Course Schedule

[Note: this webpage last modified Friday, 04-Feb-2011 19:44:51 EST]

We will cover most but not all content in the required textbook. This web-page will be kept up to date with the required reading to perform before each lecture. I will also list practice exercises that you can work through to test your knowledge, as well as the key concepts that should be learned from the reading. And this page will include links to supplementary reading material that is not required but can be consulted for those interested in getting more information.

The following table gives a tentative outline of the semester, organized roughly by week. Below the outline are the details for each lecture. Each of these will be updated throughout the semester as things change.

• August 25: Introduction
  

  Required Reading: none
  Reference material for the entire semester: Python tutorial on the python.org website. By the end of the semester, we will have covered most parts of the tutorial.
  Reference material for the entire semester: Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist by Allen Downey. This is the text used by the other sections of 151 and is a good supplementary source of information to the Mark Guzdial text we are using.
  Just for fun: video (click on "Part 2") and powerpoint slides for rousing talk by Scott Aaronson about "the future of CS".
  Just for fun: a blog post and a news article about the recent stir over recent claimed proof that P!=NP. Challenge: identify the mistakes in the news article...
  Exercises: none
  Key Concepts: course organization, take online quiz before Friday
  What we did in class today.

• August 27
  

  Required Reading: Sections 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Exercises: Problems 2.1, 2.3-2.16
  Key Concepts: using JES, print, pickAFile, makePicture, show, play, variables, arithmetic (floating point and integer), bugs, order of operations
  What we will do/did in class today.

• August 30
  

  Required Reading: Sections 1.3, 2.5, 3.1, 3.2
  Supplemental, Optional Reading: Sections 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.5
  Exercises: Problems 1.2, 1.4, 1.5, 2.2, 2.17-2.21, 3.1, 3.5
  Key Concepts: review from last time, how data is stored on a computer (0's/1's, encodings), data representation for text and pictures, how images are stored on the computer
  What we will do/did in class today.

• September 1
  

  Required Reading: review previous readings
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Exercises: review previous problems
  Key Concepts: functions in Python, how to access pixels of pictures in JES (getPixel, setRed, setBlue, setGreen, getRed, getBlue, getGreen), printing a list of things
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• September 3
  

  Required Reading: Sections 3.3, 3.4
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Exercises: Problems 3.2-3.4, 3.6-3.11
  Key Concepts: for loop with getPixels, writePictureTo, arrays, pickAFolder
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• September 6 - NO CLASS for labor day
  

• September 8
  

  Required Reading: Sections 3.5, 3.6, 3.7
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Exercises: 3.12-3.19
  Key Concepts: for loops, makeColor, setColor, graying an image, making a negative of an image, swapping colors
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• September 10
  

  Required Reading: Sections 4.1
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Links:what other students have done with JES, and some more, draft of the text that is fairly outdated but is online/free, official PPT slides for the textbook,
  Key Concepts: makeColor, setColor, graying an image, making a negative of an image, range
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• September 13
  

  Required Reading: Sections 4.2, 4.3
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: for loops with range, mirroring, scaling
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• September 15
  

  Required Reading: review of material up until now
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: review of material up until now
  What we will do/did in class today,

• September 17
  

  Required Reading: Section 5.1
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: "if" in Python, distance function, comparison operators (≥, ≥=, ≤, ≤=, ==), boolean condition operators (and, or, not) red-eye reduction, make image black and white
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• September 20
  

  Required Reading: Sections 5.3
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: ways to make black and white
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• September 22
  

  Required Reading: 5.6
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: taking something from one picture and "putting it into" another picture
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• September 24
  

  1st exam

• September 27
  

  Required Reading: Section 6.1
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: what is sound, and how it is stored on the computer, makeSound, play, what is an octave, amplitude (roughly volume) of sound wave, frequency (roughly pitch) of sound wave, sample rate, min/max amplitude in sound stored on the computer (-32,768=-(2^16-1+1) to 32,767=(2^16-1-1) if using 16 bits for a sample)
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• September 29
  

  Required Reading: Section 6.2
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: sounds in JES, getSampleValueAt, setSampleValueAt, getLength, getSamplingRate, blockingPlay
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• October 1
  

  Required Reading: Section 6.3
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: getSamples, getSampleValue, setSampleValue, debugging/tracing, increasing and decreasing volume
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• October 4
  

  Required Reading: Section 6.4
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: normalizing volume (set to max volume without clipping), max, writeSoundTo
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• October 6
  

  Required Reading: Section 7.1
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: working on different parts of a sound file, using arrays in Python with [], using float and int
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• October 8
  

