Course Notices | COMP1511 17s1

COMP1511 Provisional Marks Available

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 27 June 2017, 10:31:02 AM.

Provisional COMP1511 marks are now available here or via WEBCMS or by running
/home/cs1511/bin/classrun -sturec
on a CSE machine.

The field " provisional_final_mark " contains what I expect to be your final mark for COMP1511.

Hopefully "provisional_final_mark" contains a mark >= 50 and a grade of PS, CR, DN or HD. If so (provisionally) you
have met all hurdles and other requirements and have passed COMP1511 - congratulations, COMP1511 was a tough course and many of you had to work very hard over the past months to get here.

Particular congratulations to the top 10 COMP1511 students

Declan McDonnell
I Su Park
Tianyi Zheng
Nicholas Hiebl
James O'Brien
Ian Thorvaldson
Alvin Sho
Michael Kedar
Junjun Pan
Kevin Luong

Declan, Tianyi, Nicholas & James solved q7 on the exam which is very impressive under exam pressure.

Also a mention to Maxwell Goodbury, I Su Park & Joshua Brown for full marks for part 1 of the final exam.

If your assignment 2 mark still shows as '?', the hand marking of your assignment 2 has not been completed. Your provisional mark has been calculated using an estimate of your assignment 2 mark. The hand marking should be completed soon. Your provisional mark will then change, but in most cases only by a 1-2 marks.

Provisional marks can also change, for example when calculation errors are discovered but so far I've never changed a provisional PS to a FL.

If your " provisional_final_mark " field contains the grade " WD " this indicates your COMP1511 mark and grade is yet to be determined. Other fields will explain why.

If the field " supp_exam_offered " contains the value " yes " then its because you've been being offered the opportunity to sit a supplementary exam. There are 2 possible reasons for this:

1)You were absent from the final exam due to illness etc - the supplementary exam is used in place of the final exam to calculate your final mark.

or

2) You have not met the requirements to pass COMP1511 but are being another opportunity to meet these requirements and pass COMP1511. If you do not take this opportunity you will not pass COMP1511.

Note if you sat the final exam can not raise your mark beyond 50 no matter how good your performance on the supplementary exam is . If you already have a mark >50 but need to complete a hurdle, a successful supplementary exam will not raise your mark (but it will allow you to pass!)

The supplementary exam will be held on Thursday 20 July. The format will be similar to the final exam (but no skeleton sorry). It is tentatively scheduled for 9:45-13:00 J17 Level 3. You will be emailed exact details of location & time by Tuesday 18 July.

If you missed the final exam,

If you took the final exam, If the field " supp_exam_offered " contains the value " no ", you have not met the conditions described in the course outline to be offered a supplementary exam. If you were planning to take COMP courses in session 2 you will need to change your enrollment. The CSE Student Office can provide advice.

If the field " supp_exam_offered " contains the value " not applicable ", you don't need a supplementary exam (you've passed!).

I have withheld the marks of a small number of students due to concerns that their assignment contains work that is not their own.

If the field " plagiarism_investigation " contains " ass1 " or " ass2 " you should have email from me and your grade will be "WD". Please read the email carefully.

For most students the " plagiarism_investigation " field is empty (contains ".") and can be ignored. In other words unless " plagiarism_investigation " contain " ass1 " or " ass2 " you have nothing to worry about.

Some further information.

COMP1511 marks were scaled slightly up to get the PS/CR PS/FL boundaries to appropriate positions. Your marks for the individual exam questions are visible to you with your assignment & lab marks. I don't release exam questions or answers (yours or mine). Your answers were all run through a series of tests. These included tests you hadn't seen. If you scored less than full marks for an exam question, your answer must have failed at least one test. No one lost marks for an answer that passed all tests.

Unfortunately I'll be overseas from Thursday until Monday 17 July and unable to respond to questions about COMP1511. I will respond to questions when I return and I will then amend your mark if your assessment is incorrect or unfair. I'll will also announce office time to allow you to view the marking of your COMP1511 exam or discuss your assessment in person. Feel free to ask questions in the class forums if tutors or other students may be able to answer.

Andrew

Seating Allocation

Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Monday 19 June 2017, 10:16:06 AM, last modified Monday 19 June 2017, 11:40:14 AM.

