Message of the Day

Saturday, May 12th, 2012

The HW6 writeup said to print edge weights truncated to three digits after the decimal point. It then gave an example of using format strings that supposedly meets this specification. In fact, that example was incorrect. Format strings do not truncate but round to the nearest value by default.

You should follow the default behavior of String.format and round to the nearest value, not truncate. If you just simply followed the example in the writeup with no special consideration of rounding, your code most likely works correctly.

Friday, May 11th, 2012

HW5 is now enabled and is due next Friday. (And of course, HW4 returnin is due today.)

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

HW6 is now released.

Sunday, May 7th, 2012

HW4 returnin is now enabled and is due 11pm this Friday, May 11th.

As a friendly reminder, HW3 returnin is due 11pm this Tuesday (since we didn't want it to be due the Friday of the midterm). Remember that returnin must be completed even if you passed all the tests initially. Try to complete it by tomorrow night so we have time to help if you encounter any issues.

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

Mike H's Office hours are cancelled on all following Friday's. An additonal office hours will moved to tomorrow (Thursday May 3rd) in support of final midterm preparations from 6:00-7:00pm in CSE 006.

Tuesday, May 1st, 2012

The midterm review will be in MOR 230 (our usual lecture room), tomorrow (Wednesday) from 4:30-6:30pm.

HW3 returnin is now enabled. There was no returnin for HW1 or HW2. It is due next Tuesday, May 8th. Please review the homework submission handout for directions, and let us know early if you have any questions.

In a nutshell, returnin reruns the staff tests against your code, giving you a chance to earn some points back if you didn't pass all the tests initially. Your graded homework has a list of your test results. Returnin is worth 25% of your grade for a given assignment (the points may not add up that way, but it's scaled). Even if you passed all the tests originally, you must run returnin to get full credit.

Monday, April 30th, 2012

One of your classmates shares this blog post, titled "I have no idea what I'm doing." Highly recommended reading!

The midterm review will be this Wednesday at 4:30pm (room TBD). The review is totally driven by your questions, so bring them! We will also do a review in Thursday's section after discussing some HW4 feedback.

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

We've pushed one additional change to your repositories for HW5 — specifically, to the src/common.xml file (outside your hw5 directory). Please do one more update to make sure you get this change.

Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

HW5 is out. Start early, ask questions, and have fun!

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

RQ14 released. Due 0200 April 25th, 2012

Wednesday, April 18th, 2012

HW4 is posted, and the starter code is in your repositories. Have fun!

Reading Quiz answers are now available for you to see. Follow the same link that you used to take the quiz and you'll find your results there.

Wednesday, April 11th, 2012

Homework 3 source code has been added to individual repositories. Be sure to update your repositories and get started early.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Jackson's office hours have been moved from 1:00 to 1:30 on Tuesdays.

Krysta's office hours have been moved from CSE 006 to CSE 002, due to an unusual number of TAs holding office hours at that time. They have also been shifted five minutes to 3:00 to 4:00 on Tuesdays.

If you did not pick up Homework 1 after class, it will be available at office hours today.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

We have modified the turnin instructions for HW2 Part II (code reasoning). Please submit your solutions as text files rather than PDFs, as we found on HW1 that PDFs were causing unexpected grading difficulties. Please update your repository once, and the validate tool will look for the appropriate text files instead of PDFs when you run it. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this causes!

Also, please include your first and last name in any text files you submit (i.e. files ending in .txt).

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

HW2 has been released. It is a two-part assignment. In Part I, you will set up your development environment and write some simple Java code. In Part II, you will do some more code reasoning problems. The two parts can be completed in either order, but be sure to read the instructions in Part I about "Obtaining files from SVN" before beginning.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

A copy of HW1 in doc format has been posted in case it is more convenient for typing your answers. Please remember that the file you turn in must be a PDF.

We noticed that when the lecturer's laptop failed on Friday, a lot of pens and notebooks came out. This was good! We encourage you to take notes, even though the lecture slides are available. In fact, you might want to print out the slides before class and take notes on them, so you can focus on the key points rather than doing a lot of copying. Educational research has shown that taking notes during class increases both comprehension and grades. Remarkably, it even does so if you never go back to look at the notes, though reviewing your notes helps even more.

Friday, March 30, 2012

An updated version of HW1 has been released, with directions for submitting your assignment using SVN. Please follow its directions for setting up SVN as soon as possible, so that the staff can help you with any problems you have.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

The due date for HW1 was incorrect on the original PDF, and has now been fixed. The correct due date is Tuesday, April 3.

Due to a server misconfiguration, if you visited any CSE course web page this week, you might have viewed stale content. The sysadmins believe they have now fixed the problem. For the next day or so, you may need to reload webpages (ctrl-r in most browsers) to see the latest version.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

HW1 has been released.

Reading Quiz 3 has been released.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

If you are not receiving these Messages of the Day by email, then UW thinks that you are not registered for CSE 331. Please confirm your registration. Contact the CSE 331 staff (or the academic advisors) if you cannot register.

The Assignments webpage has been updated with links to the assignments. These links were also in yesterday's MOTD.

Please do not run the student-setup script yet. You do not need it yet, and we are still adjusting it.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Welcome to CSE 331!

Please complete four web surveys, by 2am on Wednesday, March 28. (There won't be this many on any future day.) Thanks!

• Demographics and expectations: Please tell us who you are, what you want and expect, and what you have heard.
• CSE 143 assessment: This 16-question multiple-choice review will help us and you understand what topics you have mastered and where you need help. Your answers do not affect your CSE 331 grade.
• Reading quiz: Each day that reading is assigned, there will be an approximately 5-question multiple-choice quiz on the reading material. If the reading is assigned for a given day, complete the reading quiz by 2am on that day.
• Office hours: Indicate when during the week you can make it to 331 office hours, by filling out the Doodle poll below. Note that we're interested in your availability throughout the quarter, not just the specific week listed in the poll. We will use this information to schedule weekly office hours which best accommodate your schedules.