541 Lab Guidelines

List of Labs and Weights

• Root finding (15%)
• Interpolation (15%)
• final one ( to be determined ) (20%)

Equipment and Programming Environment

You can use any computer which you have access to. You can use any programming language you feel confortable with. You must not use any numerical software package such as MATLAB or Maple to do the labs. CIS computer equipment is in the HP workstations located in BO111 and BO118 .

Lab Submission for Grading

You are to submit lab assignments with report . For each lab, submit a report describing how you solved the assignment. If you turn in just numerical answers without describing how you got the answers, you will get a low score.
You also need to submit the whole program together with your report.

Grading Criteria

Grading of the labs will be based on the following:

• 70%: Correctness and adherence to assignment specification. This includes any error checking specified in the lab handout. If no error checking is specified, then you don't have to do it
• 10%: Readability and structure of code, use of comments, indentation, etc.
• 20%: Readability of the report in geneal.

The grader will grade the labs. If you have a problem with the grade you received on your lab, see the grader first. If you can't resolve the dispute with the grader, then see me. However, in order to maintain consistent grading for everyone in the class, I am not very inclined to alter grades that are assigned by the grader.

Late Penalties

No late labs are accepted unless you have made a prior agreement for late submission. Such an agreement is not made, unless its an extreme case of a proven emergency. You have more than enough time to do the labs, especially if you start on them right away. If you wait and run out of time, it's your problem. I give extensions to the class in case of general equipment failure or other, universal, uncontrollable, devastating circumstances.

Copying Labs

Don't. Discussion of lab assignments is allowed and encouraged. However, do your own work. Labs which are too similar will be handed over to the Committee on Academic Misconduct and handled by them.

Suggestions

Don't get behind in the lab assignments. Probably the main reason for students doing poorly in this course is getting behind in the labs and never recovering. Be forewarned, some labs depend partially on previous labs.

Design and implement in a top-down, modular fashion. Get something working that has the skeleton structure of what you need and then add features to it. Each time you add a feature, test it and make sure everything is still working. It can be tough to debug graphics programs if all you know is that the output is wrong and you're not sure any one module is working.