Apr 20, 12:10am (also sent as email via CMS, subject line "[CS 1110] lab 8 credit, A5==last, other updates")

A. Lab 8 manual credit

Recall that Lab 8 requires manual verification for both problems. While you can get *help* at any consulting/office hours, to get the credit, you need to "show up" at your lab session this week if you haven't already been "checked off". (If technical problems occur, contact info for your lab instructor see the subsection "Your Section Info" on Lab 8's homepage, https://cs1110.cs.cornell.edu/py/labs/cs1110/lab8)

Follow the lab instructions for faster check-off: enter your (fully-tested) function bodies into the numberof and sum_nested_list pages and hit "submit" *before* the lab session starts, if you can.

B. Updated tentative schedule

There will be only two more coding assignments, and there will likely be only two more lab exercises. See https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/schedule/

We have gone with this option, which we previously described as the "bare minimum", due to the significant disruptions to work environment that students may be experiencing. However, for those who want to gain more programming proficiency at some point --- for instance, perhaps things will settle down for you a little after the semester is over --- Sections D and E list opportunities for further practice with solutions provided so you can check your work. These are completely optional: you don't have to engage in these extra activities, and we are not obligating the course staff to answer questions about them.

A2 regrades and prelim 1 have all been handled except for one special situation, and those grades will be transferred into CMS soon.

A3 grading will start this week, and should take a little over a week to complete.

C. About office hours

The new office hours schedule has had more additions, with further updates expected; latest status at https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/staff/ . For now, drop-in office hours will follow the same procedures, outlined on the aforementioned webpage, as consulting hours: queuemein with email as backup.

The calendar shows Ithaca time. We ask students who are roughly between +/- 3 hours off from Ithaca to remember that for students in far-distant timezones, hours in Ithaca range 10pm-10am are best for them, and to thus please avoid those if you can leave that range open for "distant" students.

Individual appointments with the two professors remain available; signup links are given on the aforementioned webpage.

D. Optional ways to get more large-scale practice

For more on-the-computer coding practice on semi-larger projects with solutions provided, see https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2018sp/assignments/index.php , which has handouts and solutions for the following previous assignments. Most of these were written with real-life or research applications in mind, to give CS1110 students a feeling for how empowered they will be with the programming skills they've acquired!

Spring 2017
A3: Text analysis/ngrams
A4: Tournaments (March Madness bracket diagrams)
  Spring 2018
A3: Topic tracking in political speeches
A4: Managing org charts (includes the poem "If your heart was [sic] an org chart")
A5: Uno

(Spring runnings before 2017 have also released solutions, but were written in Python 2. Fall semester assignments' solutions cannot be made available.)

E: Optional ways to get more small-scale practice

Spring 2018 (https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2018sp/exams/index.php) has includes not just the past exams and solutions, but also the commentary-style study guides akin to what we provided you for Spring 2020's prelim 1.

Fall 2019's exams page has more recent exams and solutions, but no commentary. https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2019fa/assessment/exams/

F. Advice on enrolling in future CS courses

There's a Piazza for pre-enrollment questions regarding CS courses, staffed by both students and the CS undergraduate office staff. https://piazza.com/Cornell/fall2017/cs0000 (Never mind that it says "Fall 2017" and that "0000" is not a real course number.)

Tue Apr 14, 10am (also announced by email, subject line "[CS 1110] lab 8/manual credit")

Hi all, just to be extra-sure everyone was clear about the following information:

Labs from this week forward are running today as last week, via Zoom. Your own personal lab-section's Zoom link can be found in the "Your Section Info" section of lab 8's "homepage"; see Piazza https://piazza.com/class/k5ofiy0fdn351d?cid=269 for screenshot.

This "matters" because this week's lab involves manual credit assignment by the staff. Our thinking was you would attend your lab by Zoom to get the manual credit, just like back in the days before the pandemic turned our world upside-down.

