Announcements

Tue Sep 24

Midterm 1 will be held next Monday, September 30, from 7pm to 9pm.

• The exam will cover all material covered Homeworks 0, 1, 2, and 3: prerequisite material, FFTs and convolutions, backtracking, and dynamic programming. The exam will not cover any material on probability or randomized algorithms.
• The exam will be held in four different rooms, all on the first floor of the Transportation Building. Please go to the room that matches the first letter of your last name:
  • A–J: 103 Transportation
  • K–P: 114 Transportation
  • R–V: 112 Transportation
  • W–Z: 101 Transportation
• Please read and understand the exam policies. In particular, you are allowed to bring one double-sided 8½"×11" handwritten cheat sheet to the exam.
• Instead of a lecture this Thursday, there will be an optional review session at the usual lecture time and location. Makrand will walk through a sample midterm; we will post the sample midterm here by Wednesday. The review session will be recorded as usual.
• We are offering a conflict exam on Tuesday, October 1. If you cannot attend the regular midterm for any of the reasons outlined in the student code, please fill out this registration form no later than Friday, September 27. On Monday, we will email the precise time and location of the conflict exam to students who have filled out the registration form.
• If you have a DRES accommodation, you are welcome to take the exam at the DRES Testing Accommodation Center either Monday or Tuesday. We strongly recommend scheduling your exam at TAC immediately if you have not done so already.

Thu Sep 19

Homework 2 solutions are available. These solutions include the stadnard rubric that we will use for all dynamic programming solutions.

Tue Sep 17

Homework 3 is due next Tuesday, September 24, at 9pm. This is the last homework before Midterm 1.

Fri Sep 13

Homework 1 solutions are available.

Tue Sep 10

Homework 2 is due next Tuesday, September 17, at 9pm.

Fri Sep 6

Homework 0 solutions are available.

Tue Sep 3

Homework 1 is due next Tuesday, September 10, at 9pm.

Starting with this homework, teams of up to three students can submit joint solutions.

• You are responsible for forming your own teams. You may work with people outside your team, as long as your team writes your own solutions and you cite everyone they worked with.
• Team solutions must represent an honest collaborative effort by all members of the group. (See our academic integrity policies.)
• For each problem, exactly one member of each homework team should submit the team's solution and identify all other team members on Gradescope.
• You may submit solutions for each problem multiple times, but only the last submission counts. So we strongly recommend identifying team members for every submission.

Tue Aug 27

• One new thing we are adding this semester is a mechanism to help students in the class get to know each other. We plan to break the class into groups of about six students each; we will send email next week informing everyone who is in their group. Then we will ask each student to fill out a short survey once a week describing your interaction. If enough students fill out the survey for enough weeks (exact thresholds to be determined), the entire class will get a small amount of extra credit. You are welcome, but not required, to work with your assigned group on homework.
• The class is full, with 200 on-campus students. A few students have contacted us asking if it's still possible to register. Normally there is a bit of churn at the start of the semester; historically at least a handful of students drop within the first week. We do expect (but cannot guarantee) that everyone who wants to register for the course will get in before the September 9 add deadline.

  If you want to take CS 473, but you have not been able to register:

  • Come to class, starting this afternoon, just as if you were already registered.
  • Submit the homework, just as if you were already registered. (You will need to enroll yourself on Gradescope, with the code 5KKB3X.) In particular, your Homework 0 is due on September 4 even if you are not yet registered.
  • Check Self-Service at least once a day, and register if you can.
  • Please talk with Jeff immediately after class on Thursday, September 5, if you are unable to register by then.

  Finally, if you are a registered student, and you decide that you do not want to take this class, please drop as quickly as possible so that someone else can get in.

Mon Aug 26

Homework 0 is due next Wednesday, September 4, at 9pm.

(Homework is normally due on Tuesday, but Monday, September 2 is a university holiday.)

Wed Aug 21

Please be patient while we finish setting up. Meanwhile, please explore all the links in the menu at the top of this page!