COSC-2010: Data Structures

Fall 2023

Contents

• Announcements
• Where, When, Who
• Description
• Learning Goals
• Policies
• OSs, IDEs, and Tools
• Schedule
• Assignments and Grading
• Materials: Readings, Videos, and Links
• Other Interesting Links

Announcements

11/15/23: Posted the rooms for the final exams. Section 01's exam is on W 12/13 4–6 PM in St. Mary's 126. Section 02's exam is on Sa 12/16 9–11 AM in Healy 104.

11/7/23: Posted p5.

• Data Structures and Algorithms in C++, 2nd edition, by Goodrich, Tamassia, and Mount.
• Also available in Safari Books Online (aka O'Reilly for Higher Education). Note that for first-time access you need to authenticate through the Library's Web site to access this resource: Safari Books Online.

• Data Structures and Algorithms in C++, 1st edition, by Goodrich, Tamassia, and Mount.
• Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd edition, by Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest, and Stein. Available Online.

My course policies are designed to supplement the University's Undergraduate Honor System and the CS Department's Honor Policy. Unless stated otherwise when I distribute an assignment, the following is the default for all assignments for this course. I have developed my policies from past teaching experiences and from the CS Department's Honor Code at George Mason University.

I am obligated to refer all suspected cases of academic dishonesty by undergraduate and master's students to Georgetown's Honor Council. I am obligated to refer all suspected cases of academic dishonesty by doctoral students to the dean of the Graduate School. If you have any questions about these policies or how they apply, please discuss such concerns with me during class, during office hours, by e-mail, or using the class's discussion board.

In my experience, students at Georgetown do honest work. The very small percentage of students who have submitted someone else's work as their own did so because they did not manage their time wisely.

Students must always follow proper scholarly practice for all submitted work, whether graded or ungraded and whether a draft or final version of a proposal, paper, program, or problem set. As scholars, we must acknowledge our reliance on the work of others through citation. You can never submit someone else's work as your own without proper attribution. The University assumes that students learned how to properly cite material at their previous institutions. If this is not the case, please let me know.

Indeed, students may be quite adept at and knowledgeable about citing and quoting material from traditional sources, such as books and articles. Typically, we do not have cite facts, common math formulae, or expressions of our own ideas, observations, interpretations, and analyses. However, students new to computer science may not realize that theorems, proofs, algorithms, programs, and code fragments may require the same treatment as any other form of expression.

For convenience, you do not need to cite the course materials, which includes the syllabus, sources linked from the syllabus, the course textbooks, the class lectures and discussion, posts on the discussion board, and conversations with me and the courses assistants. You must, however, cite the use of any resource that is not part of the course materials. Note that “the textbook” does not extend to the textbook's Web site, its contents, lecture slides, solution manuals, code repositories, or any other supplemental material related to the textbook. If you are unsure about what requires citation or what constitutes proper scholarly practice, please ask me during class, during office hours, by e-mail, or using the discussion board.

I design my courses and assignments so students have what they need to complete the assignments individually without consulting outside resources. I determine the size of and credit for assignments based on the assumption that the work for them is the result of individual effort using only the course resources and materials. Students who use outside resources to complete assignments may not be eligible for full credit. Students who do not acknowledge their use of outside resources to complete assignments may be in violation of my course policies and the university's policies on academic integrity.

The materials that I create and use for my courses (“Course Materials”) are my intellectual property. You may not disseminate or reproduce them in any form for public distribution (e.g., sale, exchange, etc.) without my written permission. Course Materials include all written or electronic documents and materials that I provide, including but not limited to syllabi, current and past assessments and their solutions (e.g., exams, homeworks, projects, problem sets, etc.), and presentations such as lectures, videos, slides, etc. Course Materials may only be used by students enrolled in the course for academic (i.e., course-related) purposes. Furthermore, your solutions to assessments are derivative works of my copyrighted material and are therefore subject to that protection because they necessarily incorporate my protected expression. Consequently, you may not further disseminate or reproduce in any form for distribution (e.g., uploading to websites, sale, exchange, etc.) your solutions to assessments.

Published course readings (book chapters, articles, reports, etc.) available in Canvas are copyrighted material. I make these works available to students through licensed databases or fair use. They are protected by copyright law, and may not be further disseminated or reproduced in any form for distribution (e.g., uploading to websites, sale, exchange, etc.) without permission of the copyright owner. Note that under § 1202 of Title 17 of the U.S. Code it is illegal to remove or alter copyright management information.

