COMP 053 Spring 2023 Syllabus

The course continues the development of program design and problem solving techniques. Topics include development of fundamental data structures and their associated algorithms as well as array-based algorithms, recursion, lists, generics, dynamic memory, binary trees, and associative structures

Prerequisites: COMP 051 or COMP 061 with a "C-" or better.
When enrolling in this course, you should be relatively proficient in basic programming with C++: variables, conditionals, loops, functions, recursion, and input/output streams.

Administration

Instructor: Sepehr Amir-Mohammadian
Email:

Lecture: MW 9:30AM-10:45AM, CTC 214
F 9:30AM-10:45AM, on Zoom (The link is shared on Canvas.)
Office hours: MW 8:00AM-9:10AM, CTC 122
Students need to request alternate meeting times outside of scheduled office hours through email.

Teaching Assistant: Ben Ung
Email: b_ung1@u.pacific.edu
Office hours: TR: 12:00PM-1:00PM

Learning Objectives

The vision for this course is: What do I, as a computer scientist, need to understand about the fundamental concepts and abstractions in programming and what are the different structures to store and retrieve data by which I can design and implement programs that are appropriate in a given project?

Reading assignments
Class labs
Course projects
Lectures and quizzes

Use multiple data structrues to write programs
Identify the features that some of the data strcutures have in common and the ways that they differ.
Consider efficiency in time and memory consumption in the design choices made while writing code.
Assess appropriateness of a data structure for a specific program.

University of the Pacific Core Competencies: This course reflects the following university-wide core competenceies in the undergraduate program:

Critical Thinking
Information Literacy
Quantitative Reasoning

Outcomes for COMP program: The assessment plan for this course comprises the following outcomes identified by ABET:

Outcome 1: "Analyze a complex computing problem and to apply principles of computing and other relevant disciplines to identify solutions."
Outcome 2: "Design, implement, and evaluate a computing-based solution to meet a given set of computing requirements in the context of the program’s discipline."
Outcome 6: "Apply computer science theory and software development fundamentals to produce computing-based solutions."

Collection of Work for Assessment: Student work may be retained to assess how course learning objectives are being met and for accreditation purposes.

Course Material

We will use the following zyBook along with additional resources that are referred through the semester. In order to use the zyBook follow these steps:

Sign in or create an account at learn.zybooks.com.
Enter zyBook code: PACIFICCOMP053YousefiSpring2023.
Subscribe. Note that a subscription is $77. Students may begin subscribing on Dec 27, 2022 and the cutoff to subscribe is Apr 27, 2023. Subscriptions will last until May 27, 2023.

The slides, assignments, supplementary material, etc. will be provided through Canvas LMS.

Object-Oriented Programming
Pointers
Templates
Arrays, Vectors, Lists, Queues, Deques, Sets, Pairs, and Maps
Algorithm Analysis
Search and Sort
Trees and Hash Tables

Grading and Attendance Policy

Grades for the course are assigned on the scale below:

A	A-	B+	B	B-	C+	C	C-	D+	D	F
[93,100]	[90,93)	[87,90)	[83,87)	[80,83)	[77,80)	[73,77)	[70,73)	[67,70)	[60,67)	[0,60)

Final grades will be assigned based on several performance factors. These factors and their quantitative contribution to the final grade are as follows:

Reading assignments: 25%
Attendance: 5%
Quizzes: 5%
Labs: 25%
Course projects: 20%
Midterm exam: 10%
Final exam: 10%

Attendance: Class attendance and participation is necessary and expected. There will be numerous activities in class, and these activities cannot be made up outside of class. Participation requires that you are properly prepared for classroom discussions and activities, and have completed all reading assignments before the relevant class. You will only be allowed three excused or unexcused class misses during the semester. The only acceptable excuses for missing a class, an assignment due date, or an exam are serious illness, family emergency or important professional, academic or athletic activities. Illness or family emergency may require documentation. Excuses for professional, academic or athletic activities must be approved by the instructor in advance. Students missing a class are responsible for making up the material discussed in that class on their own. Students are responsible for being aware of any announcements made during their absence.

Exams

Two exams will be conducted during the semester, a midterm and a final. The schedule will be announced in class and content and format will be discussed prior to the exams. Make up exams will only be scheduled in emergency situations.

