Norton, Lesson 9 - assignment

Look at p. 180 of the Norton textbook (lesson 9)

Hand in a printout with your name on and -

A. Definitions
any six of the following definitions:
polarized, formatting, track, sector, master boot record, FAT, fragmented, storage device, storage media
See p. 180 to see where the definitions are in the textbook

B. Key Terms
Copy the ten sentences, filling in the blanks in bold with the appropriate term.

Wed., Dec. 13 - bring Norton textbook

Test on Turing, Ch. 6 next Monday, Dec. 7

There will be a test on Turing, Ch. 6 next Friday, Dec. 19.

It is not intended to be challenging. There will be plenty of simple, straightforward
questions to be answered on paper, enough of them so that anyone who has studied the notes can earn a good overall mark on the test. Some of the questions will even be True or False! How easy is that?

Whether you find writing programs in Turing easy or hard, you do of course have to learn what is in your notes. That's obvious, right? It's not many pages to study. Check your answers against the .pdf file in the Pickup Folder.




Also on the test, in addition to the questions answered on paper, will be a few questions requiring you to write short programs in Turing. At least two of them are meant to be easy. They will simply ask you to write something like the programs in
-- the content of the chapter, or
-- the "Practice Exercises" in the Pickup Folder, or
-- the easier questions at the back of the chapter.

By the way, we will look at the questions at the end of the chapter in class next week and you will be give model solutions for all of them.

There will probably be one programming question a little more challenging, just so some people don't get completely bored.

Turing Ch. 6 - questions at end of chapter

When you have finished reading, making notes, and trying the given programs for Chapter 6, begin working on the questions at the end of the chapter.


(Students who find this work difficult, should go to the Pickup Folder for a file named Ch06Repetition_extraPractice.doc. It gives you additional exercises to help you get used to the ideas of the chapter.)

Several of the questions at the end of the chapter challenging questions for the stronger programming students. If you can't figure those out, don't worry. You can safely ignore them.


QUESTION #9 (p. 114) asks you to find the sum of a number of terms of the series of numbers 1 + x + x**2 + x**3 + x**4 .. . This is a challenging question for the stronger students in the class.

HINTS:

- The tricky part in this question is in how you set up the counter (index) for your counted loop.

- You need to recall a little math - What's the value of x⁰ and x¹?

QUESTION #13 (p. 115) asks you to find all the factors of an integer.

HINTS:

- Try all integers from 1 to the number.

- For each one, how do you decide whether it is a factor? Well, a factor of a number divides into the number evenly. That's the definition of a factor.

- Hint: Have a look at a very useful operator called div (p. 101).


QUESTION #14 (p. 115) asks you to take an integer from the user and output the number of digits in it. This is a challenging question for the stronger students in the class.

HINTS:

- Tell the user to enter an integer of 6 digits or less. The book doesn't mention this, but obviously there's a problem if the user can enter ANY number, no matter how large.

- Use div and multiples of 10 as a divisor.


QUESTION #16 (p. 115) asks you to generate random real numbers between, 4 and 5, 0 and 10, and so on. Be sure you learn how to do this. (It's not hard once you think about it, knowing what rand(number) does.)

ics2.posterous.com

Our files are now available even when you don't have access to the Pickup Folder.

One shortcoming of this blog is that it doesn't allow the posting of files, so I've found another way to provide you with files. They're mostly the same files that I leave in the Pickup Folder, but with posterous you have access to them when you're not on a school computer.

http://ics2.posterous.com/

Enlarge a file for easier viewing by clicking "Fullscreen" or clicking on the plus sign. The files can also be downloaded or printed.

week of Nov. 9:test on Norton 7 / begin Turing Ch. 5

Having finished Norton, Lesson 7, we begin the week with a test. It will take about 20 minutes.







In the second part of Monday's class we return to the Turing textbook and begin Chapter 5: Repetition (Loops). Be sure to bring your Turing textbook every day.

week of Nov. 2 - finishing Norton, Lesson 7

This week we finish the worksheet for Norton, Lesson 7: Transforming Data into Information, learning about the actual processing of a computer, how it represents data (bits, bytes, etc.), how it processes data into information, and the factors affecting processing speed (RAM, clock speed, etc.). We could finish this topic in the next two classes, in which case we will return to Turing in the last class of this week.

If you want some further information, here's a nice article explaining Unicode, an article at How Stuff Works on bits and bytes and a Wikipedia article on clock speed (clock rate).





There will be a test on Norton, Lesson 7 on Monday, Nov. 9.

week of Sept. 28: Variables and Constants (Ch. 5)

Monday test on Norton, Lessons 1-3.

Begin Turing, Ch. 5: Variables and Constants.

For a different presentation of variables and constants in Turing, you might look at the tutorial some has written on Geocities at http://www.geocities.com/turing_site/Tutorials/Tutorial3.htm?20091.

Week of Sept. 21 - 25: Beginning to write programs using the Turing programming language

The topic of variables and constants is not difficult, but it's important to learn it well in order to continue with programming.

1. Become familiar with how to declare a variable using var. For example:
   var maxTempDay1 : real
   
2. Know the three data types -- int, real, string.
   
3. Try to think of a variable as a named memory location, that is, an area of RAM the computer gives a name and waits for it to be given a value.
   
   

For a presentation a little different from the Turing textbook, you might look at the tutorial someone has written on Geocities at http://www.geocities.com/turing_site/Tutorials/Tutorial1.htm?20091.

Where to get your copy of Turing

To practise programming at home, you need a copy of the Turing program to install on your home computer. You can download it from here:

schools.tdsb.on.ca/jarvisci/turing/turing.zip

Welcome to the ICS201 course in Computer Studies!

Welcome to your first course in computer science!

I think you're going to enjoy this course. Working in front of a computer is a nice break from your other courses, and there are lots of interesting things to learn.



We'll start the year with a little background information about computers and how they work from the Norton textbook. It's an excellent textbook with many "pictures that say more than a thousand words." It was published a while ago, in 2000, so a few details have gone out of date, but we'll correct those little problems. Overall it's great.

After the introduction, we begin to write computer programs, which I think is going give you quite a thrill. There's something about writing your own programs, having that much control over the computer - it's very cool!

Whether you get a kick out of it at the beginning or not, later in the year I guarantee you're going to enjoy pixel graphics (Chapter 8 of the Turing textbook), where you create colour and animation and all sorts of razzle-dazzle.

So get ready to enjoy, enjoy, ENJOY!