Generic Syllabus

We typically offer the course four days per week, with 50 minues per session. This syllabus presents a typical ordering of topics. However, in a real class, we normally intersperse days for exams and pauses for breath to give students some extra opportunity to reflect on topics.

A few of the topics particuarly the introduction to recursion, often require more than one day of class.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

Week	Day	Topic	Reading	Lab	Notes
1	1	Introduction to Algorithms		Grinnell's Linux environment
	2	Introduction to the Course and Lab Environment	Grinnell's Linux environment	Grinnell's Linux environment
	3	Introduction to the GIMP	The GNU Image Manipulation Program	Getting Started with the GIMP
	4	Introduction to Scheme	The MediaScript Programming Environment & Beginning Scheme & How Scheme Evaluates Expressions (version 1)	Starting Scheme
2	5	Scripting the GIMP Tools	Scripting the GIMP Tools	Scripting the GIMP Tools
	6	Drawings as Values	Drawings as Values	Drawings as Values
	7	Writing Your Own Procedures	Defining Scheme procedures & How Scheme Evaluates Expressions (version 2)	Writing Your Own Procedures
	8	Basic Types: Numbers and Symbols	Numeric Values & Symbolic Values & Documenting Your Procedures	Numeric Values
Week	Day	Topic	Reading	Lab	Notes
3	9	Turtle Graphics	Turtle Graphics	Turtle Graphics
	10	Documenting Procedures	Documenting Procedures	Class activity
	11	Raster Graphics and RGB Colors	Raster Graphics & RGB Colors	Raster Graphics and RGB Colors
	12	Design and Color			Guest lecture by Matt Kluber; might eventually add reading
4	13	Transforming RGB Colors	Transforming RGB Colors	Transforming RGB Colors
	14	Transforming Images	Transforming Images	Transforming Images
	15	Local Bindings	Local Bindings	Local Bindings
	16	Boolean Values and Predicate Procedures	Boolean Values and Predicate Procedures	Boolean Values and Predicate Procedures
Week	Day	Topic	Reading	Lab	Notes
5	17	Conditionals	Conditional Evaluation in Scheme	Conditionals
	18	Iterating Over Positions	Building Images by Iterating Over Positions	Building Images by Iterating Over Positions
	19	Representing Images as Lists of Spots	Representing Images as Lists of Spots	Representing Images as Lists of Spots
	20	Iterating Over Lists	Iterating Over Lists	Iterating Over Lists
6	21	Recursion Over Lists	Recursion Basics	Recursion Basics
	22	Recursion with Helpers	Recursion with Helper Procedures	Recursion with Helper Procedures
	23	Other Forms of List Recursion	List Recursion, Revisited	List Recursion, Revisited
	24	Verifying Preconditions	Verifying Preconditions	Verifying Preconditions
Week	Day	Topic	Reading	Lab	Notes
7	25	Local Procedures and Recursion	Local Procedures and Recursion	Local Procedures and Recursion
	26	Randomized Drawing	Randomized Drawing	Randomized Drawing
	27	Numeric Recursion	Numeric Recursion	Numeric Recursion
	28	Geometric Art through Numeric Recursion	Geometric Art	Geometric Art	Often needs two days
8	29	Characters and Strings	Characters and Strings	Characters and Strings
	30	Storing Data in Files	Files	Files
	31	Storing Images in Files	Pixel Maps: A Technique for Storing Images	Pixel Maps
	32	Storing Images More Efficiently	Pixmaps Revisited	Representing Integers as Characters
Week	Day	Topic	Reading	Lab	Notes
9	33	Color Palettes	Color Palettes	Encoding Images With Color Palettes
	34	Vectors	Vectors	Vectors
	35	Analyzing Procedures	Analyzing Procedures	Analyzing Procedures
	36	Testing Procedures	Testing Procedures	Unit Testing
10	37	Pairs and Pair Structures	Pairs and Pair Structures	Pairs and Pair Structures
	38	Deep Recursion	Deep Recursion	Deep Recursion
	39	Project Ideas	Project Ideas	Project Ideas
	40	Association Lists	Association Lists	Association Lists
Week	Day	Topic	Reading	Lab	Notes
11	41	Higher Order Procedures, Revisited	Design Patterns and Higher-Order Procedures	Higher-Order Procedures
	42	Binary Search	Search Algorithms	Binary Search
	43	Trees, Revisited	Trees, Revisited	Trees, Revisited	Planned Material
	44	Binary Search Trees	Binary Search Trees	Binary Search Trees	Planned Material
12	45	Introduction to Sorting	No reading	Class activity	Need to describe class activity.
	46	Insertion Sort	Sorting	Insertion Sort
	47	Merge Sort	Merge Sort	Merge Sort
	48	Quicksort	Quicksort	Quicksort
Week	Day	Topic	Reading	Lab	Notes
13	49	Student Project Presentations	No reading	No lab
	50	Guest Lecture: Artistic Perspectives on Student Projects	No reading	No lab
	51	Algorithmic Perspectives on Student Projects	No reading	No lab
	52	Project Debriefing	No reading	No lab
14	53	Encapsulating Values	GENERIC	GENERIC
	54	Object-Oriented Programming	GENERIC	GENERIC
	55	Representing Objects	GENERIC	GENERIC
	56	Inheritance	GENERIC	GENERIC
Week	Day	Topic	Reading	Lab	Notes
15	53	Beyond Introductory CS: What Do Computer Scientists Do?	No reading	No lab
	54	Beyond Introductory CS, Continued	No reading	No lab
	55	Class Wrapup	No reading	No lab
	56	Review for Final	No reading	No lab
Week	Day	Topic	Reading	Lab	Notes

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Primary: [Front Door] [Syllabus] [Assignments] [Labs] [Readings]

References: [A-Z] [Primary] [Scheme Report (R5RS)] [Scheme Reference]

Samuel A. Rebelsky, rebelsky@grinnell.edu

This material is based upon work partially supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CCLI-0633090. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.