If you are allocated to afternoon exam in Tabla or Drum or Oud lab, please go to J17 G02 at 12:15.

No change to other students seating information.

The Seating Allocation has been updated.

Final Exam Part 1 Skeleton Available

Posted by Andrew Taylor Sunday 18 June 2017, 05:40:46 PM.

A skeleton for the final exam part 1 is available here

Sorry it doesn't reveal much.

Please don't email me questions about the exam, they must go in the forum where all students can see my answer.

Final Exam Part 2 Skeleton Available

Posted by Andrew Taylor Saturday 17 June 2017, 08:13:11 PM.

A skeleton for the final exam part 2 is available here

I will release a skeleton for part 2 by tomorrow evening - but it won't tell you very much.

Questions about the exam must go in the forum.

I won't be able to answer questions tonight sorry. I will answer question first thing tomorrow.

Week 13/14 Exam Marks Available

Posted by Andrew Taylor Thursday 15 June 2017, 03:21:11 PM.

The marks from the Week 13/14 exam are now available in the class database. You should be able to to view them here or via WebCMS

You should see your marks for individual questions ( e xam2_q1 , exam2_q2 ) each out of 5.

You should also see your mark for the exam ( exam2_mark ) out of 10.

And you should see whether you've met the second COMP1511 hurdle ( linked_lists_hurdle ).

If the " linked_lists_hurdle " field says " passed " - congratulations you've passed the second hurdle.

If you have not passed the linked_lists hurdle (or the arrays hurdle) you can still do so in the final exam on Monday.

See the course outline for full details of COMP1511 assessment.

Draft automarking for assignment 2 available

Posted by Andrew Taylor Thursday 15 June 2017, 02:26:35 PM.

You should be able to view draft auto-marking for assignment 2 here

You should see the results of testing your program in 120 single-bot worlds.

Full details of your bot's performance in each world is available at this URL if you replace 5555555 with your zid:
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/17s1/assignments/trader_bot/marking/5555555/

It was not possible to make a profit in Test 16 and Test 36. This was taken into account in the marking.

The marking using your profit as a percentage of the maximum profit any player made in that world. This was done to ensure worlds where large profits were possible did not dominate marking.

These percentages (positive and negative) were summed and then piece-wise-linear transformed as described in the assignment specification.

Only bots with an average profit of 20+% in single-bot testing on the two largest worlds (large_world.txt + large_world1.txt) were included in multi-bot marking.

The current state of the multi-bot tournament is here

Note the multi-bot tournament is not complete (the draft automarking uses intermediate results). The tournament may be rerun if significant problems are pointed out.

If your submission did not compile or your bot did not make any profits your tutor will replace the automarking component and ensure you get a fair overall mark for the assignment.

Let me know about any general problems with the automarking by posting in the course forum.

When any general problems with the automarking are fixed, I'll release the assignment 2 to the tutors to complete the hand marking.

Also if there are remaining issues with assignment 1 marking - please let me know.
My email has been impossible to keep up with in recent weeks.

Andrew

Final Exam Seating Allocations

Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Wednesday 14 June 2017, 12:27:45 PM.

Your final exam time slot and location is available. Please ensure that you know where to go and when you are expected to arrive before Monday 19th June .

Revision lectures tomorrow Wed 7 Jun

Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Tuesday 06 June 2017, 10:27:12 PM.

They are being organised a group of enthusiastic tutors in Rex Vowels Th tomorrow.

Based on your votes, the topics below will be included in the revision. The topics may overlap between sessions and bring along questions to ask the tutors.

Morning Session (11:00AM - 1:00PM)
- Memory, memory organisation, malloc, pointers
- File I/O
- Linked lists
- stacks and queues
- tools (debugging, make, git etc)
Afternoon Session (2:00PM - 4:00PM)
- Sorting and Searching
- Structs and Typedef
- Extra C (Hexadecimal, Decimal, Binary Conversion)
- Characters and Strings

Final Exam Session Preference

Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Tuesday 06 June 2017, 09:43:46 PM.

Register your preference for either morning or afternoon exam on this form .

Students with another exam on the same day, were pre-allocated to the session that avoid the clash.

If you don't give a preference, you will be allocated randomly to either session.

