CSE219 Home Page (Fall 2002)

Useful Links

• Personalized Course Information Area (visit this if you are taking the course!)
• Course staff information, including office hours.
• Course syllabus.
• Schedule of topics
• Lecture materials (SEC01, Prof. Ramakrishnan).
• Lecture materials (SEC02, Prof. Stark).
• Frequently Asked Questions.

Important Course News and Messages

Please check this page regularly for new messages. The newest messages will always appear first.

• Tests used by the TAs to score HW6 functionality can be found here. The grading scheme was as follows:
  • Pass A - one point
  • Pass 3 out of 4 of B? - one point
  • Pass 2 out of 3 of C? - one point
  • The GUI part - one point
  The expected output of each test is in XX-RESULT, except C1, C2, C3, which have screen output only.

  Please do not E-mail us about HW6 functionality scores unless you have tried these tests and can reference specific tests that your program passes that the TAs said it does not pass.

• Homework 6 grade sheets are now available under the Personalized Course Information Area.

  The maximum grade on Homework 6 was 15 points. There were 208 students who received a nonzero grade for HW6. The statistics are as follows:

  HW6 (whole class ) Valid 208; Mean 10.22; Std. Dev. 2.53 HW6 (section GUO) Valid 34; Mean 10.26; Std. Dev. 2.11 HW6 (section HUANG) Valid 35; Mean 10.83; Std. Dev. 2.28 HW6 (section LONGO) Valid 36; Mean 11.64; Std. Dev. 1.96 HW6 (section CRESPO) Valid 34; Mean 9.62; Std. Dev. 1.88 HW6 (section PAN) Valid 35; Mean 10.20; Std. Dev. 2.39 HW6 (section SATPREM) Valid 34; Mean 8.65; Std. Dev. 3.39

• Homework 5 grade sheets are now available under the Personalized Course Information Area.

  The maximum grade on Homework 5 was 12 points. There were 229 students who received a nonzero grade for HW5. The statistics are as follows:

  HW5 (whole class ) Valid 229; Mean 9.73; Std. Dev. 1.75 HW5 (section GUO) Valid 37; Mean 9.81; Std. Dev. 1.84 HW5 (section HUANG) Valid 37; Mean 9.59; Std. Dev. 1.67 HW5 (section LONGO) Valid 40; Mean 9.57; Std. Dev. 1.89 HW5 (section CRESPO) Valid 38; Mean 9.89; Std. Dev. 1.41 HW5 (section PAN) Valid 38; Mean 9.66; Std. Dev. 1.83 HW5 (section SATPREM) Valid 39; Mean 9.87; Std. Dev. 1.87

• Design exam grades are now available under the Personalized Course Information Area.

  There were 236 students who received a nonzero grade on the exam. The maximum possible grade was 12. The statistics are as follows:

  DESIGN (whole class ) Valid 236; Mean 6.65; Std. Dev. 1.99 DESIGN (section GUO) Valid 38; Mean 6.81; Std. Dev. 1.66 DESIGN (section HUANG) Valid 39; Mean 6.57; Std. Dev. 1.93 DESIGN (section LONGO) Valid 43; Mean 6.69; Std. Dev. 2.13 DESIGN (section CRESPO) Valid 39; Mean 7.41; Std. Dev. 2.00 DESIGN (section PAN) Valid 38; Mean 6.36; Std. Dev. 1.79 DESIGN (section SATPREM) Valid 39; Mean 6.05; Std. Dev. 2.22

• Final exam grades are now available under the Personalized Course Information Area. Histograms for all grading completed as of December 17, 2002 can be viewed here.

  There were 243 students who received a nonzero grade on the exam. The maximum possible grade was 100. The highest grade actually attained was 83.34. The lowest grade actually attained was 8.00. The statistics are as follows:

  FINAL (whole class ) Valid 243; Mean 47.59; Std. Dev. 13.13 FINAL (section GUO) Valid 39; Mean 47.90; Std. Dev. 12.08 FINAL (section HUANG) Valid 39; Mean 47.90; Std. Dev. 12.77 FINAL (section LONGO) Valid 45; Mean 45.06; Std. Dev. 14.28 FINAL (section CRESPO) Valid 39; Mean 47.99; Std. Dev. 13.18 FINAL (section PAN) Valid 40; Mean 48.78; Std. Dev. 14.45 FINAL (section SATPREM) Valid 41; Mean 48.25; Std. Dev. 12.16 The Kuder-Richardson formula 20 (KR20) reliability coefficient for this exam was 0.83, which indicates good reliability. See midterm item below for further information on this statistic.

