CMU 15-112 Syllabus
Summer 2020
| Overview | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Previous Versions: |
Previous versions of 15-112/15-110/15-100: S20, F19, S19, F18, S18, F17, S17, F16, S16, F15, S15, F14, S14, F13, S13, F12, S12, F11, S11, F10, S10, F09, S09, F08, S08, F07 Previous Summers: N19, M19, N18, M18, M12, APEA-09, APEA-08 |
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| Official Description | A technical introduction to the fundamentals of programming with an emphasis on producing clear, robust, and reasonably efficient code using top-down design, informal analysis, and effective testing and debugging. Starting from first principles, we will cover a large subset of the Python programming language, including its standard libraries and programming paradigms. We will also target numerous deployment scenarios, including standalone programs, shell scripts, and web-based applications. This course assumes no prior programming experience. Even so, it is a fast-paced and rigorous preparation for 15-122. Students seeking a more gentle introduction to computer science should consider first taking 15-110. NOTE: students must achieve a C or better in order to use this course to satisfy the pre-requisite for any subsequent Computer Science course. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Unofficial Description |
This course is designed to help you learn how read, write, design, and debug Python programs. Towards that end, you will spend most of the time in the course developing programming as a skill by learning about various programming constructs and techniques and by constantly practicing with code. Students who take 15-112 generally fall into one of two categories. First, you might be a CS major or a student in another technical major who needs to take a set of CS classes to fulfill requirements. 15-112 will prepare you for the technical challenge of those courses by helping you develop a robust understanding for how to work with code; this skill will be essential in future courses. Alternatively, you might want to learn how to program in depth, but then have no intention of taking further CS courses. For you, 15-112 will help you learn that essential skill, and will also introduce you to some of the big ideas in computer science so that you can bring new ideas back to your own field of study. In this course, you will primarily do work through completing programming assignments either individually or collaboratively; these assignments will help you develop and practice your coding skills. You will also be assessed with a set of tests and exams, to help you measure your understanding of the class's various topics. We will teach you primarily through interactive lectures and recitations, where we will demonstrate how to code using instructions, examples, and live coding. At the end of the semester, you'll demonstrate your mastery of the course's topics by working on a 1 week term project, where you can develop and code a project of your own design, based on your own interests. |
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| Learning Objectives | At the end of the course, students should be able to:
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| Zoom Links and Times |
Zoom links for all events can be found here |
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| Topic List and Schedule |
See the topic list and schedule here (includes schedule, notes, video mini-lectures, homeworks, tests, and exams). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Resources | |
| Course Resources |
15-112 can be an intense course, but it becomes much more manageable if you use the course resources. These resources include:
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| Office Hours |
Instructor Office Hours: Austin Schick (aschick): Mon-Fri 3:30pm to 5pm EDT Head TAs: Mina Nowroozi (mnowrooz): by appointment Prithvi Okade (pokade): by appointment TA Small Group Varies depending on your individual schedule. TA Office Hours Mon-Fri 9pm - 10pm EDT. Large Group Review Sessions These are review sessions where TAs will do prep for the weekly test and go over any difficult homework problems for the week. Saturdays 8:00pm-9:30pm EDT Parthean Virtual Office Hours: * Daily (7 days/wk): 5pm - 11pm EDT (on most days) Academic Development Walk-in Tutoring This is a great resource provided not by 15-112 but rather by Academic Development in support of 15-112.
