CS 201 - Spring 2025. 1/24/2025.

Welcome to CS 201!

Video of the Day

Crab Canon , A Musical Offering, J.S. Bach. See also: Crab canon, which is like a palindrome.

I hereby solicit suggestions for the video of the day. Please email me your ideas with explanations. Selected entries will win 5 homework points. If your video is played at the beginning of class, you must also briefly explain something about the video and something about yourself - in person.

Logical problem of the day

A father is 21 years older than his child. In exactly 6 years from now, the father will be exactly 5 times as old as the child.

Where's the mother?

https://pollev.com/slade You may also download the app to your phone. Use the "slade" poll id.

Top Ten Reasons to Learn Racket!

Number 7: Unlike other high level languages, racket reflects the principles of the von Neumann computer architecture in which data and instructions are syntactically identical. In Racket, both data and code are lists. In machine language, both data and code are binary numbers. (We will see this when we write assembly language programs for TC-201.)

Canvas Quiz of the Day (need daily password)

Most days, there will be a simple canvas quiz related to the lecture. You need a password to activate the quiz, which I will provide in class. These quizzes will count toward your class participation grade. The quiz is available only during class.

Click for today's quiz.

Note: the collaboration quiz is separate. It coincides with the first homework assignment.

Lecture 5: Racket.

I have office hours Wednesdays from 4-6 pm, on zoom, id 459 434 2854.

I am available for lunch on Mondays at 1 pm in Franklin.

ULA office hours are found at https://csofficehours.org/CS201/schedule. Sign up via the queue.

If you're thinking of taking CPSC 201, please do the following.

Complete this online Student Information form.
Get a course account for CPSC 201 on the Zoo. When you register for this class, your course account should be created within one hour or so of signing up.
Start the homework assignment: [Assignments]. hw1 is now available. Note: I have listed provisional due dates for all assignments.
Familiarize yourself with the Zoo computers with classmates or ULAs or on your own using the Zoo tutorial, Spring 2014 edition. We will discuss UNIX in class in the coming weeks and throughout the term. The compiled staff solutions to the problem sets are available for execution on the zoo. There is also an interactive UNIX tutorial available on the zoo.
(Optional.) Download and install DrRacket on your computer (Racket) and familiarize yourself with it (Choose language: "Use the language declared in the source", #lang racket. Then press the Run button to actually change the language.) If you don't want to install and run DrRacket on your machine, you may run it in person or remotely using your Zoo account.

Announcements

Summer Computational Biology Research at TECBIO

We are pleased to announce the 16th summer for our REU program in computational biology and hope that you would be willing to recommend another student(s) for our program this year. More information and our 2025 program flyer can be found at our website – tecbioreu.pitt.edu, which also connects to our program application page via the NSF ETAP portal.
Application Deadline: February 14, 2025
Program Dates: May 19 – July 25, 2025
Student Support: $7000 stipend, housing*, and stipends for travel* and computer equipment*
*housing, travel, and computer support may not be available for Pitt (home institution) students

In hw0, you are asked to read a recent issue of the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery (CACM). The ACM is the major professional society for the broad field of computer science. I have been a member for 50 years now. If you intend to pursue a career in computer science, either in industry or academia, you should join. They have a special student membership rate of $19 a year. See https://services.acm.org/public/fall/ and select ACM Student Membership. If you sign up (or are already a member), I will award you 5 homework points. Just send me proof.

From the Yale College Dean's Office:

How to Write an Email to Your Instructor
How *Not* to Write an Email to Your Instructor
Note: like diamonds, emails are forever. See Enron Email Corpus.

Racket.

See staff solutions for hw0 and hw1 in /c/cs201/hws on the zoo.

Racket.html (jupyter) Lists.

Getting to know UNIX

UNIX Introduction

[Home]