Course syllabus

Quick useful information:

Course book (will be uploaded chapter by chapter during the semester): Course book

Study Guide: cs120_studyguide_summer_2019.pdf

Tutorial Guide: cs120_tutorialguide_summer_2019.pdf

Piazza:

We have set up Piazza for this course. The main purpose of Piazza is for you to interact with other students in the course; while lecturers will monitor Piazza and help if necessary, we believe that the best way for Piazza to work in this class is if you are all collectively responding to each other's problems! 

In general: mathematics is something that is best learned by doing and then having others critique your working, so that you can get better.  As lecturers, students often ask us for extra practice problems, or for the best way to revise material: I claim that Piazza is this!  Try to ask 1-3 questions a week and try to comment on 1-3 posts a week, and I guarantee your skills will improve.

To encourage student responses, we as lecturers will follow a "2 hour" rule: during the first two hours of any post about the material in CS120, we will not respond.  (Note: this does not mean that we will respond immediately after two hours!  Depending on when your question goes up, we may be in meetings, or it may be after work hours and we're trying to take care of our families, etc.  In general we'll get responses up as soon as is reasonable.  If you haven't seen a response in two working days, please repost or email us.)

Teaching staff

Lecturers:

Tanya Gvozdeva, room 303-467, t.gvozdeva@auckland.ac.nz

Meetings before/after lectures and by email appointment.

 

Padraic Bartlett, room 303e.232, padraic.bartlett@auckland.ac.nz

Office hours: by appointment, for the second half of semester.

 

Course coordinator:

Tanya Gvozdeva

 

Tutors:

Yan Kolezhitskiy,ykol002@aucklanduni.ac.nz

 

Lectures times and locations

All lectures are in SLT1/303-G01.

Monday	11am-12pm
Tuesday	11am-12pm and 2pm-3pm (please attend both, as these are different talks!)
Wednesday	11am-12pm
Thursday	11am-12pm
Friday	11am-12pm

 

Tutorials times

Stream 1	Stream 2
Wednesday, 1pm-3pm Friday, 1pm-3pm	Wednesday, 1pm-3pm Friday, 1pm-3pm

Please check SSO for locations, as they have likely changed since the start of semester!

Information regarding university policies and technical support:

Academic Integrity

Aegrotats and compassionate passes

Canvas help

 

Assessment:

Attempt all of the assessments, even if what you submit is incomplete!

• 5 Assignments, worth 20% of the final grade (4% each)
• 10 tutorials, worth 10% of the final grade (8 best tutorial's grades are chosen, every tutorial worth 3 marks)  
• Mid-semester test, worth 20% of the final grade
• Exam, worth 50%

Plussage: Your test score can be replaced by your exam score if your exam score exceeds your test score.

Assignments: 

Assignments will be due on the following Fridays, at 4pm:

• Assignment 1 is due on Friday, January 18th. 
• Assignment 2 is due on Friday, January 25th. 
• Assignment 3 is due on Friday, February 1st.
• Assignment 4 is due on Friday, February 8th.
• Assignment 5 is due on Friday, February 15th.
  

Assignment hand-in boxes are located in the Faculty of Science Student Resource Centre on the ground floor of Building 301 - room G402. All assignments should be handed in to the correct hand-in box before 4pm on the due date. Late assignments and those in the wrong box will not be marked.

The most important part when submitting an assignment is the coversheet. Coversheets must be generated on Canvas. Each coversheet contains a personalised QR-Code with your information, unique that that particular assignment.

Please make sure that your QR-Code is complete, machine readable, not resized and not corrupted. The Student Resource Centre need this QR-code to scan, track and process assignments in a timely manner. Furthermore, each coversheet has a declaration on it which you must date and sign.

Assignments without a coversheet cannot and will not be recorded. Assignments with an outdated, non-Canvas coversheet also cannot be recorded. In addition, you may be penalised for failing to sign and date the declaration.

 

Coversheet help video:  students to download cover sheet.mp4

Tutorials:

Tutorials are weekly.  There are two two-hour tutorial each week that you are responsible for attending. Tutorials start in week 1 of the semester on Thursday for the first stream and Friday for the second stream. There will be 10 tutorials: one tutorial on weeks 1,6; two tutorials on weeks 2,3,4,5.  

You must attend the tutorial that you signed up for on Student Services Online.   If you are unable to do so due to illness/family emergencies/other extenuating circumstances, email your course coordinator as soon as you can. 

 

Mid-Semester Test:

The Mid-Semester Test is one hour long plus a five minute reading period, and covers all of the material from the first three weeks of class.

It is in class, on January 25th, from 10:35am-11:40am.  It is recommended that you show up fifteen minutes early so that we can set up. 

 

Exam:

The Exam is two hours long and covers material from the whole course; it will contain 15 multi-choice questions and 4 free-response questions. The exact date of the exam is not available until around the middle of the semester.

No calculators are permitted on the exam or test. Please note that the test and exam are designed so that a calculator is unnecessary; if you can add and multiply single-digit numbers, you will be capable of performing any of the calculations present.