There are 6 programming assignments in all. These are due at midnight (11:59 PM to be precise) on the dates indicated on the Calendar page.
| # | Title | Goal | Links |
| 1 | Straight-line Programs | Implement programs without branches and loops. | writeup | zip | discussion |
| 2 | Control-flow Programs | Implement programs with branches and loops. | writeup | zip | discussion |
| 3 | Mozart Waltz Generator | Implement Mozart’s waltz game by writing a program to generate a two-part waltz and another program to play the waltz. | writeup | zip | discussion |
| 4 | RSA Cryptosystem | Implement the RSA public-key cryptosystem. | writeup | zip | discussion |
| 5 | Atomic Nature of Matter | Re-affirm the atomic nature of matter by tracking the motion of particles undergoing Brownian motion, fitting these data to Einstein’s model, and estimating Avogadro’s constant. | writeup | zip | discussion |
| 6 | Markov Model | Use a Markov chain to create a statistical model from an English text corpus and use the model to generate stylized pseudo-random text and decode noisy messages. | writeup | zip | discussion |
The writeup file contains descriptions of the problems in the assignment. The zip file contains the starter files for the problems, any necessary data files, and notes.txt file for the assignment. The discussion document provides additional explanation of the assignment problems and directions on how to solve them.
You will use Gradescope to submit your Python programs (ie, .py files) and the notes.txt file. Make sure that you only submit files listed under the Files to Submit section of the assignment writeup.
You may submit your files as many times as you like, up until the assignment deadline. The most recent submission is considered active by default and your score on the active submission is your official score for the assignment as well. You have the option of making any of your previous submissions active.
Note: If your active submission is partial, your assignment score will also be partial, so in order to be eligible for full credit, make sure you have an active submission containing all the required files for the assignment.
Your solution to each assignment problem will be evaluated for correctness by an autograder. Each test that is used for this purpose is worth some number of points; your solution will receive all the points from a test that passes and 0 points from a test that does not.
Your solutions will additionally be checked by a TA for code clarity and efficiency. Your solution to each problem will receive some number of points if it passes all the autograder tests for that problem and 0 otherwise. In addition, your solution will receive some number of points if it follows good programming principles (ie, is clean, well-organized, uses meaningful variable names, includes useful comments, and is efficient) and will be marked down otherwise.
The given notes.txt file for an assignment must be uploaded with the three sections (#1 mandatory, #2 if applicable, and #3 optional) filled in as appropriate. In section #1, for each problem, you must state its goal in your own words and describe your approach to solve the problem along with any issues you encountered and if/how you managed to solve those issues. For each problem, your notes will receive some number of points if the goal and approach subsections meet our expectations and will be marked down otherwise.