If you have trouble attending your lab, contact your lab instructor, whose contact info is given in the same "our Section Info" section of lab 8's "homepage" (https://cs1110.cs.cornell.edu/py/labs/cs1110/lab8)

Mon Apr 13, 2:10pm (also announced by email, subject line "[CS 1110] lab 8, updates, more resources")

A. Lab 8, on recursion, is now available at https://cs1110.cs.cornell.edu/py/labs/cs1110/lab8. It's a little lacking in the occasional lab "joie de vivre", but for this week, we're trying to see whether we can restore any sense of business as usual.

B. A3 will be graded no earlier than the middle of next week. A4 may use concepts from A3, but recall that A3 solutions are available on the Schedule page, https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/schedule/ (search for "A3" on that page)

C. A4, on recursion, is tentatively slated to be released somewhere between Friday April 17 and Sunday April 20. Given this, the due date could be somewhere between April 24 and May 4, but no earlier than a week from when it is released.

D. Looking for more practice?

Sun Apr 12, 10:30pm (also sent out as email, subject line "[CS 1110] Virtual Office &Consulting Hours Update")

Hope you all had a great first week of classes back. We are excited to inform you that we will start having Virtual Office Hours & Consulting hours as of tomorrow, Monday, April 13th, 2020 4:30 pm EDT.
The current consulting and office hours schedule is posted on the [Staff/Office hours page of the] course website. We are working on offering office hours for people in widely different time zones from Ithaca and will update the calendar on the course website once those are finalized.

Mon Apr 6, 3:30am Lab 7 released, as announced by a sequence of two emails, both with subject line "[CS 1110] lab 7 (mandatory but no work) released"). You should be able to see the bodies of these messages by logging in to CMS and going to the CS1110 "E-mails" link in the left-hand sidebar. If this doesn't work for you, please send an email to cs1110-staff@cornell.edu explaining what happens when you try to log in to CMS.

Fri Apr 3, 7:15pm

We have initiated section swaps, effective immediately, for about 60 students due to time-zone and staff-balancing issues. Moved students were sent email via bcc: from cs1110-prof@cornell.edu; please check your spam folders!

This matters because we are having a mandatory "sound check" lab on Tuesday April 7th and Wednesday April 8th. More details and zoom links will be sent later.

Sun Mar 29, 11:45pm (also sent out as email, subject line "[CS 1110] updates Mar 29: schedule, prelim 1, etc.")

Dear CS1110 students, bcc: staff, we have been thinking a lot about you, although we hope that you haven’t been thinking too much about us ---- you have had so much else to cope with in the past almost-three-weeks now...

This email has several sections, describing what’s new regarding CS1110:
A. overall adjustments to the class
B. access issues
C. additional resources
D. Prelim 1 and A1 grades interpretation
E. A2 regrade-request extension deadline, A3 grading status

A. Here are some adjustments Prof. Fan and I have decided on in light of the move to virtual instruction. Many uncertainties still remain; but we will keep you updated!

  1. We are paring future material down to three topics: recursion, structure of classes, and while-loops. We will restart recursion from scratch when classes resume.
  2. Because Prelim 1 took place under the disruption of the university move-out notice, we will, when determining final course grades, either give Prelim 1 a weight of 15% weight (as previously set) OR 0%, whichever gives you, individually, the better grade. (Recall that, we don’t base letter grades on means/medians: your grade is independent of how other people do.)
  3. There will be no more short-time-limited prelims or finals, so assignments will now constitute the vast majority of the course grade. We reserve the right to potentially include quizzes that should be completed solo, but we will continue to allow partners on assignments. The new weights by which grading is determined are given at https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/policies/
  4. Lectures will be recorded and posted on the course website prior to 9:05am every Tuesday and Thursday. As before, any slides and code associated with the lecture will be posted as well. Rather than recording entire 50-minute lectures, each lecture will be divided into shorter segments and most segments will end with an activity that helps you exercise the learned concepts and gauge your comprehension. Like the clicker questions and short exercises given in past lectures, these post-lecture activities are not for credit but we urge you to do them purposefully--practice is important and any uncertainties revealed will help focus your review of the concepts, perhaps using office/consulting hours.
  5. Lab exercises will continue to be distributed and checked off online. Lab is also the course component where students interact with course staff on a weekly basis as they practice specific topics and where course staff can gauge students’ progress by interacting with them through the exercise. Therefore, course staff will host virtual labs via Zoom at their scheduled time, EDT (U.S. Eastern Daylight Time, aka, Ithaca, NY, time). Students are encouraged to attend and to work with one another (in assigned “virtual break-out rooms”) and will be able to interact with the course staff during labs. As mandated by the university, students will participate in their ENROLLED lab sessions in order to avoid creating schedule conflicts. ONLY for the students whose enrolled section times fall outside of the period 8 AM to 9 PM of their local time we will arrange a different weekly lab/interaction time with course staff and such students will be notified about the time.
  6. Office/consulting hours will be scheduled individual or small-group appointments between students and course staff, at least initially, for trouble-shooting purposes. For example, if we know that student A was supposed to “show up” for an scheduled Zoom appointment but didn’t, we’ll be able to follow up with student A about whether they might be having connectivity issues.