You can find more information about intellectual property and copyright here: https://www.library.georgetown.edu/copyright. You can find more information about computer acceptable use policy and intellectual property here: https://security.georgetown.edu/it-policies-procedures/computer-systems-aup.

Copyright issues aside, if you post your solutions to assessments on the Internet, students in current and future classes will be able to find your solutions and submit them as their own work without attribution. Naturally, students who submit another student's work as their own violate my course policies, and in the past, the Honor Council has found these students in violation and sanctioned them. The Honor Council has also found students who post their solutions on the Internet in violation because they facilitated cheating, violated copyright law, the Web site's terms of service, or some combination of these.

I understand that prospective employers may ask for examples of your work. I recommend that students devise a scheme for providing examples in a manner that does not violate copyright law, does not violate the terms of service of the site on which you have posted material protected by copyright, and does not facilitate cheating. One idea is to share a private folder on Google Drive with a prospective employer.

The following list details acceptable and unacceptable practices:

• You can:
  • obtain assistance in understanding course materials (textbooks, lecture notes, assignments);
  • obtain assistance in learning to use the computing facilities;
  • obtain assistance in learning to use special features of a programming language's implementation;
  • obtain assistance in determining the syntactic correctness of a particular programming language statement or construct;
  • obtain an explanation of a particular syntactic error;
  • obtain explanations of compilation or run-time error messages;
  • use industry-standard tools for software development that are installed on personal or departmental computers;
  • consult external resources with the proper attribution and with understanding that you may not be eligible for full credit.
• You can obtain assistance only from me and the course assistants:
  • in designing the data structures and algorithms used in your solution;
  • in modifying the design of an algorithm or data structure determined to be faulty;
  • in implementing your algorithm or data structure in a programming language;
  • in correcting a faulty implementation of your algorithm or data structure;
  • in determining the semantic correctness of your program;
  • in designing an experimental study and interpreting its results.
• You can not:
  • use any external resource without the proper attribution;
  • use Internet-based software development platforms including but not limited to Replit, GitHub Copilot, and ChatGPT;
  • show or give a copy of your work in any amount or form to another student;
  • post course materials or your solutions for any assessment to any site on the Internet, including sites such as GitHub and CourseHero;
  • see or receive a copy of someone else's work in any amount or form;
  • attempt to gain access to files other than your own or those that I designate and authorize;
  • inspect or retain in your possession another student's work, whether it was given to you by another student, it was found after other student discarded his or her work, or it accidentally came into your possession;
  • collaborate in any way with someone else in the design, implementation, or logical revision of an algorithm;
  • use or present as your own any algorithm, data structure, or implementation that is not of your own or of my design, or that is not part of the course materials without attribution.
  • study or incorporate code that others have written, such as code found on the Internet;
  • hack the autograder which includes but is not limited to sharing tests and their results with others, and attempting to reverse engineer the routines used for automatic grading.

Policies dealing logistics:

• You should submit all assignments on time. For each homework and project except p5, you can submit the assignment late by taking an additional 48 hours beyond the deadline to complete the assignment. (It is not possible for me to grant an extension for p5 because of university rules prohibiting work extending into study days.) This election requires no prior approval. Just do it. However, for projects submitted beyond the 48-hour extension period, there will be a 1% deduction for each minute after the period ends. In the real world, it won't be your grade that decreases. It'll be your stock price.
• I grant extensions only to students who have documentation for a medical issue, a family emergency, or an accommodation from the Academic Resource Center. In the cases of a medical issue or a family emergency, you must to coordinate with your advising dean since these situations almost always affect your work in all of your classes.
• You have permission to occasionally take digital photos of the material on the board for your personal and course-related use, but you can not post these recordings on the Internet. It is important to understand that all of the course material is protected by copyright, either mine or someone else's.
• If you use your laptop for development, you should make periodic backups of your projects on a university or department machine (e.g., cs-class) so that if something goes wrong with your submission I can verify that you completed the work for an assignment before the deadline.
• You must take the final exam with your assigned section and during the period designated by the Registrar.
• It is my job to maintain a constructive learning environment for everyone. Please silence your cell phone and other electronic devices.
• The Undergraduate Bulletin stipulates that “[a]ll students are expected to attend all classes...” Furthermore, in the classroom, I value and promote questions and discussions. It is important for all students to hear and learn from these discussions even if they choose not to participate. As a consequence, you will be allowed up to three unexcused absences throughout the course of the semester. If you are absent four or more times, your course grade will be lowered by four percent for the fourth and fifth absences.