Week 14 Exam Skeleton Available

Posted by Andrew Taylor Sunday 04 June 2017, 06:52:33 PM.

The skeleton for tomorrow's exam is available here ;

Good Luck with today's Exam

Posted by Andrew Taylor Friday 02 June 2017, 01:27:45 PM.

I have many emails that I have been unable to answer (sorry). You should be able to find me outside Kora Lab after both exam sessions if you need to talk to me. If you are unwell and unable to take today's exam, obtain a medical certificate and you will be allowed to sit Monday's exam. Good Luck.

Week 13 Exam Skeleton Available

Posted by Andrew Taylor Thursday 01 June 2017, 07:47:28 PM, last modified Thursday 01 June 2017, 07:48:46 PM.

A skeleton of tomorrow's exam can be viewed here

COMP1511 Help Videos

Posted by Andrew Taylor Wednesday 31 May 2017, 08:51:58 PM, last modified Wednesday 31 May 2017, 09:02:23 PM.

Some COMP1511 tutors have been busy making videos to help students. The project is aimed at future sessions, but we'll roll out as many videos as we can to help you with exam prep. These 5 might help you this week:

Pointers Video 1 - Motivation for Learning with Emily

Pointers Video 2 - Walkthrough using a swap function with Emily

Pointers Video 3 - Walkthrough with Callum

Linked List Video 2 - Inserting Into a Sorted List with Mark

Linked List Video 3 - Deleting a Node with Mark

All Sample Solutions Available

Posted by Andrew Taylor Wednesday 31 May 2017, 06:31:05 PM.

I've released all tut, lab & revision exercise sample solutions in response to requests from students preparing for Friday/Monday's exam.

I strongly recommend not looking at the revision exercise sample solutions until you've attempted the revision exercises. Similarly I recommend not looking at tut solutions before your tut.

Also a reminder try not to stress out too much preparing for Exam #2. Linked list programming is hard but if you can't do it in Exam #2 on Friday/Monday, you get another chance in the final exam.

Similarly if you didn't manage to demonstrate you can program with arrays in Exam #1 in week 8 or the catch-up exam last week, you get another chance in the final exam.

And because the combination learning to code and coping with your first session at uni is very hard, COMP1511 has a generous policy with supps (see the course outline for details) and we'll try to arrange (optional) revision classes over the mid-session break to help those with supps get over the line.

Exam #2 Seat Allocations

Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Tuesday 30 May 2017, 09:59:44 PM.

Exam seating Make sure you know where the room is before your exam. Good Luck!

Trader Bot Tournament

Posted by Andrew Taylor Monday 29 May 2017, 07:47:51 PM.

A new version of the Trader Bout tournament is underway at: http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/assignments/trader_bot/tournament/

MyExperience Survey

Posted by John Shepherd Monday 29 May 2017, 05:42:50 PM, last modified Monday 29 May 2017, 05:46:52 PM.

So far, only 27% in the LEC A lectures (KBT and SciTh) and 20% of the class in the LEC B lectures (Mathews A). If you tell what's great about the course, we'll get a momentary sugar-hit of happiness. If you don't tell us what needs improving, the course will never get better. Please spend 5 mins giving us some feedback. Thanks, jas and andrewt

Try this link: https://unsw.bluera.com/unsw/ and, for some unknown reason, you need to use zID@ad.unsw.edu.au to login.

Week 13 Blogging Topic

Posted by Andrew Taylor Monday 29 May 2017, 11:50:10 AM.

The last COMP1511 blogging topic:

Looking back at weeks 1-12 what was good about COMP1511 and what was bad. What would you like to see dropped from COMP1511 and what would you like to see added.

Don't forget to blog about the assignment too.

Exam #1 (Supp) Fri 26/05 15:00-16:30

Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Wednesday 24 May 2017, 08:53:22 PM.

This exam is meant for students who did not pass the hurdle in Week 8/9. Please check the lab and computer you are allocated to here .

Exam #2 time preference form

Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Wednesday 24 May 2017, 01:09:16 PM.

Limited seats available at each time slot (Fri 02/06 15:00, Fri 02/06 16:20, Mon 05/06 14:00). Subject to availability of seats, you may use the form to change your exam time. Form closes Monday 7am. Seating allocation will be generated soon after.

