CPS 1: Computer Science Principles

Announcements

• I have posted the slides from our last two classes. Please also review your grades and let me know if you have any questions. By this time, all the grades except the finals should have been posted. Good luck on your exam
• If you have any question about the exam, please post it on the Duke blackboard's discussion forum
• The Final exam is scheduled on Thursday, June 26th from 2:00 to 5:00 in our regular class room. Keep in mind that we won't have classes on Tuesday and Wednesday(reading period)
• Due to popular demand, the weights of the grades have been changed. You can see the updated weights in the Grading subsection in this page
• Your mid term exam has been graded. Please log in to blackboard to see your scores. The solutions have been posted on the schedules page.
• As we have discussed in class, if you are not completely satisfied with your mid term grades, you have an option to cancel your mid term score, and have the final exam score reflected on your mid term. In other words, if you get 90 on your final, your mid term score will become 90. If you want to use the option, you should let me know no later than June 20th.

Course Description

This course is an introduction to computer science principles - programming, algorithms, symbolic and numeric computation, systems, basic theoretical foundations, and interesting CS ideas and their implication on society. The course is aimed primarily for students not majoring in Computer Science, but may be used by students with no programming background to explore that possiblity.

Time and Place

2:00pm-3:15pm on weekdays(lecture); 3:20pm-4:20pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays (lab)
229 Social sciences Building. Find it on the Duke map

Instructor

Azbayar Demberel (Asic)
Web: http://cs.duke.edu/~asic
Email: asic <at> cs <dot> duke <dot> edu
Office: D307 LSRC Find it on the Duke map
Office hours: by appointment

Grading

Grading is done on an absolute, but adjustable scale. This means that there is no curve. Anyone earning 90% or more of the total number of points available will receive a grade in the A range; 80% or more guarantees a grade in the B range, 70% or more guarantees a grade in the C range, 60% or more guarantees a grade in the D range. This scale may slide down, but it will not go up.

Honor Code

Under the Duke Honor Code, you are expected to submit your own work in this course, including homeworks, projects, and exams. On many occasions when working on homeworks and projects, it is useful to ask others (the instructor or other students) for hints or debugging help, or to talk generally about the written problems or programming strategies. Such activity is both acceptable and encouraged, but you must indicate in your submission any assistance you received. Any assistance received that is not given proper citation will be considered a violation of the Honor Code. In any event, you are responsible for understanding and being able to explain on your own all written and programming solutions that you submit. The course staff will pursue aggressively all suspected cases of Honor Code violations, and they will be handled through official University channels.