CMSC 420 Data Structures, Spring 2018

• CMSC 420 interactive resource center on piazza is your source for announcements, TA office hours, and additional resources. Expect to receive lots of Piazza messages from me--consider them Mandatory Reading.
• Dr Hugue will occasionally send email as drmeeshATgmailDOTcom, as well as meeshATcsDOTumdDOTedu. To help you, I will endeavor to put cmsc420 or 420 in the subject.
• Email Dr Hugue directly regarding technical questions, personal issues, project irregularities or private project concerns.
• All project-related questions will be answered on piazza to give all students equal access to the information. (Of course, you will need to add yourself to piazza first. Be sure to enable delivery of postings!)
• In general, answers to project questions will not be emailed by the TA's. And, please don't email project questions to Dr. Hugue directly. She will tell you to post them to piazza. Although Dr. Hugue will answer questions on piazza occasionally, don't expect personal help from her in writing, debugging, or fixing Java code.

• Be sure to make yourself aware of University Policies.

• Explicit updates of project resources will be made in my CMSC420 course directory (http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/meesh/420/ProjectBook).
• Project submission will be to the submit server

• Lectures (located in CSIC): 
• (0101) MW...2:00--3:15pm CSIC 2117    
(0201) MW...3:30--4:45pm CSIC 2117    
• Instructor: Michelle Hugue 
• Email: meeshATumd.edu 
• Office: 1109a AV Williams 
• Hours: TBD. Google chat, hangout or Skype encouraged; by appointment, and if the door is opened.  
• Class accounts: Unix accounts will be on the GRACE ( Glue Research and Academic Computing Environment) cluster. Development tools, such as Eclipse, and JAVA 1.8 are available on the cluster; we will grade your projects using the submit server. To use the cluster, you will need a TerpConnect account. If you do not have one, or if you are not sure if you have one, you must request one asap.
• Book(s): A Practical Introduction to Data Structures and Algorithms (Shaffer --Required (free versions) 
Design and Analysis of Spatial Data Structures (Samet--Optional) or Foundations of Multidimensional and Metric Data Structures (Samet--Optional) Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, CA, 2006.

• Tentative Syllabus.

• Two 75 minute in-class Tests: 3/14, 4/25 (20% each)
• Cumulative Final Exam: 5/14 (32%)  
• Room: TBD 
• Question Style, Not Exam Length: Sample Exam 1 (html) (pdf) (ps) 
• Question Style, Not Exam Length: Sample Exam 2 (html) (pdf) (ps) 
• Project (28%):  
• Part 0: (20 pts) Due 2/2 23:59PM with 48 hour grace period. No later submissions accepted for credit--only good faith effort.
• Part 1: (80 pts) Due 2/23 23:59PM with 48 hour grace period. No later submissions accepted for credit--only good faith effort.
• Part 2: (250 pts) Due 4/6 23:59PM with 48 hour grace period. Extension/s limited to university rules.
• Part 3: (250 pts) Due 5/10 23:59PM with 48 hour grace period. Extensions limited to university rules.
• Note 1: Contact Dr Hugue--Do not hesitate--to contact Dr. Hugue should you find yourself lost in the land of MeeshQuest.
• Note 2: The term "grace period" means that there will be no deductions for projects submitted by the end of the grace period.
• Note 3: We reserve the right to fail you in the absence of a good-faith effort on the project. The term "good faith effort" means that at minimum, you will modify the canonical partf and submit for part(f+1), for f from zero to two inclusive. Dr. Hugue is the sole arbiter of this issue, and the minimum number of project points to pass the class will be approximately 350 points unless otherwise stated.
• Note 4: In the presence of a good faith effort and a minimum number of project points your final grade will be the maximum of the following: TBD
• Note 5: In the presence of a good faith effort and a minimal number of project points, the final exam can only improve your grade.