COMP1511 Last lecture (Stream B moved to Science Theatre)

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 23 May 2017, 07:41:44 PM.

We are merging the streams for COMP1511's last lecture tomorrow. For both streams the lecture will be in Science Theatre at 11:00 - don't go to Mathews A.

We will have a special guest lecturer Richard Buckland. Richard taught COMP1511's predecessor and more recently has been creating an exciting set of new cybersecurity courses which I'm sure many of you will take. He is also UNSW's Director of the First year Experience. Richard is always an interesting speaker - he wants to talk to you more genrally about studying computing and how you will use what you've been learning in COMP1511.

We'll will finish by talking about the final exam and COMP1511 assessment

Week 8/9 Exam Marks Available

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 23 May 2017, 07:26:11 PM.

The marks from the Week 8/9 exam are now available in the class database. You can view them here

You should see your marks for individual questions ( e xam1_q1 , exam1_q2 , exam1_q3 ) each out of 3.

You should also see your mark for the exam ( exam1_mark ) out of 10 (there was little upward scaling for some students).

And you should see whether you've met the first COMP1511 hurdle ( arrays_hurdle ).

If the " arrays_hurdl e" field says " passed " - congratulations you've passed the first hurdle.

If the " arrays_hurdle " field says " not_ passed " you can sit an optional extra exam Friday (26th) 15:00-16:30 and have another go at passing the hurdle. The Friday exam is optional. You also have opportunity to pass the "arrays" hurdle in the final exam. Friday's exam is not worth any marks. It is only available to students who did not meet the "arrays" hurdle. If you want to sit the exam you don't have to do anything - you will receive email giving the exam location by Thursday.

Week 12 Blogging Topic

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 23 May 2017, 08:38:58 AM.

The week 12 bloggin topic is:

What have I learnt in COMP1511 since starting assignment 1 in week 7, and how is it helping me with assignment 2

Assignment 1 Marking

Posted by Andrew Taylor Monday 22 May 2017, 10:09:37 AM.

Assignment 1 has been released to the tutors for hand marking. Unfortunately many of the tutors have their own assignments due this week. They'll try the best they can to get the hand marking to you in week 13, but please understand they are very busy. I'll push the assignment 2 deadline back a few days to Sunday June 4 so you have more opportunity to incorporate their feedback from assignment 1.

A reminder if you scored poorly on the assignment 1 automarking - your tutor will change your mark to ensure you get a fair overall mark for the assignment. If you made a serious attempt on the assignment 1 you should get 40+% for the assignment even if you passed 0 automarking tests. And if single small mistake caused you to fail many tests your tutor will change the automark to be fair.

Week 8/9 Exam Marking

Posted by Andrew Taylor Monday 22 May 2017, 09:27:15 AM.

The week 8/9 exam marking has taken much longer than expected (my apologies). The markers have been working non-stop and hope to finish late today. I'll send email to the class as soon as results are available. These results will tell you if you've met the "arrays" hurdle requirement. See the course outline for more about the two COMP1511 hurdle requirements.

if you haven't met the "arrays" hurdle requirement, you can sit an optional extra exam Friday (26th) 15:00-16:30 and have another go at passing the hurdle. The Friday exam is optional. You also have opportunity to pass the "arrays" hurdle in the final exam. Friday's exam is not worth any marks. It is only available to students who did not meet the "arrays" hurdle.

The week 8/9 exam was worth 10% - but if you completely bombed don't panic. We realize it was your first exposure to programming under the pressure of exam conditions. If you pass the "arrays" hurdle requirement in Friday's optional exam or in the final exam, we'll push your mark for the week 8/9 exam to 50% (5/10).

We also have exam #2 (linked lists) coming up Friday Week 13 /Monday week 14. it'll be run in a similar way to the week 8/9 exam. You'll get an email telling you how indicate a preference for a session day/time

Automarking Updated

Posted by Andrew Taylor Saturday 20 May 2017, 10:09:02 AM.

Updated automarking is available at

https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/cgi/marking.cgi/ass1

The main changes are for submission that didn't previously compile. The marking script goes to great length to turn these into a program that can be tested

For example, some students forgot to submit files resulting in functions not being defined. The automarking script tries to fix this by looking for a file in the student's repo defining this function. It also attempts to fix multiply defined functions (usually main), missing prototypes and extra files that don't compile (one student submitted a .c file containing an image , another student submitted a .c file containing machine code)

In almost all the above cases, when the assignment was submitted with give, the submission test told the student that their submission did not compile.

