News, CPSC 331, Winter 2017

News

• April 13 - Model solutions to Assignment 4 are available on the "Assigment 4" page.
• April 13 - Complete versions of all lectures notes are available on the "Schedule" page.
• April 10 - A final exam review session will be held on Thursday, April 13, 12:00 - 13:00 in ENE 239. The TA will help you work through the relevant problems on the sample final, and present the answers to the whole group.
• April 6 - Extra office hours during the exam period will be:
  • Thursday, April 13: 13:00 - 16:00
• April 6 - Some information about the final exam:
  • The exam is cummulative (everything covered in class is examinable)
  • Similar in style and length to the sample exam.
  • You are not responsible for the correctness proofs of the graph algorithms covered in class.
  Summary of topics:
  • Analysis of algorithms:
    • Correctness: definitions, loop invariants (no complete proofs - just stating), proof of termination, correctness of recursive algorithms using induction
    • Testing: definitions and principles, designing test cases
    • Asymptotic analysis: definitions, proving results based on the definitions, runtime analysis of iterative algorithms, expressing running times of recursive algorithms using recurrence relations.
  • Data structures and algorithms:
    • Give specification of requirements for an algorithm.
    • Define ADTs (specification of requirements for the ADTs methods).
    • Be able to trace examples for algorithms, give pseudocode, give key loop invariants, prove termination.
    • Know running time results (worst and average case, best case where relevant). Be able to give proofs for iterative algorithms, give recurrence relations for recursive algorithms.
    • Be able to handle some variations and different applications.
    You are responsible for all data structures and algorithms covered in class. One exception: you are not expected to memorize all the cases and subcases of insertion and deletion for red-black trees.
• April 6 - Model solutions to Assignment 3 are available on the "Assigment 3" page.
• March 27 - The deadline for Assigment 3 has been extended to Wednesday, March 29, 11:59 PM.
• March 22 - Model solutions to Assignment 2 are available on the Assigment 2 page.
• March 17 - Participants needed for study about candidate nominations

  University of Calgary students are invited to participate in a study about candidate nomination procedures. We have already conducted the study in Costa Rica and Israel and now are conducting the study in 6 more countries, including Canada. The study has been approved by the Research Ethics Board of the University of Calgary (study number REB16-2350).

  Participation in the study will take approximately 20-30 minutes. First, you will be given an informed consent form. If you agree to participate you will be asked to read a candidate speech and then answer a survey, followed by a short debriefing. There are no right or wrong answers to the survey questions - responses are your opinions. You can choose to not answer individual questions on the survey if you wish. Participation in the study is completely anonymous. Your responses will be combined with the responses of the other participants in the project to obtain totals and averages.

  To thank you for participating in the study, participants have the opportunity to enter a drawing for one of three iPads by giving your email address. The email addresses will be stored separately from the survey answers so that all responses to the survey remain anonymous.

  Any student at the University of Calgary is welcome to participate in the study.

  To take part in the study please go to the following URL: http://drgeva.org/ng/q/calgary

  If you would like more information about the study please contact Dr. Melanee Thomas at thomasm@ucalgary.ca.

  Thank you, and we hope that you will participate in our study.

• March 15 - Midterm grades are available on D2L, and solutions to the midterm are available here.
• March 10 - Assignment 3 has been posted, available through the assigments page.
• March 6 - In order to make sure that everyone has enough time to study for the midterm and finish Assignment 2, the deadline for Assigment 2 has been extended to Friday, March 10, 11:59 PM.
• March 2 - The midterm (Wednesday, March 8 from 17:00 - 18:30 in EDC 179) will cover all material up to and including the Lecture 18-19 (Binary Search Trees) notes. Complete versions of all lecture notes up to that point are available on the Schedule page.
• March 2 - The deadline for Assigment 2 has been extended to Monday, March 6, 11:59 PM.
• Feb 28 - A sample midterm is now available.
• Feb 28 - Model solutions to Assignment 1 are available on the Assigment 1 page.
• Feb 13 - Assignment 2 has been posted, available through the assigments page.
• Feb 8 - As announced in class this morning, the deadline for Assignment 1 has been extended to Friday, Feb 10, 11:59 PM.
• Feb 2 - The Computer Science Showcase 2017 is an event designed to give CPSC students a chance to display any cool projects they've been working on during the year (in class or otherwise). You are all invited and encouraged to participate, either by attending or volunteering to present. See the web page for more information.
• Feb 2 - Garage 142 is a Makerspace in Math Sciences 142, where computer science students can explore new toys, hardware & equipment and play - discover - try out new, innovative and crazy ideas! If you're interested, check out the web page and sign up for training.
• Feb 2 - The deadline for Assignment 1 has been extended to Wednesday, Feb 8, 11:59 PM Also, note that a correction has been made to the description of Question 5. The instances of n/2 in the pseudocode have been replaced with (n-1)/2. A corrected version of the assignment description is available on the course web page.
• Jan 24 - The course D2L site has been activated. As stated in class, we will use D2L primarily for assignment submission and grade reporting.
• Jan 24 - My office hours will be moved to Fridays, 14:00-16:00 starting on February 3. This coming week, I will also be available on Friday, Jan 27 from 14:00 - 14:50, but not on Monday, Jan 30. As usual, if you need to see me outside of these times please send me email to make an appointment.
• Jan 20 - Assignment 1 has been posted, available through the assigments page.
• Jan 13 - The CS Department is offering a few workshops on various aspects of programming (eg. intro to Linux, Eclipse debugger) this term. Click here for more information.