Introduction to Programming

with Mathematica

CPSC 215 - L02 - Winter 2002

Christian Jacob

Course Information

For many of you, this course is your very first encounter with programming and, may be, with a computer. The course is designed to help you become familiar with the use of computers and programming, i.e., how to tell a computer what you want it to do.

Please note that learning to program is a VERY time-consuming activity and assignments in this course may well take more time to complete than assignments in other courses.

The course emphasizes student activity. This means that a significant portion of what you learn will come from actually working with a computer. There are numerous Workstations located on the first floor (Main Floor) of the Math Sciences building available for your use during the term. There will be two scheduled lab hours per week where the Teaching Assistants will help you with assigned laboratory exercises as well as other work.

As our programming tool, which also provides the programming language itself, we use Mathematica (www.wolfram.com), which provides an environment for scientific computing. During the course you will see how to make use of Mathematica, in your "every-day" programming tasks and, later on, in your particular area of interest.

 

Lecture Time

We meet for our CPSC 215 lecture every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in A 142 from 12:00 to 12:50 p.m.

  

Labs and Teaching Assistants

You will have the opportunity to attend two labs per week. In these labs your teaching assistants will answer your questions, prepare you for the assignments, and give you additional help towards the material covered in the lecture.

The following CPSC 215 labs are offered in Winter 2002:

  • Lab 05: Monday and Wednesday, 9:00, SB 312
  • Lab 06: Monday and Wednesday, 13:00, SB 105
  • Lab 07: Monday and Wednesday, 16:00, SS 6
  • Lab 08: Tuesday and Thursday, 12:00, ED 172

This semester your Teaching Assistants are:

Both Teaching Assistants will maintain web pages for their labs:

 

Course Requirements

To achieve an overall grade of C - or better - in the course, you must achieve a grade of C - or better - on the final exam and attempt at least 4 assignments.

The overall weighting of your grades is as follows:

      • 30% - Assignments
      • 30% - In-Class Midterm Exam
      • 40% - Final Exam

 

 

 

Back to CPSC 215 Main Page 

 © Christian Jacob
 Last updated: January 2002