If the the marking script couldn't run your program, don't worry you won't get 0/80 for the automarking. Your tutor will manually assign you a fair overall mark. This is also applies to submissions which compiled but passed few tests (< 35/80 for for the automarking).

Please let me know about any general problems with the automarking ASAP in the course forum. I'd like to release the assignment to the tutors very soon.

Draft automarking for assignment 1 available

Posted by Andrew Taylor Thursday 18 May 2017, 05:54:03 PM, last modified Thursday 18 May 2017, 05:56:28 PM.

You should be able to view draft auto-marking for assignment 1 here:
https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/cgi/marking.cgi/ass

You should see the results of testing your program on 300 digit images,
200 captcha images and 100 challenge captcha images.

You can find the images used in the marking here:
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs1511/assignments/captcha/marking.html
or here:
/home/cs1511/public_html/assignments/ass1/marking/

Marks were awarded for each digit recognized, whether in a single digit image, a CAPTCHA image or a challenge CAPTCHA image.

Partial marks were awarded if use of an uninitialized variable was detected by dcc -valgrind, if correct output was produced without this checking (i.e. just running dcc).

You should be able to rerun the marking tests with a command like:
~cs1511/public_html/assignments/captcha/run_marking_tests crack_digit.c crack_digit.c captcha.h ....

Scroll to the bottom and you'll find the number of digits you recognized translated to a mark out of 80.

This translation was done as described in the "Assessment" section of the assignment description.

If you've scored < 35/80 in the automarking your tutor will manually assess your assignment and ensure you get a fair overall mark for the assignment.

If you've done something silly which has caused you to fail *many* tests in the automarking, alert your tutors so they can consider manually adjusting your mark to ensure you get a fair mark for the assignment.

Let me know about any general problems with the automarking by posting in the course forum.

When any general problems with the automarking are fixed, I'll release the assignments to the tutors to complete the hand marking.

Andrew

Help Session Times

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 16 May 2017, 01:27:51 PM.

Need a hand with COMP1511? Remember there are help sessions running throughout the week:

Monday 4pm to 6pm Location: Strings Lab (J17 302)

Tuesday 1pm to 3pm Location: Clavier Lab (K14 LG20)

Tuesday 6pm to 8pm Location: Drum Lab (K17 Basement)

Wednesday 4pm to 6pm Location: Flute Lab (J17 303)

Friday 12pm to 3pm Location: Brass Lab (J17 305)

Check out the help sessions page for up to date details:

https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP1511/17s1/resources/6935

Trade World Diagram Added to Assignment Specification

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 16 May 2017, 12:35:05 PM.

A draw.io diagram of the structs & pointers representing a Trader Bot world has been added to the Assignment 2 description. Take a look if you are still trying to get started on the assignment - abig thank you to Emily for the diagram.

WannaCry Ransomware Information

Posted by Andrew Taylor Monday 15 May 2017, 04:17:18 PM.

If you are interested in reading (much) more about the current widespread ransomware attack, an extensive compilation of information can be found here:

https://gist.github.com/rain-1/989428fa5504f378b99... The attack exploits illegal C in an old version of Microsoft windows, analagous to not checking an array index is valid - more precisely the code allows the attacker to provide invalid parameters to a low-level C function called memmove.

Week 11 Blogging Topic

Posted by Andrew Taylor Monday 15 May 2017, 09:03:53 AM.

The week 11 blogging topic is:

Progress on assignment 2: what do I have working and what doesn't work, what have I figured out and what don't I understand yet.

Exam #2 time slot for overflow

Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Friday 12 May 2017, 04:21:55 PM, last modified Friday 12 May 2017, 07:40:36 PM.

Exam #2 is scheduled for Friday Week 13. We need to run the exam for ~150 students on another time slot as there are more students than can fit in the labs.

The majority of students (~680) will sit their exam at their enrolled time on Friday Week 13.

There are 2 possible alternative time slots, either Thursday afternoon 1st June (4-5:30pm) or Monday afternoon 5th June (2-3:30pm). Vote here .

