Announcements

Thu Sep 21

Two practice exams are available on the exams page.

• Practice exam 1 is the one I mostly solved in today's review session. Unfortunately, my wireless mic's battery died halfway through the review session, so the video is mostly silent. I will post a new walkthrough video and complete solutions later today.
• I will post a walkthrough video and solutions for Practice exam 2 on Saturday.

Mon Sep 18

Midterm 1 will be offered next Monday, September 25, from 7pm to 9pm. (We're still working on the location.)

• The exam will cover all material from Homeworks 1 through 4 and the corresponding Guided Problem Sets—string induction, regular expressions, DFAs, product constructions, fooling sets, NFAs, closure properties of regular languages, language transformations, and (very lightly) context-free languages, but not Turing machines.
• Please read and understand the exam policies.
• Study problems:
  • A large collection of exam-style study problems is available. Please take the first page seriously. You can also find exams from past semesters either on past semesters' course web sites, or in Jeff's exam archive.
  • Another large collection of auto-graded study problems is available on PrairieLearn. Some of these are variants of past guided problem sets; others are simple multiple-choice questions; still others are Pythonic free-response problems. All the advice from page 1 of the fodder applies to these problems as well.
• Review/study sessions:
  • Instead of a lecture this Thursday, there will be an optional review session at the usual lecture time and location. Jeff will walk through a sample midterm on Thursday; we will post the sample midterm here by Wendesday. The review session will be recorded as usual.
  • Instead of labs this Friday, there will be optional review sesions at the usual lab times and locations.
  • We will hold "study parties" this Thursday evening, this Saturday afternoon, and next Monday morning at the usual "homework party" times and locations.
  • HKN will hold a review session on Sunday, September 24, from 3pm to 5:30pm, in ECE 1002 (the main ECE lecture hall)
• The conflict exam will be held on Tuesday, September 26, at either 9:30–12 or 11–1:30.
  • If you cannot attend the regular exam for any of the reasons outlined in the student code, please fill out the registration form no later than Friday, September 22.
  • If you need to take the conflict exam but you have additional conflicts both immediately before and immediately after the 374 lecture on September 26, please fill out the registration form no later than Wednesday, September 20.
• If you have a DRES accommodation, you are welcome to take the exam at the DRES Testing Accommodation Center on Monday or Tuesday. We strongly recommend scheduling your exam at TAC immediately. If you are not taking the exam at TAC and you have an accommodation for extra time, please take the conflict exam.

Tue Sep 12

In respnse to feedback from both students and course staff, I've reorganized the course web site a bit to make specific resources easier to find. Please take a few minutes to try every item in the navigation menu, and please post feedback to Discord and/or Ed Discussion.

Mon Sep 11

• Guided Problem Set 4 is available on PrairieLearn. You can also find several additional practice exercises on PrairieLearn that cover everythign we've seen in the course so far.
• Homework 4 is available.
• These are the last assignments before Midterm 1.

Fri Sep 8

Homework 2 solutions are available.

Tue Sep 5

• Guided Problem Set 3 is available on PrairieLearn.
• Homework 3 is available.

Thu Aug 31

• Homework 1 solutions are available.
• Homework 2 has been revised to clarify problem 1(e).

Tue Aug 29

• Next Monday is Labor Day, which is a university holiday. The Monday grading party and all office hours are officially canceled. All deadlines next week are extended by 24 hours.
• Guided Problem Set 2 is available on PrairieLearn (due next Tuesdsy).
• Homework 2 is available (due next Wednesday).

• A reminder about submitting homework: Exactly one member of each group submits exactly one PDF file to Gradescope for each numbered homework problem. The submitter also identifies their other group members in the submission form, so that all group members get credit. Finally, we ask submitters to mark which pages are relevant for each lettered subproblem.

Tue Aug 22

• It looks like the Discord link I previously posted expired. Here is a (hopefully) permanent link (also in the "Links" menu above).
• Sigh. I (Jeff) forget to actually push the "record" button at his lecture today. I've posted a makeup lecture video, which walks through two induction proofs in detail.
• We have a tentative office-hour schedule.

Mon Aug 21

For people still wanting to register: As of 4pm today, there are 33 available seats, which I believe are open to anyone (not just CS majors). I don't expect those seats to stay open long.

Sun Aug 20

• Guided Problem Set 1 is available on PrairieLearn (due next Monday)
• Homework 1 is available (due next Tuesday).
• A LaTeX homework template is available for typesetting hoemwork. You are not required to use this template, or to typeset your homework at all, but please include all the information shown in the template in your homework solutions. The zip archive also includes LaTeX source for Homework 1. (We do not plan to release LaTeX source for future homeworks.)
• Standard grading rubrics are available. We will use these to grade most homework and exam problems; however, some problems may not fit any of these standards. We reserve the right to modify the rubrics for problems that have not been assigned yet.

Thu Aug 17

The saints in the CS academic office are planning to open about 70 more seats during the first week of the semester, giving us a final enrollment cap of 480. Experience suggests that these seats will vanish very quickly after they are released. I have no control over when the remaining seats open, or who gets them.

We will accept late registration as justification for a 24-hour extension, but you are responsible for submitting GPS1 and HW1 even if you cannot register until after they are due. You can self-enroll on Gradescope without being registered; you will also have access to PrairieLearn.

Mon Aug 14

Aside from the spiffy new mobile-friendly web pages, we are making a few changes to the course this semester. These are all experiments, which we will stop if they prove impractical or disruptive.

• Extensions: We are now allowing both guided problem sets and written homework to be submitted up to 24 hours after the official deadline for 50% partial credit, or for full credit with an approved extension. Students can request extensions by filling out this form. Everybody gets three free ”no-fault“ extensions. See our extension policies for more information.
• Homework parties: In addition to regular and conceptual office hours, we expect to offer both frequent review sessions (where course staff review recent course material) and homework parties (where students work together on homework with staff present to answer questions). We are still working out the logistics for these, so they may not happen during the first week of the semester. See our weekly schedule page for more information.

Mon Aug 8

• Welcome! We’re working hard to get everything set up here before the semester begins. Meanwhile, you may notice several inconsistencies, broken links, and inaccurate dates.
• There are two independent sections of CS/ECE 374. This is the web site for Section A, or more formally: lecture section AL1 and lab sections AD*. Section B, taught by Nickvash Kani, has a separate site.