Assignment Guidelines

Reading Assignments: Reading assignments will be released on the course Canvas page at most one or two days before each lecture session. Students must study the referred material before the due date, and accomplish all of the requested participation and challenge activities. zyBook traces your activities and numerically reports how much you have progressed in reading the (sub)sections precisely by date/time. Those evaluations will be used as your grades for reading assignments, considering the due dates. Each lecture session accompanies a reading assignment. The due date for the reading assignment is until midnight of the day of the class. There will be no due date extensions on reading assignments.
Quizzes: Each session comes with a brief quizz (5-10 minutes) that reflects on the material covered in the reading assignment associated with that class session. Quizzes are published and automatically graded in Canvas. The due date for the quizzes is until midnight of the day of the class. There will be no due date extensions on quizzes.
Labs: Labs are group-based (max size: 2) class activities that will be released on the course Canvas page. The goal is to accomplish all lab activities and submit in Canvas until the end of the day. However, submissions are accepted until 11:59PM of upcoming Sunday, without late submission penalty. There will be no due date extensions on labs.
Course Projects: Course projects are group-based assignments (max size: 2). They will be released on the course Canvas page with a clearly indicated due date. Timely submissions are accepted until 11:59PM on the due date.

Solutions: Solutions to sample exam questions and midterm exam may be submitted electronically via Canvas, or in class on pencil-and-paper when appropriate.

Late submission policy: Deliverables for course projects will be accepted up to three days late, with a 5% per day penalty.
All assignments will be considered individual efforts unless otherwise specified (e.g., labs), and will be treated as such under the Academic Honesty Policy.

Academic Honesty

The Honor Code at the University of the Pacific calls upon each student to exhibit a high degree of maturity, responsibility, and personal integrity. Students are expected to:

Act honestly in all matters
Actively encourage academic integrity
Discourage any form of cheating or dishonesty by others
Inform the instructor and appropriate university administrator if she or he has a reasonable and good faith belief and substantial evidence that a violation of the Academic Honesty Policy has occurred.

Violations will be referred to and investigated by the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards. If a student is found responsible, it will be documented as part of her or his permanent academic record. A student may receive a range of penalties, including failure of an assignment, failure of the course, suspension, or dismissal from the University. The Academic Honesty Policy is located in Tiger Lore and online.

Course-specific Honor Code Policy: Engineering is generally a cooperative endeavor and collaborative learning can be a valuable experience for all involved. However, proper assessment (i.e., grading) requires that work be done by individuals. To balance these two requirements, the following policy will apply:

Collaborative work on course assignments is encouraged. This includes working together on planning solution strategies and helping each other to debug programs.
Collaboration must stop short of someone else writing your assignment. You may not directly copy the work of another student. You also may not copy the work of another student, and then modify it so that it does not look the same as the original author's work. It is your responsibility to ensure that the work you submit is an honest representation of your own understanding of the material.

Marginal cases will be resolved by oral examination of the student(s) involved. If they each understand the material in the assignment, it will be considered honest collaboration. If they do not, then it will be considered academic dishonesty.

In many cases, it may be possible to identify reusable source code from textbooks, web sites or other resources that can help you with assignments. You are permitted to use such references provided that:

The amount of code reused does not exceed 25% of the total assignment length, and
In the source code comments, you clearly identify any code that you did not write, state where it came from, and to what extent you modified it.

You are responsible for understanding the theory behind all algorithms or source code used, regardless of their source.

Accommodations for Students with Disabilities

Students who have not previously registered for accommodations can request services by visiting pacific.edu/disabilities and selecting New Students Apply Here. Once registered, students will be asked to provide documentation of their disability, and meet with the accommodation specialists to determine reasonable accommodations.
Students who have previously been approved for services with SSD can request accommodation(s) letters each semester by selecting the Returning Students Login Here link located on pacific.edu/disabilities

The Office of Services for Students with Disabilities is located in the McCaffrey Center, Second Floor. Phone: 209-946-3221. Email: ssd@pacific.edu. Online: pacific.edu/disabilities

Nondiscrimination Policy

The University of the Pacific does not discriminate in the administration of any of its educational programs, admissions, scholarships, loans, athletics, or other University activities or programs on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin, handicap, sexual orientation or preference, sex or age.

COMP 053: Data Structures

Course Description