• The final exam will be held on Monday, Dec. 16, from 5:00pm to 7:30pm in
  • Section 1: Harriman 137
  • Section 2: Engineering 145
  The exam will be multiple choice format. Please bring your student IDs and a pencil. We will supply scantron forms. Be sure to attend the exam at the section for which you are officially registered.

• I have made available C source code for my test driver for the Fish program. This program was tested under FreeBSD, so it should be OK on the UG lab systems. There is a good chance it will also work under Cygwin, but I didn't test it there. It will probably not work without modification on Linux. Compile it using: gcc -o play play.c -lutil This will produce an executable play (or play.exe on Cygwin). Run it using: play dealer_dir opponent_dir where dealer_dir is the name of the directory containg Java class files for the program to be used as the dealer, and opponent_dir is the name of the directory containing Java class files for the program to be used as the opponent. Both directories must contain Fish.class, and they are permitted to be the same directory. The driver will start up an instance of the dealer and the player program, play them against each other, and print out a transcript of the results.

• If you lost the Design/Coding exam handout, you can read it here (Postscript).

• Submit the Design/Coding exam here.

• The test files used by the TAs in testing HW4 can be found here.

• Homework 6 set up (revised, supersedes previous message below): The symbolic link scheme described below for working around the "MP3man clashes..." compilation error works only under Unix systems, not under Windows. To solve this problem under Windows, you are permitted to rename the file MP3man.java to Main.java, with a corresponding change to the class name inside the file. The submission script has been relaxed to permit this change. No other changes to the file organization specified in the HW6 handout are permitted.

  The course newsgroup has long threads about compilation errors, including this problem, which is really a very minor one that arose because we did not anticipate that the Java compiler would reject directories having the same base name as a class. In fact, most problems people have posted about are not a consequence of this, but rather boil down to the fact that they have still not learned how to use the classpath arguments to javac and java. Some reading material that might be helpful can be found here.

• Homework 4 grade sheets are now available under the Personalized Course Information Area. If you have a question or complaint about your grade, please first contact the TA who graded it by E-mail and discuss it. If you are unable to reach agreement, contact Professor Stark or Professor Ramakrishnan and we will render our decision.

  The maximum grade on Homework 4 was 15 points. There were 229 students who received a nonzero grade for HW4. The statistics are as follows:

  HW4 (whole class ) Valid 229; Mean 8.89; Std. Dev. 2.76 HW4 (section GUO) Valid 38; Mean 8.84; Std. Dev. 3.25 HW4 (section HUANG) Valid 39; Mean 9.08; Std. Dev. 3.53 HW4 (section LONGO) Valid 41; Mean 9.51; Std. Dev. 3.17 HW4 (section CRESPO) Valid 36; Mean 8.28; Std. Dev. 2.17 HW4 (section PAN) Valid 36; Mean 9.25; Std. Dev. 1.76 HW4 (section SATPREM) Valid 39; Mean 8.33; Std. Dev. 1.98

• Homework 6 set up: If you check out MP3man, DBManage and other modules from your CVS repository into the same directory and try compiling MP3man.java (now in the MP3man directory) you will get the following compile-time error:

    MP3man/MP3man.java:6: MP3man clashes with package of same name public class MP3man
  

  To compile your files without changing file or directory names or changing the specified submission format, use the following procedure. First of all, leave all files and directories named exactly as in the assignment handout. This is very important. Do not make any change to file or directory names, either in your CVS repository or otherwise.

  Secondly, in order to compile and run MP3man, use the following procedure:

  1. Check out all modules from CVS into a suitable directory (for concreteness let's say /home/cse219/HW6). The directory /home/cse219/HW6 will contain at least subdirectories MP3man and DBManage.
  2. Use "cd MP3man" to go to the MP3man subdirectory. Execute the following command at the shell level:

                             ln -s ../DBManage .
     		  

     This will create a "symbolic link" within the MP3man directory to the DBManage directory which is one level up.

     Use a similar command to create additional symbolic links to any other modules.

  3. Compile from within the MP3man directory as follows:

                     javac -classpath /home/cse219/HW6/MP3man MP3man.java
     		

  4. Run from within the MP3man directory as follows:

                     java -cp /home/cse219/HW6/MP3man MP3man text
                     java -cp /home/cse219/HW6/MP3man MP3man gui
     		

  The TAs will use the same procedure to compile and run your stuff. This procedure has the advantage of not interfering with any CVS setup you have already created, and also it does not require changes to the published HW specs.

  (The above instructions were also posted in the course newsgroup)

• Homework 6 is now available. Please have a look at it and get started on it.

• Homework 3 grade sheets are now available under the Personalized Course Information Area. If you have a question or complaint about your grade, please first contact the TA who graded it by E-mail and discuss it. If you are unable to reach agreement, contact Professor Stark or Professor Ramakrishnan and we will render our decision.

  The maximum grade on Homework 3 was 12 points. There were 249 students who received a nonzero grade for HW1. The statistics are as follows:

  HW3 (whole class ) Valid 249; Mean 9.44; Std. Dev. 2.54 HW3 (section GUO) Valid 38; Mean 9.79; Std. Dev. 2.28 HW3 (section HUANG) Valid 42; Mean 9.48; Std. Dev. 2.94 HW3 (section LONGO) Valid 45; Mean 9.98; Std. Dev. 2.37 HW3 (section CRESPO) Valid 39; Mean 9.49; Std. Dev. 2.19 HW3 (section PAN) Valid 41; Mean 9.73; Std. Dev. 2.07 HW3 (section SATPREM) Valid 44; Mean 8.25; Std. Dev. 2.93

• Prof. Ramakrishnan's completed SunSpot has also been made available. This code too has undergone only minimal testing. As with Prof. Stark's code, this shows how some of the intricacies in the design of SunSpot, and especially, DBManage, can be handled. The differences between the two designs will perhaps help you identify some design Dos and Don'ts.

• For what it's worth, you can view histograms of the distributions of scores through the midterm here.

• (NOTE: There was a bug in the first round of these scores that caused one question to get dropped. I have reprocessed the scores to correct this.)

  Midterm exam grades are now available under the Personalized Course Information Area.

  There were 258 students who received a nonzero grade on the exam. The maximum possible grade was 75. The highest grade actually attained was 62.34. The lowest grade actually attained was 12.67. The statistics are as follows:

  MIDTERM (whole class ) Valid 258; Mean 37.57; Std. Dev. 10.30 MIDTERM (section GUO) Valid 39; Mean 39.10; Std. Dev. 10.31 MIDTERM (section HUANG) Valid 42; Mean 35.42; Std. Dev. 8.54 MIDTERM (section LONGO) Valid 48; Mean 37.64; Std. Dev. 11.01 MIDTERM (section CRESPO) Valid 40; Mean 38.49; Std. Dev. 11.43 MIDTERM (section PAN) Valid 44; Mean 38.20; Std. Dev. 10.33 MIDTERM (section SATPREM) Valid 45; Mean 36.74; Std. Dev. 10.12

  The Kuder-Richardson formula 20 (KR20) reliability coefficient for this exam was 0.79. This statistic is a measure of the stability (or reliability) of the test scores, in the following sense: Suppose the same test is administered to the same group on a different day, with no intervening instruction, If the test scores are highly stable, then each examinee will get the same or close to the same score on both administrations. The meaning of the KR20 statistic is roughly as follows:

  • 0.90-1.00 -- High reliability. Suitable for making a decision about an examinee based on a single test score.
  • 0.80-0.89 -- Good reliability. Suitable for use in evaluating individual examinees if averaged with a small number of other scores of similar reliability.
  • 0.60-0.79 -- Low/moderate reliability. Suitable for evaluating individuals only if averaged with several other scores of similar reliability.
  • 0.40-0.59 -- Doubtful reliability. Should only be used with caution in the evaluation of individual examinees. May be satisfactory for determining average score differences between groups.
  Based on the above, the outcome of this exam has moderate reliability.

• Homework 5 is now available. Please have a look at it and get started on it.

• Prof. Stark has made available the following:
  • A completed SunSpot program. This (hopefully) implements the full functionality specified in the assignment handout, but it has had only very minimal testing, so there will likely be some bugs.

  • The SunSpot design which he discussed in his lecture.

  SunSpot turned out to be lots more interesting than what we were shooting for, so don't feel terrible if you were only able to get some of it working. It is a very good exercise, which poses realistic programming problems, but on a bit larger scale than what we really wanted. Hopefully now that you've attempted it yourself, you can study this solution to see how Prof. Stark decided to handle some of the things you might have had trouble with.

• We am still missing one or two grade sheets for Homework 2, but we have decided to release the rest. We sincerely apologize for the long delay on this assignment. Homework 2 grade sheets are now available under the Personalized Course Information Area. If you have a question or complaint about your grade, please first contact the TA who graded it by E-mail and discuss it. If you are unable to reach agreement, contact Professor Stark or Professor Ramakrishnan and we will render our decision.

  The maximum grade on Homework 2 was 12 points. There were 254 students who received a nonzero grade for HW1. The statistics are as follows:

  HW2 (whole class ) Valid 254; Mean 8.37; Std. Dev. 2.09 HW2 (section GUO) Valid 39; Mean 8.18; Std. Dev. 2.23 HW2 (section HUANG) Valid 44; Mean 8.61; Std. Dev. 2.53 HW2 (section LONGO) Valid 46; Mean 7.85; Std. Dev. 1.70 HW2 (section CRESPO) Valid 39; Mean 8.87; Std. Dev. 1.79 HW2 (section PAN) Valid 42; Mean 8.07; Std. Dev. 1.88 HW2 (section SATPREM) Valid 44; Mean 8.70; Std. Dev. 2.18

• The midterm exam will be held during class on Wednesday, October 30. The exam will be multiple choice format. Please bring your student IDs and a pencil. We will supply scantron forms. Be sure to attend the exam at the section for which you are officially registered.

• Homework 4 is now available. Please have a look at it and get started on it.

• Note from Prof. Stark: I misinformed students in my section. I stated that the only way data was created in the SunSpot system was by executing a sequence of commands. This is wrong. After reviewing the assignment handout, I can see that there is a specific format indicated for the databases, and that the data is to be read in from System.in when the program starts. Please pay attention to the written specifications, rather what I said.

• Homework 3 is now available. Please have a look at it and get started on it.

• Homework 1 grade sheets are now available under the Personalized Course Information Area. The test cases used by the TAs can be found here. If you have a question or complaint about your grade, please first contact the TA who graded it by E-mail and discuss it. If you are unable to reach agreement, contact Professor Stark or Professor Ramakrishnan and we will render our decision.

  The maximum grade on Homework 1 was 11 points. There were 267 students who received a nonzero grade for HW1. The statistics are as follows:

  HW1 (whole class ) Valid 267; Mean 7.75; Std. Dev. 1.94 HW1 (section GUO) Valid 41; Mean 7.66; Std. Dev. 1.87 HW1 (section HUANG) Valid 43; Mean 7.42; Std. Dev. 2.51 HW1 (section LONGO) Valid 49; Mean 8.06; Std. Dev. 1.84 HW1 (section CRESPO) Valid 45; Mean 7.00; Std. Dev. 1.43 HW1 (section PAN) Valid 44; Mean 8.89; Std. Dev. 1.62 HW1 (section SATPREM) Valid 45; Mean 7.44; Std. Dev. 1.78 The assignment of students to graders was made randomly. Assuming that the average student is about the same in each of the groups, the distribution of grades given by the TAs was mostly the same, with the exception of PAN, who was an "easier" grader than the rest. Also, HUANG tended to give a broader range of grades than the other TAs. We will try to bring the scales used by each of the graders into closer correspondence. If necessary, scores will be normalized on a per-grader basis at the end of the semester to reduce the effect of grading differences between TAs.

• Homework 2 is now available. Please have a look at it and get started on it.

• The list of TAs for this course and their office hours has been added to the course staff page.

• We have summarized frequently asked questions (FAQ) raised in the newsgroup or by email to course staff (with answers, of course!). Please check the FAQ before posting to the newsgroup or sending us email; the answer you need may already be there.

• Homework 1 is now available. Please have a look at it and get started on it.

• The links under "HTML documentation for the JDK and JDE..." on the CDROM main page do not work. This is because they were mistakenly created by me (Prof. Stark) using Unix-style symbolic links, which get copied off the CD as regular file, rather than shortcuts.

  There's not much I can do about these links now that they are burned onto the CD. They do work on the online image linked above, but not when copied from the CD. Each of the links actually refers to a folder that is located elsewhere on the CD, so the documentation is not missing -- it is just this set of links that is broken.

• Further information about using Outlook Express to read news is now available here.

• Homework 0 is now available. Please have a look at it and get started on it.

• If you are planning to take the class, whether or not you are currently registered, you should do the following:
  • Attend the first class, Wednesday, September 4, 3:20PM-4:40PM, Harriman 137 (Prof. C.R. Ramakrishnan) or Engineering 145 (Prof. Stark). Fill out and return the signup questionnaire that will be handed out at that time. Or, if you are absolutely unable to attend the first class, print the questionnaire, fill it out, and return it either Prof. Stark's or Prof. C.R. Ramakrishnan's mailbox in the CS Department as soon as possible after the first class.

  As soon as you have been able to register for the class, you should do the following things right away:

  1. Visit the Personalized Course Information Page. In signing on to that page, you will enter your name in a database of students, and you will select a user ID and password that will give you access to personalized course information, such as grades, once the semester starts.

  2. Visit the course newsgroup here. You can use any number of programs and browsers to read news, including XEmacs, Netscape Navigator, or Outlook Express. You will need to supply the password you selected in step 2) above in order to obtain access to the newsgroup. Note that Outlook Express by default is typically not configured to handle password access to news servers. It can do it, but you will have to hunt through the preferences dialogs to find the place to turn it on. For more information about reading news, see here.