B. We have seen survey responses indicating trouble with a computer, accessing Python 3.7, or accessing the internet (sometimes because of the policies of certain countries). We also have seen a wide distribution of time zones. For those who have steady internet and computer access but not access to Python, we are working with CIT about getting an Apps on Demand setup, but there is a hiccup with it utilizing Google Drive, which is not available in all countries. We don’t have solid answers yet for other cases, but are working hard to try to find solutions.

C. A number of students have expressed a desire for sources of additional help in this especially challenging learning setting. We don’t have experience with the effectiveness of the following, but Cornell students, staff and faculty have free, unlimited access to LinkedIn Learning’s courses, which include some on Python. https://it.cornell.edu/linkedinlearning We do hear about CodeAcademy, but don’t know much about its fees and can’t vouch for the quality.

D. First, recall A1.2 above about Prelim 1’s (re-)weighting: in essence, we will drop Prelim 1 for you if that will result in a better overall course grade for you, due to the difficult circumstances under which Prelim 1 was given.

Also, recall from our A2 message that because you are not in competition with each other, we do not (intentionally) release means or class histograms. Nor do we use absolute cutoffs for grade-levels, so as to adjust for the difficulty of individual homeworks and exams.

Rather, here is how you can determine our letter-grade assessment of your prelim score:
For prelim 1, out of 107 points,
The rough center of the As: 95 out of 107
The rough center of the Bs: 80 out of 107
The rough center of the Cs: 55 out of 107
We don’t plan to determine grade boundaries.

Exam solutions will be posted at https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/exams within the hour.
Graded exams will be released on Gradescope within the hour.
Regrade requests can be submitted on Gradescope until Friday April 10. We will handle the regrade requests in one batch, so none will be processed until after the April 10th deadline passes.

A1 grades have been finalized and will be released within the hour. Out of 10 points,
The rough center of the As is (given the multiple chances to revise) 10 out of 10
The rough center of the Bs is 7 out of 10
The rough center of the Cs is 5 out of 10

E. Due to the disruptions from the University announcements on March 10 and March 13, the regrade-request deadline for A2 on Gradescope has been extended to Friday April 10. We will handle the regrade requests in one batch, so none will be processed until after the April 10th deadline passes.

We will announce when A3 is graded, but expect this to take at least a week and a half from now.

Profs Fan and Lee

Sun Mar 15, 9:30pm (also sent out as email, subject line "[CS 1110] updates and mandatory check-in")

We hope you are doing OK! Please check in with us by filling out a CMS so-called quiz (we’re sorry it’s called a quiz! We can’t control that.) so we can get a headcount and understanding of what communication/Python resources you have, by March 23, if at all possible. The “quiz” (really survey) will be released within an hour.

We are going to do our level best to make sure there are good, regularly scheduled office hours and opportunities for individual help, in addition to Piazza and email. Partnering on assignments will continue to be an option. Details to be arranged.

