Final marks -- plus solutions for exam, June 2010

Final marks are now posted on Google Docs at http://tinyurl.com/ylgwc6c.

The answers and solutions to the June exam are on posterous.com at http://ics2.posterous.com/.

One or two graphic details may not display accurately on that posterous document. The diagrams for the question on pixel graphics should look like below (this does not show the shaded arc):

Have a great summer!

Career Project -- Bibliography format

The Career Project specifies that you create a bibliography using a standard format (APA or MLA) that you learned in your Careers class.

A simple search on the Web (e.g. bibliography APA style) will find you many guides to correct formatting. One example is at http://www.library.ubc.ca/home/about/instruct/apastyle.html.

Another approach is to fill in the form with information about your source at http://www.bibme.org/, select APA or MLA, then copy and paste the citation it creates for you.

format of June exam

The June exam will take place on Tuesday, June 15, 12:30 - 2:00.

It is worth 20% of your final mark.

The format of the exam is --

MARKS
12	Part A: Multiple Choice
13	Part B: What is the output?
25	Programs
15	Part D: Written explanations

Mon., April 26, 2010 - bring Norton textbook

What you need to know for the test on Turing Selection

On Thursday, April 22 there will be a test on Chapter 9 of the Turing textook (Selection). You will be asked to write four programs in Turing.

You need to know:

1- the if construct - including elsif

2. finding large and smallest of input numbers of strings

3. the case construct

Turing in-class assignment - Selection using the case construct

Create a Turing program named after yourself (e.g. HannahM_SelectionCase). The program asks the user to choose their favourite sport from a menu of four sports. The program then gives a different reponse (e.g. "Great choice! Hockey is Canada's most popular sport.") for each sport. Use a case construct with string input. When finished, copy your file to the Dropoff Folder (Jarvis / Dropoff / Schreiber / ICS2O1).

Thuirs., Feb. 3 - Norton, Ch. 27, Creating computer programs

Today we begin Norton, Ch. 27, Creating computer programs.

Some of this material will be familiar to you because you have already been creating computer programs in Turing, but you will get a more general overview of the topic by also learning about subjects such as program flow, flowcharts, algorithms and heuristics, and object-oriented programming (or try this link).

Test, Mon., Feb. 8 - Turing ch. 7 Character Graphics

There will be a test on Turing, Chapter 6 (Character Graphics) on Mon., Feb. 8.

Wed. Feb. 3 - Finish questions at tend of Chapter 7.

Thurs., Feb. 4, bring your Norton textbook to class.

the Turing textbook in pdf form

The entire Turing textbook, An Introduction to Programming in Turing by J.N.P. Hume (Holt Software Associates Inc.), is now available in pdf format in the Pickup Folder.

Turing Ch. 7 - see Pickup Folder

The Pickup Folder has the following files:

* Ch07_xtraExers.doc
--- Extra exercises to give you more practice

* Ch07_CharacterGraphics_textExers_ANSW_Q01-06.pdf
--- Answers to the extra exercises)

* Ch07_CharacterGraphics_exercises_hints.doc
--- Hints for some of the trickier points in the exercises at the end of the chapter

Turing, Ch. 7 - in-class assignment

Create a new Turing program named after yourself (e.g. BackO_Ch7_assignment.t).

You may use your notes, the textbook or any programs you have saved on your home drive

Using the some of the sample programs in Chapter 7 (pp. 118-129), create a program that
1. begins by colouring the entire screen blue

2. simulates the bouncing of a rectangle, using the characters [], starting near the bottom left of the screen at location 25,2 and moving diagonally upward to the right

3. the rectangle consists of red characters, and the background of the characters is yellow

4. the speed of the "movement" is slow enough that the movement can be easily seen

Test Mon., Jan. 11 -- Norton, Lessons 9 and 10

There will be a test on Norton, Lessons 9-10 next Monday, Jan. 11.

Welcome back! - week of Jan. 4, 2010

Let's hope everyone had a nice holiday and feels refreshed.


Is it really 2010?

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.