  Required Reading: Section 7.2
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: splicing sounds together, makeEmptySound, makeEmptySoundBySeconds
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• October 11
  

  Required Reading: Section 7.3
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: more splicing with a general clip and copy function, using import in Python
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today, cs151functions.py

• October 13
  

  Required Reading: none
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts:
  What we will do/did in class today, cs151functions.py

• October 15 - NO CLASS for fall break
  

• October 18
  

  Required Reading: Sections 8.1, 8.2
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: adding sounds together, blending sounds, min, overflow
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• October 20
  

  Required Reading: Section 8.3
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: creating an echo (by adding a sound to itself delayed a little bit)
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• October 22
  

  Project proposal is due and will be checked in class.

• October 25
  

  Required Reading: Section 9.1
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: (note: this week's material will be on exam3 not on exam2), printNow, requestString, requestInteger, while loop, having a program run continuously taking user input, using else with if
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• October 27
  

  Required Reading: Sections 9.3, 9.4
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: debugging using print, debugging using the watcher, more with while loops (can do a for loop with a while loop)
  What we will do/did in class today, Python file from today

• October 29
  

  2nd exam

• November 1
  

  Required Reading: Sections 10.2, 10.3.1
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: manipulating strings, triple quote, string as an array, using [] and [:] with strings, len, escape characters (\t, \b, \n), adding strings together, strings as objects, string functions (capitalize, upper, lower, swapcase, startsWith, endsWith, find, isalpha, isdigit, replace, etc. - see reference sheet for complete list)
  Administrative: exam2 grades, total grade so far, Nov 2 last day to drop with failing grade and not have it part of GPA, working on projects?, forgot to mention CS minor last time...,
  Python file from today

• November 3
  

  Required Reading: Continuation of previous day's material
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts:
  Administrative: Exam2, HW10, Projects, Course scheduling
  Python file from today

• November 5
  

  Required Reading: Section 10.3.2
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: lists (creating with [], accessing with []), nested lists, parsing information out of a string and putting into a list, list functions (append, remove, sort, reverse, count, max, min), split for strings
  Python file from today

• November 8
  

  Required Reading: Section 10.4.1
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: getting and putting text in files, file functions (read, readlines, write, open, close),
  Administrative: HW10
  Python file from today

• November 10
  

  Required Reading: Continuation of previous day's material
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts:
  Administrative: HW10, HW11, project
  Python file from today

• November 12
  

  Required Reading: Sections 10.4.2 and 10.4.3
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: more working with text files - reading and writing, can use str to convert a number into a string
  Python file from today

• November 15
  

  Required Reading:
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: review of most important programming concepts (how functions work with input/output and how to use them, difference between returning a value from a function and not, how variables work with setting values to them, what does a loop do - the same thing a bunch of times, how to look up information about what a function does and how to use it, lists and strings - storing information in an organized way), practice tracing code and taking quizzes
  Python file from today

• November 17
  

  Required Reading: Section 10.5
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: using builtin Python libraries, os library (listdir), random library (random and choice functions), datetime library, math library (functions sin, cos, sqrt, pow, ...), for a module use dir to see what functions are available (e.g, dir(random), and things that start with underscores are "internal" to the module and not for you to use)
  Adminstrative: project (due Monday?), HW12, in class quiz
  Python file from today

• November 19
  

  Classtime to work on project and ask questions. The project midpoint is due before class starts on Monday, November 22. Send your code and project document to me before class starts on Monday.
  Notes: If want to open a text file for "appending", use "at" instead of "wt" or "rt".

• November 22
  

  Required Reading: Section 11.3
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: putting a secret message in a picture (or in a sound), encryption (encoding and decoding), reviewing how to work with pictures
  Administrative: project midpoint due today, HW12 due next wednesday December 1, exam3 next Friday December 3.
  Python file from today

• November 24 - NO CLASS for Thanksgiving
  

• November 26 - NO CLASS for Thanksgiving
  

• November 29
  

  Required Reading: Section 11.1
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: how webpages and the web works, urllib builtin library (urlopen, read, and close functions)
  Administrative:Exam3, sample exam tonight, HW11 grading, projects, quiz, go over practice quiz, extend HW12?, HW13 extra credit only?
  Python file from today

• December 1
  

  Required Reading: To be determined
  Supplemental, Optional Reading:
  Key Concepts: continuation of previous

• December 3
  

  3rd exam

• December 6
  

  Final projects will be presented during class.

• December 8
  

  Final projects will be presented during class.

• December 10
  

  Final projects will be presented during class.

• Exam slot
  

  Final projects will be presented during exam slot.

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