We will reactivate Piazza so that we can jointly discuss pending Python installation issues, tips for working at home, etc. Things best not discussed on Piazza now:

We will absolutely be adjusting our evaluation of the prelim scores (e.g., grade centers and the like) to account for the events of the prelim day.

Piazza and email response speed will unfortunately be slower for at least this week until our staff get settled.

Course website, where announcements will be posted: https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/

University FAQ on instruction going forward: (“Will the end date for the spring semester be affected? Will you extend the drop/grade change deadline? How will online class scheduled be determined? Will there be consideration for those in different time zones? Will the Learning Strategies Center still be available?” And so on) https://www.cornell.edu/coronavirus/virtual-instruction.cfm

Thu Mar 12, 8:05pm: Nothing will be due until after Spring Break, and neither in-person nor virtual attendance is required in the time before (or during) Spring Break. As of now, we have not cancelled any in-person office hours before Spring Break.

Thu Mar 12, 8pm: about communications moving forward:

  1. Please check your mail, including your spam folders, for the following messages. If you don't think you received them, please email cs1110-staff@cornell.edu, with your netid and your preferred email address (if different). We need to make sure we can stay in touch and you are getting our announcements!
    • March 11, 2020 12:48AM, subject "about holding the prelim"
    • March 10, 2020 06:10PM, subject "Prelim 1 takes place tonight"
    • March 9, 2020 04:21AM: subject "A3 solutions released"
  2. We'll post all announcements here even if they have been sent in email and in lecture, as not everyone may have good internet access.
  3. Piazza will be re-activated as soon as we have all the "regular" prelim 1 makeups done. By Sunday Mar 15, probably.
  4. We are planning to have office hours of some form distributed across time zones, with one-on-one help still available, throughout the rest of the semester.
  5. We believe the University is or has surveyed all students to find out about people's internet access. For those who have been depending on the ACCEL lab computers, we are checking with CIT about whether remote login into those computers will be possible. In the meantime, as a last resort, Python Tutor and Python Anywhere are websites where you can access a Python shell.

Mon Mar 3, 12:02am: (also sent as email via Gradescope)

A2 grades were released on Gradescope, and solutions have been posted on the course Schedule page, adjacent to the A2 link. https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs1110/2020sp/assignments/assignment2/a2soln.pdf

What the A2 scores mean: Because you are not in competition with each other, we do not release means or class histograms. Nor do we use absolute cutoffs for grade-levels, so as to adjust for the difficulty of individual homeworks and exams.

Rather, here is how you can determine our letter-grade assessment of your work. For A2, out of 50 points,
the rough center of the A grades is 48;
the rough center of the Bs is 44;
the rough center of the Cs is 36;
a 29 or below is certainly below a C-
We don't plan to determine grade boundaries.

Regrade requests: When you review your A2, if you believe a grading error was made, you may request a regrade on Gradescope until 11:59pm Friday March 13 (we will batch requests, and so none will be processed until after that deadline passes.)

As stated on the course Policies page, section "Regrade requests",

Communication regarding regrade requests will be done only in writing: given the number of staff members involved in handling regrade requests, we need records of all discussions. ...
We want to give grades that accurately represent our assessment of your understanding of CS 1110 material. Hence, if you are given a lower score than you should have been, you should absolutely bring it to our attention via the mechanisms just described. However, we must explicitly mention an additional consequence of the importance of grade accuracy: if we notice that you have been assigned more points than you should have been, we are duty-bound to correct such scores downward to the correct value.

Grade record-keeping : After all regrade requests are processed, we will transfer all scores back to CMS, so that all grade information is in one place.

Mon Mar 2, 3:15am: A3 released, with two deadlines. See link on Schedule page.

Sat Feb 29, 6:30pm: as announced by email, Lab 6 was released the day before. However, Prof. Lee forgot until today to add a link to the Schedule page.

Fri Feb 21, 6:30pm: as announced by email, A2 should be submitted on CMS instead of Gradescope. The A2 pdf has been updated to reflect this.

Thu Feb 19, 7:00am: