Book Report Guidelines (15-412, Spring 2003)

This assignment is due Friday, April 18th at 23:59:59.

Please submit your report in either PostScript or PDF format (not: Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, Apple Works, LaTeX, XyWriter, WordStar, etc.). Submit your work by placing it in the appropriate place, i.e., /afs/cs.cmu.edu/academic/class/15412-s03-users/$USER/report/$USER.pdf (by now you know the drill). Please be sure your name and Andrew username appear on the first page of the report. Also, clearly indicate what you read.


Approved books

See the list of pre-approved books or send mail to de0u+412books@andrew.cmu.edu.

Book Report Contents

You should expect to write one to two pages of text. While presentation clarity will probably be an important part of your career skill set, I will not be grading this the way an English teacher would. On the other hand, since I was raised by one, please pay some attention to style so I don't need to suffer unnecessarily.

Please be sure to address, in one to three paragraphs, each of the following topics.

Question 1: Educational value of material

What was the most surprising, interesting, or eye-opening material you found in what you read? If you want, you can fall back to summarizing everything you read, but I'd rather you focused on what was the most valuable to you.

Question 2: Recommendation

Would you recommend this material to your friends or co-workers? To which ones? Why? In the course of reading this, did you find out about some other material you would recommend? What, and why?

Question 3: Value of this assignment

This assignment is probably somewhat unusual for CS courses. Do you think it was worth your time? Please feel free to recommend improvements in the format of the assignment.