CMSC 420, Data Structures - Section 0101, Fall 2002

    Course Description


Location and time: CSI 3117, Tuesday/Thursday, 2 PM to 3:15 PM
Web page:
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~nau/cmsc420
Newsgroup:
csd.cmsc420.0101

Instructor: Dana S. Nau <nau at cs.umd.edu>
Office hours: 1/2 hour after each class; other times by appointment
Office: Room 3241 AVW
Telephone: 301-405-2684
Web page: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~nau
  
Teaching assistant: Ransom Winder <rwinder at cs.umd.edu>
Office hours: Wednesday 11-2 and by appointment
Office: A.V. Williams 1151

Required text: Lewis and Denenberg, Data Structures and Their Algorithms
Material to be covered: Nearly the entire book.

Lecture schedule: on the class web page is a tentative schedule of what topics we'll cover on what days. Ransom Winder will do the lecture on Sept. 3 (I'll be out of town), and we'll have no class on Sept. 5 (same reason). I'll be back in class on Sept. 10.

Homework: About five or six written homework assignments, of about 5 problems each. I'll usually give you a week to complete them. To submit your homework for grading, give them to me in class (not in our offices and not in our mail boxes - they'll get lost that way). To get full credit, submit your homework on the due date - or for a 10% penalty, submit it at the next class meeting after the due date. After that time, you cannot get any credit for the assignment.

Programming projects. There will be two or three programming projects, to be written in C++. You'll have several weeks to do each one. You can develop your programs on whatever machine you wish - but make sure your programs run correctly on the machines in the OIT Unix cluster, because that's where we'll test your programs. You'll need to submit each project electronically. For full credit, submit it by the due date - or for a 10% penalty, submit it by the "late date." After that time, you cannot get any credit for the project.

Exams. There will be a midterm exam and a final exam. Both will be open-book and open-notes (but closed-neighbor :-) The midterm will be in class on Thursday, October 17. According to the university exam schedule, the final exam will be Thursday, Dec 19, 10:30am to 12:30pm. To help you prepare for the exams, I'll use the last class before each exam to review what we've covered.

There will be no makeup exams. To get credit for a missed exam, you will need a valid medical excuse. This means an official letter (including the dates of incapacitation for your illness), either from your private physician or from the Social Services department in Module II of the University Health Center. If you have a valid medical excuse, I'll give you credit for the missed exam based on your performance on the other exam.

Grading. Most grading will be done by the TA. If you have a question about the grading, please discuss it with him first - and if you are still not satisfied, then see me about it. At the end of the semester, your numeric score will be the sum of:

I'll use this score to assign letter grades on a curve. To give you a rough indication of how well you are doing, I can also give you a letter grade after the midterm exam - but I won't use that letter grade to assign your final letter grade for the semester.

Academic integrity. All work that you submit in this course must be your own; unauthorized group efforts will be considered academic dishonesty. See the Undergraduate Catalog for definitions and sanctions. Academic dishonesty is a serious offense that may result in suspension or expulsion from the University. In addition to any other action taken, the grade “XF” denoting “failure due to academic dishonesty” will normally be recorded on the transcripts of students found responsible for acts of academic dishonesty. Sharing of code on programming assignments is a form of academic dishonesty.

Waiting list. If you want to be in this course and you aren't already signed up for it, then you should contact the university to get onto the waiting list. Depending on the size of the waiting list, you might have a better chance of getting into another section of the course.