  Absences will be excused for participation in a university-sponsored varsity athletics (with confirmation from the appropriate contact) and for religious holidays (for a list of religious holidays that are excused absences, please visit: https://campusministry.georgetown.edu/religious_holy_days.) You are responsible for any material covered during your absence.

  Absences for minor illnesses do not count as excused, but rather count against your three allowed absences. If you will be missing more than two classes because of a serious illness or because you have been asked to quarantine, you must contact your advising dean, who will help you work with all of your professors to formulate a recovery plan. The same goes for other types of emergencies, such as family illnesses. We will deal with such absences in a compassionate way, but since they affect all of your courses, you must work with your advising dean to make a plan for getting back on track.

  Absences due to interviews, employment, and extra-curricular activities do not count as excused. Your academic work comes first, and you should plan these activities so they do not interfere with attending class.

  Finally, if you must miss class for any reason, be sure to get the lecture notes from a classmate.

• In the case of inclement weather that results in the university's closure, we will meet virtually during normal class times using Zoom.

• Homework, Optional
• Homework 0 (Concept Inventory), assigned M 8/21, due F 9/1 @ 11:59 ET
• Homework 1, assigned W 8/29, due F 9/15 F 9/29 @ 11:59 PM ET
• Homework 2, assigned T 9/12, due W 9/20 @ 11:59 PM ET
• Homework 3, assigned T 9/26, due W 10/4 @ 11:59 PM ET
• Homework 4, assigned T 10/17, due W 11/1 @ 11:59 PM ET
• Programming Projects, 45%
• Project 0, assigned W 8/23, due W 9/6 @ 5 PM ET, optional
• Project 1, assigned W 8/23, due W 9/13 @ 5 PM ET, 9 points
• Project 2, assigned T 9/12, due W 9/27 @ 5 PM ET, 9 points
• Project 3, assigned T 9/26, due W 10/18 @ 5 PM ET, 9 points
• Project 4, assigned T 10/17, due W 11/8 @ 5 PM ET, 9 points
• Project 5, assigned T 11/7, due T 12/5 @ 11:59 PM ET, 9 points
• Midterm Exam, 18%
• Section 01: R 10/26
• Section 02: R 10/26
• Final Exam, 29%
• Section 01: W 12/13, 4:00 PM, STM 126
• Section 02: Sa 12/16, 9:00 AM, Healy 104
• Attendance and Participation, 8%

String Grades::getLetterGrade()
{
  if (grade >= 94)
    return "A";
  else if (grade >= 90)
    return "A-";
  else if (grade >= 87)
    return "B+";
  else if (grade >= 84)
    return "B";
  else if (grade >= 80)
    return "B-";
  else if (grade >= 77)
    return "C+";
  else if (grade >= 74)
    return "C";
  else if (grade >= 70)
    return "C-";
  else if (grade >= 67)
    return "D+";
  else if (grade >= 64)
    return "D";
  else
    return "F";
} // Grades::getLetterGrade

I use automatic grading routines to assign an initial grade for the projects. It is important to emphasize that the grade you obtain from Autolab is an initial grade and may not be your final grade. There are many important aspects of a program that are difficult or impossible to assess using automatic grading routines. For example, automatic grading routines can not determine if you have written proper documentation. They can not easily assess if an implementation of an operation is optimally efficient. As a consequence, I start with the initial grade you obtain from Autolab and take further deductions if necessary. I grade the last submission for practical and pedagogical reasons.

