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Data Structures
Spring, 2008

Instructor

 

Announcements

Course Overview

Textbook

Grading

 

Frederic Green
Dept. of Math/CS, BP 334
fgreen at black dot clarku dot edu
Office Hours: Tuesdays/Thursdays 1 – 3pm
and by appointment

TA: Ian Denhardt
Consultation Hours: Mondays/Tuesdays 4-6

 

 

Announcements


 

  • Assignment 7 now posted (4/21/2008).
  • Final exam: Tuesday, May 6, 4 - 6pm in BP316.

 

 

Course Overview



  • Course Overview: This course represents the second semester of an Introduction to Programming in Java with emphasis on elements of object-oriented programming (OOP), a way of producing reliable and reusable code. Students are expected to be familiar with basic Java (or C++) syntax, data types, text-based I/O, control flow, arrays, and have some familiarity with OOP ideas such as classes and objects. 


The course begins with a quick introduction/review of the Java basics mentioned above. There follows a brief introduction to the Phases of Software Development, including a discussion of algorithm analysis. We then study the notion of an abstract data type ("ADT"). The bulk of the course (building on the ADT idea and algorithm analysis) is the exploration of a variety of ADTs and their implementations, such as Java Collections, Linked Lists, Stacks, and Queues. Following a study of Recursion as an interesting subject in its own right, we next examine ADTs relating to Trees. We end studying some important algorithms for searching, and sorting.

 Meeting Times:

    • The class meets twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday) for lectures:
      • 9 - 10:15 am in BP316
    • There is also a lab session that meets once each week in BP310:
      • Tuesdays, 10:25 – 11:40am


Academic Integrity: All homeworks, lab assignments and exams must reflect individual efforts. Students may discuss assignments and collaborate on the high-level design of projects, but coding must be done individually. Cheating may result in the student(s) receiving an F for the course, and could seriously jeopardize a college career. For more information on the academic honesty policy at Clark see the web page on Academic Integrity: Clark University Academic Integrity Policy. All suspected cases of plagiarism are reported directly to the Dean of Academic Advising.

 

 

Textbook



Textbook (Required)

Michael Main. Data Structures & Other Objects Using Java, 3rd Ed., Addison Wesley 2006.
 

Reference Text

The following is an excellent reference book:
Bruce Eckel.
Thinking in Java, 4th Edition, Prentice Hall, NJ, 2006.
You can download the entire 2nd edition (already excellent reading) free (!) online at: Bruce Eckel's Web Site.

 

 

Grading Policy



Grading Policy

Exams:

    • Mid-term (20%) and Final (30%), 50% total

Homeworks:

    • 7 Assignments worth 35% total

Labs:

    • 8 to 10 Assignments worth 15% total


Exams will be open book, open notes.

Homework assignments will be due by the start of the class period for which it is due. Homework turned in up to 24 hours late will be marked down 10%, 24-48 hours late, 25%. No homework will be accepted more than 48 hours late.

Lab attendance is mandatory. Lab assignments will be due a week after they are assigned. No late lab assignments will be accepted.
 

 

 

Last Updated: 1/12/2008, Frederic Green
Thanks to Kajal Claypool for the basis of these web pages.