General Information

Instructor

Matt Bishop, Email: bishop@cs.ucdavis.edu
Web site: http://seclab.cs.ucdavis.edu/~bishop
Office: 2209 Watershed Science; Phone: (530) 752-8060
Hours: M 12:30PM–1:30PM; Tu 1:30PM–2:30PM, W 10:00AM–11:00AM, Th 10:30AM–11:00AM

Teaching Assistants

Samuel Johnson, email: samjohnson@ucdavis.edu
Shengren Li, email: shrli@ucdavis.edu
Hours: The TAs will hold office hours during the labs.

Lectures

TuTh 9:00–10:20 AM in 212 Veihmeyer

Discussion Section

Lab section 15-A01: M 12:10–3:00 PM in 1131 Meyer (TA: Shengren Li)
Lab section 15-A02: M 3:10–6:00 PM in 1131 Meyer (TA: Sam Johnson)
Lab section 15-A03: W 2:10–5:00 PM in 1131 Meyer (TA: Shengren Li)
Lab section 15-A04: F 12:10–3:00 PM in 1131 Meyer (TA: Shengren Li)

Course Outline

Practical introduction to computers, how they work, how you can use them, how computer scientists and technologists manipulate them. Software, including word processing and spreadsheets. Multimedia, games, printers, and the Internet. Introduction to programming using the Python programming language.

Course Goals

Some goals we hope you achieve:

Explore the structure of computers, their hardware and software.
Introduce some application programs such as word processors and spreadsheets.
Introduce the fundamental concepts of computer programming using Python
Learn how to write a research term paper.

Texts

R. White, How Computers Work, Ninth Edition, Que Publishing, Indianapolis, IN (2008); ISBN 0-7897-3613-6.
M. Dawson, Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Third Edition, Thomson Course Technology, Boston, MA (2010); ISBN 1-4354-5500-2.

Class Web Site

The class web site is on SmartSite. To access it, go to http://smartsite.ucdavis.edu and log in using your campus login and password. Then go to ECS 15 in your schedule. Handouts and other documents will be posted there. We will also post announcements there, too. If you do not have access to SmartSite, you can go to the alternate web site at http://nob.cs.ucdavis.edu/classes/ecs015-2011-01. You can download the handouts from that site, but you cannot look at your grades or submit homework there.

Homework

All work is due at 11:55PM on the date stated on the homework, unless otherwise stated. See the handout All About Lab Exercises and the Term Paper for more information.

Exams

Midterm: Thursday, February 10, in class
Final: Thursday, March 17, 10:30AM–12:30PM
These are closed book/closed notes exams. No early or late exam will be given; if you miss an exam for medical reasons (you must document this; no other excuses are acceptable), you may be allowed or required to take a make-up exam, or the other parts of the course will be counted proportionally more (the choice is the instructor’s). In particular, forgetting the time or place of an exam is not an excuse for missing it!

Grading

Laboratory Exercises	25%	Midterm Exam	20%
Term Paper	30%	Final Exam	25%

The 30% for the term paper is distributed as follows:

Prospectus	1%	Progress Report	2%
“Spew” Paper	4%	Completed Paper	23%

Academic Integrity

The UC Davis Code of Academic Conduct, available at http://sja.ucdavis.edu/cac.html, applies to this class. In particular, for this course:

All work submitted for credit must be your own. You may discuss your assignments with classmates, with instructors, or with teaching assistants or readers in the course to get ideas or a critique of your ideas, but the ideas and words you submit must be your own. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, collaboration is considered cheating and will be dealt with accordingly.
For written homework, you must write up your own solutions and may neither read nor copy another student’s solutions.
For laboratory exercises, you must create and type in your own code and document it yourself. Note that you are free to seek help while debugging a program once it is written.
For your term paper, both the ideas and your expression of them must be your own. You may not copy another’s work, except when you are quoting it in order to discuss it, and you must acknowledge your source.

A good analogy between appropriate discussion and inappropriate collaboration is the following: you and a fellow student work for competing software companies developing different products to meet a given specification. You and your competitor might choose to discuss product specifications and general techniques employed in your products, but you certainly would not discuss or exchange proprietary information revealing details of your products. Ask the instructor for clarification beforehand if the above rules are not clear.

ECS 15, Introduction to Computers
Winter Quarter 2011

You can also obtain a PDF version of this.
Version of January 6, 2011 at 2:01PM