Computer Science 109:
Computers in Our World
Fall 2010
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Computer Science 109:
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Princeton University
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Andrea LaPaugh |
Computer Science Dept. |
| Students are responsible for monitoring Announcements and Schedule and Assignments frequently. |
Computers, computing, and many things enabled by them are all around us. Some of this is highly visible, like laptops, phones and the Internet; much is invisible, like the computers in gadgets and appliances and cars, or the programs that fly our planes and keep our telephones and power systems and medical equipment working, or the myriad systems that quietly collect and share personal data about us.
Even though most people will not be directly involved with creating such systems, everyone is strongly affected by them. COS 109 is intended to provide a broad, if rather high level, understanding of how computer hardware, software, networks, and systems operate. Topics will be motivated by current events and concerns, and will include discussion of how computers work; what programming is and why it is hard; how the Internet and the Web operate; and how all of these affect security, privacy, property and other issues. We will also touch on fundamental ideas from computer science, and some of the inherent limitations of computers.
This course is meant for humanities and social sciences students who want to understand how computing works and how it affects the world they live in. No prior experience with computers is assumed, and there are no prerequisites. COS 109 satisfies the QR requirement.
The labs are complementary to the classroom work, though intended to reinforce the basic ideas. They will cover a spectrum of practical applications; two of the labs are a gentle introduction to programming in JavaScript.
The course will have fundamentally the same structure as in
previous
years, but lectures, case studies and examples change every year
according to what's happening. More and more of our private lives are
observed and recorded by business and government, sometimes with our
knowledge and consent. Microsoft and Google are duking it out with each
other on technical and legal fronts, and with a variety of governments.
Skirmishes in the forever war between students and the entertainment
industry affect Princeton students all the time. The careless, the
clueless, and the criminal continue to do bad things with technology.
What could possibly go wrong? Come and find out.
Comparison of COS 109, 116 and 126
Professor: Andrea
LaPaugh,
304 CS Building, 609-258-4568, aslp@...
Office hours Mon.
3:00-4:30 PM,
Wed. 1-2:20
PM
or by appointment (best to make by email). You are welcome to
look for me at other times
but I suggest you check if I am available before walking any distance.
Teaching Assistants:
Jacopo Cesareo, 103B CS Building,
jcesareo@..., office hours Mon. 2-3pm, Fri.
11:30am-12:30pm or
by
appointment
Arman Suleimenov, 103B CS Building, asuleime@...,
office hours Tues.
3:00-5:00pm or by appointment
Course secretary: Mitra Kelly, 323 CS building, 258-4562,
mkelly@ ...
You are encouraged to use electronic mail to set up appointments, leave messages, and ask quick questions (like ``What was that reference you gave today in class?'' or ``I've been at McCosh Infirmary all week; can I have an extension on my assignment?'') However, an old fashioned face-to-face meeting is still best for clarifying confusions and other technical discussions.
| Regular class attendance is expected and class participation helps. Frequent absences are grounds for a failing grade regardless of other performance. |
You may use laptops in class unless they
become a problem, but please limit your use of them to
lecture-related activities.
There will be eight labs to give hands-on practice in important aspects of computing. The labs are designed to be easily completed within three hours, if you have read through the instructions beforehand, which should take at most an hour. Lab instructions will be posted on the Schedule and Assignments page under the week they are due. Undergrad lab assistants will be available to help out during scheduled lab sections. Labs are held in the Friend Center; they can be done in dorm rooms or campus clusters, but there will be lab assistants in Friend, and no help elsewhere.
Labs are together worth about 20 percent of the course grade. To receive credit, students must complete labs by 11:59 PM Friday of the week they are assigned, unless there are extraordinary circumstances.
Labs start the second week of classes. There will be no labs in the week before fall break, Thanksgiving week, or the last week of classes.
Eight weekly problem sets, together worth about 20 percent of the course grade, will be assigned. Problems are intended to be straightforward, reinforcing material covered in class and providing practice in quantitative reasoning, and should take 1-2 hours to complete.
Problem sets will be due by 5:00 PM
Wednesday one week after they
are assigned. Problem sets will be
posted on the Schedule
and Assignments page. There will be no problem
set
due in the week before fall break (midterm instead), Thanksgiving week,
or the last week of the term. Only minimal credit will be given for
late submissions unless there are extraordinary
circumstances, and in
no
case after solutions have been posted or discussed in class.
There may well be short, unannounced, in-class quizzes to verify your existence and test your understanding. These could be worth 5 percent of the course grade.
A take-home, open-book midterm examination will be given during the week before fall break (midterm week). It will cover material presented and discussed in class and any relevant reading through the end of the fifth week of classes. It will be worth 20 percent of the course grade.
An open-book final examination will be given during the January exam period. It will cover all of the relevant readings and material presented and discussed in class. It will be worth 35-40 percent of the course grade.
There will be question and answer sessions before exams. These
are
not meant to be an orderly review and are not a substitute for missed
lectures, but they are a chance for you to ask questions about course
material.
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You must submit
all exams, labs and assignments to pass
the course. |
For both labs and problem sets, extracurricular
activities
and
heavy workloads in other classes don't count as "extraordinary", no
matter how unexpected or important or time-consuming. And I am
unsympathetic to the appeal that "this is my fifth class," since the
same could be said of any one of the others.
Nevertheless,
everyone gets truly behind from time
to time. In
recognition of this, you are allowed two late submissions (no more than
4 days late in each case). Please let us know ahead of time
that
you will be submitting late so we can keep track.
Preponement or postponement of the final exam must be authorized by
the registrar: "Appropriate reasons for granting such requests are
religious days,
personal emergencies, and more than one examination scheduled in a
single calendar day. " [Undergraduate
Announcement 2010-2011: Academic Standing and Regulations].
I
will
follow
the
same
guidelines
for
requests
to
take
the
midterm
outside
of
midterm
week.
You are encouraged to collaborate on problem sets, but you must turn in separate solutions; the names of all collaborators must appear on each submission.
(This elaboration of the policy on collaboration is paraphrased from COS 126:) You must reach your own understanding of the problem and discover a path to its solution. During this time, discussions with friends are encouraged. However, when the time comes to write down the solution to the problem, such discussions are no longer appropriate -- the solution must be your own work, so you must work on the written assignment on your own. If you have a question, you can certainly ask friends or teaching assistants, but do not, under any circumstances, copy another person's work or present it as your own. This is a violation of academic regulations.
Another way to look at this: If I asked you to explain how you got your answer, you would have no trouble doing so, because you understood the material completely.
Sorry, no collaboration on take-home exams or the final.
If you do poorly on the midterm but much better on the final, I will weight the final more heavily than usual, so a poor midterm grade is not fatal at all. But you must do acceptably well on the final exam.
Don't forget that P/D/F has three possible
outcomes, only one of
which is good. Attending lectures, paying attention and participating,
turning work in on time, coming to office hours, studying for exams,
and
attending q/a sessions all help to avoid unpleasant results.
There is no assigned text for this course. Notes and readings will be posted on the Schedule and Assignments page. The weekly readings are for background, context, general education, and/or entertainment; you are not expected to know the detailed content, but you should understand the basic ideas.
Professor Brian Kernighan has compiled a bibliography
of Web
sites, talks, and books that cover some of the topics we will address
in
the course. I highly recommend browsing some of these resources.