CSCI 335_01_03: Software Analysis and Design III

I started to put test files for project 4 onto the server. You can use these to test your program. Right now they do not have expected outputs associiated with them. But they are small enough that you can determine by hand what they should be.

All test files are in : /data/biocs/b/student.accounts/cs335_sw/projects/project4/testcases

Project 4 is posted on the course website now.

The third assignment is a non-programming assignment. It is an exercise in exploring open source software in a public repository and reading code related to the materials we have covered in the course to date. It is worth an additional 40% of your final programming project grade, and is due as noted on the course website, on April 27.

As a few people have asked the question, I will summarize how final grades are computed. I do not technically "curve" grades, but most people do not know what curving a grade really means - it means fitting it to a normal distribution.  What I do instead is to adjust where the letter grade cut-offs are,based on the overall class statistics.  They shift up or down a few points from semester to semester, but as a general rule, they are as follows:

A grades (including + and -)  :  between mid-80's and 100

B grades (including + and -)  :  between low 70's and mid-80's

C grades (including + )          :  between 60-ish and low 70's

D grades                                :  between upper 40's and 60-ish

Failing                                    :  below upper 40's

The exact boundaries I cannot determine now.

They are now posted on the course website.

I  posted my summary of the Google presentation that I attended last week. Disclaimer: This is not intended to be a substitute for advice directly from Google. There is a small possibility that some of the statements are inaccurate.

Title: Google_expectations.pdf


You can view it on the course page: https://piazza.com/hunter.cuny/spring2017/csci335_01_03/resources

The grades for Exam 1 are posted in the Blackboard Grade Center. The CUNY Portal is down right now, but there is a backdoor into Blackboard that can be accessed on http://portaldown.cuny.edu/cunyportal/portal.html.

The scores are very low, on average, although a few people did exceptionally well. The exam was hard, but most people who got low scores lost many points on questions that were not hard.  Questions about initializer lists and constructors, or those that ask for code or the running time of short code fragments - these were not hard. They required preparation and studying. Some questions required remembering the mathematics that was covered in Chapter 1, and there was nothing hard about them if one remembered the formulas and knew how to apply them.

The AVL tree questions were hard, and in general, most people lost many points on them.

I have yet to decide how to interpret the grades, meaning what is an A, B, C, etc.

An email message has been sent to your Hunter email address, containing your grade on Project 1 and a file containing my comments on the project. Make sure that you retrieve your Hunter email to get the grade and attached file.

I will make some general comments about the projects in class tomorrow. Anyone who has specific questions should see me during office hours.

Tomorrow I will get the midterm exams and they will be graded no later than Tuesday.