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| Required Software: |
Every required software package we use is available for free on the web. This includes:
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| External Resources: |
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| Expectations | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Assigned Work: |
Homework:
Programming assignments will be graded based on style (modularity, effective use of data abstraction, readability, commenting, etc.) and functionality (correctness and efficiency of the program on all possible test inputs). Your code should be properly annotated with comments that are well-placed, concise, and informative. Your assignments will be graded by your TA, by automated graders, and at times by your instructor. Writing Sessions Writing Sessions are designed to ensure that you're deeply internalizing the material from the collaborative and solo homework assignments. You will sit for a timed and proctored writing session each day after the homework deadline. Within the allotted time, you will solve a selected subset of the solo and collaborative homework problems (or similar exercises) without access to any notes or other supports. You will share your screen with your TA proctor who will grade you as you write and discuss your solution with you immediately after the session. Term Project The Term Project will take place over one week at the end of the semester. You will design and build a program of your choosing with the guidance of a mentor TA. More information can be found in the Term Project Assignment writeup. Attendance We will take attendance during small groups, recitation, and lecture to ensure that all students are attending and learning. You must have your video on during your scheduled lecture/recitation to be marked as attending. Of course, you should also be engaging with the material and focusing on learning! If you have to miss a required course event due to a medical or family emergency, please contact the relevant lecture instructor or recitation TA before the class time to be excused from lecture/recitation that day. Excessive absences without approval may result in a lower letter grade regardless of a student's numerical average in the course. |
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| Exams and Tests: |
Final Exam: There will be a final exam given in class as noted in the course schedule. This exam will cover material from the entire semester but will focus on the materials from after the midterm exam. Midterm Exam: There will be one midterm exam given in class as noted in the course schedule. The exam will cover the material on the course schedule up to and including animations. Tests: Tests will be given once weekly. Tests generally cover material from the current week. Tests are designed to be extra hard, to demonstrate where additional study is needed. Extended-Time Policy: We gladly accommodate students with university-approved extended time (as approved by the Office of Disability Resources (ODR), as explained here). If you are eligible for university-approved extended time, please deliver the appropriate form to the instructors as soon as possible, since accommodations do not apply retroactively. If you need to acquire the form, contact Catherine Getchell, Director of Disability Resources. Extended time events such as tests, midterms, and finals will be proctored separately from the standard-duration events. We will be in contact before each event about scheduling its extended-time version. Extended-time writing sessions will still be taken one-on-one with your TA at your scheduled time. Test Late Policy: Unfortunately, the scale of this class makes it impossible to allow generally flexible time for taking tests. Therefore, no late/make-up tests or exams will be administered, except in the case of medical or family emergencies. Students who fall into this category should obtain instructor approval before missing the test. Approved missed tests & exams will be taken in the following week. |
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| Course Requirements: |
Participation with earnest effort in this course is required and consists of the following activities:
Any material covered in lecture, in recitation, in assigned readings, or in homework assignments may be included in any future homework assignment, test, or exam. |
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| Grading: |
Each homework, test, midterm, term project, and final will be graded on a standard scale: A: 90 - 100 B: 80 - 89 C: 70 - 79 D: 60 - 69 R: 0 - 59 The same scale will be used for final grades, though the instructors may choose to change the scales at their discretion. You are guaranteed that your letter grade will never become worse as a result of changing scales. Half-Weight Policy: The lowest 2 homeworks and the lowest test are all half weighted. ****************************************************************** Semester Grade Cap Policy In all cases, your semester grade is capped at 10 points above the highest score you receive on the course's proctored events -- that is, on your semester test average, on midterm 1, or on the final exam. For example, if your raw semester average is 83, but your highest proctored score is a 65, then your semester score is capped at 75 and you would receive a C as your semester grade. Alternate Minimum Grading (AMG) Policy This AMG policy is available to everybody, but is designed specifically for those students who struggle in the first part of the course and then through sustained hard work and dedication manage to elevate their performance in the latter part of the course to a level that merits passing with a C, even if their Standard Grade might be lower than that. In addition to Standard Grading as described above, we will separately compute your grade using an Alternate Minimum Grading (AMG). Students do not sign up for AMG. Every student will be considered both for Standard Grading and AMG, and their semester grade will be the higher of the two (where the highest grade via AMG is a C). To compute your Alternate Minimum Grade, first use the following to compute your raw score:
The half-weight policy (for the lowest two scores) still applies to the best-5 homeworks, but it does not apply to the best test (since that makes no sense with only one test counting towards the AMG). Unlike the Standard Grade, effort is heavily factored into your AMG score, and in fact you cannot qualify for AMG unless you put forth sustained effort (as judged by the course instructor) on every homework, test, and exam. If you miss multiple lectures/recitations, miss multiple assignments (including checks), or are penalized for a cheating violation, you will be disqualified from AMG status. In any case, if you qualify for AMG status and your AMG score is 70 or higher, you may qualify for a C as your semester grade. Once again, the highest grade possible via AMG is a C. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Course Contract: |
Learning how to program is exhilarating, but also challenging. To succeed in this course, you will need to do the following things:
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| Policies | |
| Homework Policies: |
Extensions: There are no grace days throughout the semester - however, students who have medical or family emergencies may request an extension. Extension requests are processed by Katherine (katheriy@andrew.cmu.edu) and are handled on a case by case basis. You should request these extensions before the assignment due date. Additionally, if a religious day you observe conflicts with an assignment date, let us know in advance; we may be able to provide extensions or move assignment dates in some cases (though in general we urge you to start the assignment early instead). Formatting Errors: Misformatted homework in general cannot be graded by our autograder, and as such may receive penalties, which can range from -5% to not being accepted at all. Therefore, be sure to submit your homework early -- you can submit repeatedly, we only grade the last submission -- to be sure you do not have obvious formatting errors. Errors can be detected by checking your Autolab grade a few seconds after submitting. Submission Issues: In exceptional circumstances (medical emergency, etc) submissions may be accepted past the deadline. If you are requesting submission past the deadline, do not modify your file; email Austin (aschick@andrew.cmu.edu) immediately with an explanation of your situation and, if possible, the file you need to submit. There is no guarantee that late submissions of this nature will be accepted. Regrade Requests: Homework and Test regrades should be submitted via this form and are handled on a case by case basis. Regrades must be requested within one week of the time when the contested grade was released. This deadline does not apply to exams, as they are returned on a more variable basis. |
| Collaboration and Cheating Policies: |
Solo Homework Policy: Unless otherwise noted, for homework assignments, students are only permitted to talk to the course staff about the assignments. Each student must develop their own solutions to the homework. Consulting another student's solution is prohibited, and submitted solutions may not be copied in whole or in part from any source. Specifically: do not look at other students' code or written answers, and do not show them your code or written answers, until after the assignment deadline has passed and the assignment has been submitted and graded. And: do not email or otherwise electronically or physically transfer your code to other students, and do not receive such transmissions from other students, until after the assignment deadline has passed and the assignment has been submitted and graded. In particular, this precludes students helping each other debug their code (since you may not even look at their code). Of course, students may (and should!) seek debugging assistance (and any other help) from the course staff, who provide extensive support to all students via email, office hours, review sessions, and 1-on-1 tutoring by appointment. Also, if you find a reference (say, in an optional textbook or some online source) that contains code or a written solution that is identical or overtly similar to an assigned problem, then you are required to not look at that code or written solution! You may still refer to supporting figures and explanatory text separate from the problem solution, but you may not look at or copy the code. Collaborative Homework Policy: In these (and only these) assignments, you may work with your group of four collaboration partners which was declared at the beginning of the week, even writing code together, and certainly debugging each other's code. However, you may only work with your collaboration group, and you must include a list of these group members at the top of your submitted file. Also, even when working in an approved group, you absolutely may not copy solutions from anyone or anywhere. In all cases, you must be intellectually involved in the authoring of everything you submit. Retaking Course / Reusing Prior Material Policy: If you are repeating 112, your prior work in this course is treated just as anyone else's work -- that is, you may not consult it. This is to promote the best possible learning, and using your prior answers will only hurt in that regard. So do not refer to your prior work, and solve everything from scratch. This will result in your best learning experience. Autograder / Decompiling Policy: Any attempt to decompile solutions, or object code that may help produce solutions, or in any way to extract solutions from the autograder, or to "hack" the autograder in any way, will result in your failing the course. Plagiarism Detector Policy: In addition to manual checks on homework and exam submissions, we will also routinely use an automated plagiarism detector. Here is a video demonstrating how it works (AVI or MP4). Consequences: Homeworks or portions thereof that are deemed overly similar (as opposed to mostly identical) will face these consequences:
Online "Help" Policy: Generally: Students may not post any course content, nor any questions related to any assigned material, to any online venue Why? There are many online 'help' resources, and while some may be legitimate, many are basically providing a homework outsourcing service, or otherwise violating the spirit (and often also the letter) of our course policies on cheating and collaboration. Importantly, we cannot control the quality of 'help' students receive from such sources, and experience indicates many 'answers' from such sources are of very low quality. Finally, given the truly extensive support this course provides through daily office hours, private and small-group tutoring, email-based help, collaborative assignments, and so forth, not to mention the support of the broader CMU community of learners, there is no compelling reason students should need any external sources. Posting course content online to seek help may result in failing the course on the first offense. Honesty: To end this section on a more positive note, you should know that we put a high premium on honesty. Of course, it's by far the best to always be honest and not have an Academic Integrity violation in the first place. That said, if you do get into an Academic Integrity situation, then the sooner and more completely you tell the entire truth, by far the better it is for you and for everyone else involved. The bottom line: If you regret a lapse in judgment, it is always better to let us know right away, to come clean and be honest and truthful. You will feel better about it, as will we, and it will probably result in a better outcome for you as well. |
| General Policies |
Family/Health/Personal Emergencies: We understand that some of you may have emergencies occur during the semester that will disrupt your ability to focus on learning. If you have a family/personal emergency or if you are too sick to engage with the course, please let us know. We will need to confirm the emergency (with an email from your academic advisor for family/personal emergencies or a note from your healthcare provider for illness); once it's confirmed, we're happy to arrange extensions for assignments and tests until you're ready to rejoin the course. Note that we must be notified about emergencies before work is missed to provide extensions. Recording (audio or video): Students may not record lectures or recitations without explicit permission in writing from the instructor. Violations will result in your failing the course. Exceptions will be granted in accordance with university guidelines for accessibility concerns, but even then such recordings may not be shared publicly or privately and must be deleted at the end of the semester. Electronics: Research has shown that devices can greatly detract from student learning. Therefore, students may only use electronic devices during course events to attend those course events. Outside of this one (important) usecase, students should only use electronic devices with explicit permission from the instructors. Notes may still be taken, of course, but should be done with pen and paper. This policy is meant to help all students focus, as electronic devices are distracting for the user and result in worse outcomes. |
| Virtualization Policies |
Catastrophic Tech Failures: In the case of a catastrophic tech fail (a Zoom crash or a loss of internet resulting in a timeout) during a proctored event immediately stop taking the assessment and contact Prithvi (pokade@andrew.cmu.edu) who will handle scheduling your makeup. The makeup will either be at a later session the same day or an oral exam with a faculty member. If there is a tech failure during a course event like lecture, recitation, or small groups try to rejoin as soon as possible. If you feel that you missed too much of the event due to the tech fail contact Prithvi (pokade@andrew.cmu.edu) who will direct you to a later session. |
| Well-being & Happiness |
We care very much about your well-being and
happiness. Yes, CMU students (and faculty) work hard, sometimes very hard.
But we must keep our balance and always attend to our well-being and happiness.
That comes first, academics follow. So be sure to get enough sleep, eat
right, exercise regularly, and attend to your well-being and happiness.
Here is a list of ideas that might help.
Also, please know that we do care about you and take your well-being seriously. We want to help you learn while minimizing stress. Towards this end, we are working to reduce the workload of the course as much as is possible, while still meeting the learning goals of the course. If you have any ideas or feedback towards reducing the workload or student stress, or improving the course in general, please let us know! Finally, if you are feeling overly stressed, or anxious, or unhappy about your performance or your general experience in this course: please come talk to us. We will listen. We are here for you and we will try to help. Addendum: Here is a great two-page one-stop-shopping summary of many CMU Student Support Services. |