General Information

CS409 - Spring 2000

Time and Place

• Tuesday and Thursday, 8:40 to 9:55am in Phillips 219

Prerequisites

• The programming language for the course will be Java. If you know some other high-level language you should be able to learn Java without severe difficulty.
• The official prerequisites for the course are CS211 or CS212 or equivalent programming experience. "Equivalent programming experience" means that you should be a good and experienced programmer familiar with programming using recursion and pointers. If you have any doubts about being prepared for the course, see the instructor.
• This course is normally not open to Computer Science majors.  It is not possible to get credit for both CS409 and CS410.  A few students have gotten permission, due to scheduling constraints, to take CS409 in place of CS410.

Grading

• There will be homework (both problem sets and programming), quizzes (roughly every other week, in class), one midterm exam (given in class), and a final exam (given at the scheduled final-exam time).
• Weighting will be roughly as follows:
  • 25% homework (problem sets and programming)
  • 20% quizzes (your lowest quiz score will be ignored)
  • 25% midterm exam
  • 30% final exam

Homework

• There will be weekly homework assignments, due at the beginning of class.
• Programming: Some of the assignments will be programming assignments. The programming language for the course is Java. It is expected that assignments will compile and execute correctly using Microsoft Developer Studio J++ in the CSUGLab (315/317 Upson). We also expect you to use good programming practices such as structured code and comments. Information on how to use the undergraduate lab and Microsoft Developer Studio will be distributed later in the course.
• Late Homework Policy: It is expected that homework will be turned in in class and on time. Late homework will receive a decreased grade. However, to cover cases of emergency or illness, one assignment will be accepted one lecture late without penalty. You do not need to inform me about late homework in advance or give me any excuses. Excuses for late homework beyond the first will be accepted only under unusual circumstances.
• Warning: It is unlikely that you will learn the material in the course unless you do the problem sets. Those who skip a significant number of them are likely to earn poor grades on the exams.

Text

• Skiena: The Algorithm Design Manual, Springer-Verlag, 1998.
  • Additional material is available on the CD that comes with the text and at the associated web site: http://www.cs.sunysb.edu/~algorith/
• Other Helpful References (on reserve at the Engineering Library):
  • Aho, Hopcroft, and Ullman: Data Structures and Algorithms
  • Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest: Introduction to Algorithms
  • Goodrich and Tamassia: Data Structures and Algorithms in Java
  • Sedgewick (3 separate books): Algorithms; Algorithms in C; Algorithms in C++
  • Tarjan: Data Structures and Network Algorithms

Course Information Resources

• Course Web Site: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs409/2000sp/
• Office Hours: Hours will be announced in class and posted on the course web site as soon as they are determined.
• Email: Questions about the course can be emailed to chew@cs.cornell.edu.

Academic Integrity

Students are allowed to collaborate on the homework to the extent of formulating ideas as a group. Each student is expected to write up (and understand) the homework by herself or himself. Students may not copy any part of someone else's code or written homework.