For complete implementations, I use the following distribution as a guide:

• 40%: Compiles against the autograder
• 20%: Executes without failure using the autograder
• 40%: Autograder unit tests
• 10%: Internal documentation, if required
• Purpose of classes and methods explained in documentation comments
• Purpose, range, and meaning of identifiers explained, where needed
• Complex flow of control explained
• 10%: Style and formatting
• Nested indentation for loops and conditionals
• All class, method, and function headers emphasized
• Comments set off from code
• Vertical alignment of comments, where appropriate
• White space between blocks of code (and comments)
• Mnemonic identifier names
• 80%: Algorithm and Implementation
• Correct implementation of the operations
• Proper object-oriented design and implementation
• Appropriate error checking and diagnostic messages
• Appropriate data and object types
• Correct, clean, organized output format

Notice that an implementation consisting entirely method stubs would obtain an initial grade of 60%. Such an implementation is incomplete, and would be subject to further deductions based on the effort required to implement the required operations.

In addition to the above, the following deductions may be taken if applicable:

• 20%: Does not compile on cs-class
• 1–10%: Incomplete or improper submission
• 1–10%: Debugging or unnecessary output
• 1–5%: My effort for fixing any minor issue
• 1–5%: Inefficiently implemented routine
• 1% per minute: Late deduction

• Dynarski, S. M. (10 August 2017). For better learning in college lectures, lay down the laptop and pick up a pen. Research Report, Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. (Read if interested.)
• Perez-Hernandez, D. (28 March 2014). Taking notes by hand benefits recall, researchers find. The Chronicle of Higher Education. (Read if interested.)
• Mueller, P. A. and Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25(6):1159–1168. (Read if interested.)
• Autolab, for submitting projects
• Piazza, for online discussions.
• Canvas, for document distribution, submitting homeworks and exams, and for submitting projects if Autolab breaks.

• cppreference.com
• cplusplus.com
• C programming.com–Your Resource for C and C++ Programming
• Google C++ Style Guide
• Book: Managing projects with GNU make, 3rd Edition, by Robert Mecklenburg. We will give you Makefiles that you can modify, but if you want to learn more, Chapters 1 and 2 are probably sufficient for this class.
• Screencast: Program Organization
• Screencast: Basic Makefiles
• Screencast: Date Class Design and Implementation
• Screencast: Makefile Magic
• Screencast: Processing Command-line Arguments
• Screencast: DOC Comments, Doxygen, and Posting Documentation on the Web
• YouTube Playlist: Classes
• YouTube Playlist: C++ Vectors
• YouTube Playlist: Pointers
• YouTube Playlist: Self-referential Classes
• YouTube Playlist: Bit Operations, Set ADT, and the BitSet Class
• YouTube Playlist: Red-Black Trees: Insertion and Removal
• MIT's course The Missing Semester of Your CS Education
• vi Reference Card
• emacs Reference Card
• gdb Reference Card
• How to Write Doc Comments for the Javadoc Tool
• doxygen: A documentation system for C++, C, Java, and other languages
• Unix as IDE
• Xcode, Apple's free integrated development environment (IDE). Make sure you install the command-line tools.
• Eclipse, a free integrated development environment (IDE) for Linux, OS X, and Windows
• NetBeans, a free IDE for Linux, OS X, and Windows (Oh! And Solaris)
• Code::Blocks, a free IDE for Linux, OS X, and Windows
• Visual Studio Express, a free IDE for Windows
• vim, an improved vi editor for Unix, OS X, and Windows. It's usually already installed on OS X and Unix systems
• Interactive Vim Tutorial
• Useful Unix Commands
• HOWTO: Log in and transfer files to cs-class from OS X and Linux
• HOWTO: Log in and transfer files to cs-class from Windows
• HOWTO: Create and compile files on cs-class
• WinSSH: a secure telnet and ftp client for Windows (educational license)
• PuTTY: a free secure telnet and ftp client for Windows
• FileZilla: a free secure ftp client for Linux, Windows, and MacOS

• The 2023 Top Programming Languages
• xkcd: Old Days
• Computer Language Benchmarks Game
• An Interview with Bjarne Stroustrup, which includes his thoughts on educating computer scientists
• Now Blooming: Digital Models
• Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years, by Peter Norvig
• Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software
Engineers of Tomorrow?, by Dewar and Schonberg
• The 18 Mistakes that Kill Startups, by Paul Graham
• Hackers and Painters, by Paul Graham
• In the Beginning was the Command Line, by Neal Stephenson
• Bjarne: the man, the language
• The Deitel Empire
• GNU gcc, which includes g++, our C++ compiler
• Peet's
• Fast Lane
• Red Bull

Copyright © 2023 Mark Maloof. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.