Week 10 Blogging Topic

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 09 May 2017, 08:51:57 AM.

This week's blogging topic is: " My plans & dreams for assignment 2 : timetable, strategies, what can I see how to do, what looks challenging, ... "

Week 9 Blogging Tppic

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 02 May 2017, 01:28:20 PM, last modified Tuesday 02 May 2017, 01:55:51 PM.

The week 9 blogging topic is: If I could go back in time 4 weeks, what advice would I give myself about assignment 1 ?

COMP1511 extension of due date (maximum mark 50%)

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 02 May 2017, 11:00:05 AM.

I'm concerned that a number of students have not submitted anything for assignment 1.

I have modified the late penalty so that you can submit up until Sunday (7th) midnight.

The maximum mark you can achieve will be capped at 50%.

If you have not submitted anything for assignment 1, I strongly advise you to do so by Sunday.

Help Session Today (Sat 29 Apr) - 10:30-12:30 Bongo Lab

Posted by Andrew Taylor Saturday 29 April 2017, 10:15:15 AM, last modified Monday 01 May 2017, 09:25:01 AM.

As assignment 1 is due tomorrow night, we have 3 particularly helpful tutors in Bongo lab 10:30-12:30 today to answer those questions that better addressed face-to-face rather than in the class forum.

Please respect the UNSW tradition of bowing to all tutors present before seeking help.

You are also permitted to give tutors left-over Easter chocolate.

Week 8 Exam Skeleton Available

Posted by Andrew Taylor Thursday 27 April 2017, 07:47:48 PM.

A skeleton of tomorrow's exam can be viewed here

The exam skeleton unfortunately reveals little content but it does show the exam layout.

These lecture topics will definitely not be covered in the exam: Structs & Typedef,Sorting and Searching, Malloc, Extra C

The focus of the exam will be arrays. This week's revision exercises are a good starting point.

Final exam - Provisionally Timetabled for Monday 19/06/17

Posted by Andrew Taylor Thursday 27 April 2017, 03:38:42 PM.

The COMP1511 final exam is now provisionally timetabled for Monday 19/06/17

This is a change to the provisional timetable. The provisional timetable previously had another date for the COMP1511 exam.

The final exam will be held in 2 sessions. If you have another exam on Monday 19/06/17 you will be automatically allocated to the COMP1511 exam session that does not clash with your other exam. You do not need to do anything. You will be able to attend both exams.

Students with exam requirements registered with SEADU will also have their requirements met without doing anything.

We will close to the exam date email you indicating how you can select which of the two sessions on 19/06/17 you would like to attend. We will give as many students as possible their preferred session. If you have non-exam commitments on 19/06/17 please take advantage of this so you are allocated a session that suits you.

Questions about exam can only be answered in the class forum. Any information about exams I provide must be available to the entire class. I'll post some more information about the week 8/9 exam here by 19:00 today.

More Help Sessions Available

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 25 April 2017, 10:35:23 PM.

We've added Tuesday & Wednesday help sessions to the existing Monday and Friday help sessions, and a one-off special help session this Saturday.

A big thank you to the tutors taking this on at a busy time of session for them too.

Current times and locations of help sessions can always be found linked to the class web page

Exam#1 Seating Allocation

Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Monday 24 April 2017, 08:40:06 PM.

Your exam week, time slot and room is available here .

Clarifications Of Assignment 1 Specification

Posted by Andrew Taylor Sunday 23 April 2017, 10:39:51 PM, last modified Monday 24 April 2017, 08:17:20 AM.

I've updated the assignment 1 specification to clarify a couple of issues raised in the forum. Here is a summary:

The images in the supplied captcha dataset are72 pixels high. This wasn't intended and contradicted the specification. But as many students have been working from the supplied datasets, I am not going to change the dataset and the captcha part of the marking will be done with images that are 72 pixels high.

The supplied digit and challenge_captcha are 70 pixels high. The digit and challenge_captcha part of the marking will be done with images that are 70 pixels high.

The specification didn't include a time limit. The marking needs to run your program on hundreds of images and there are 900 students in the class so we need a time limit. Your program must process an image (digit or captcha) in 30 seconds when compiled with dcc. I've modified the captcha_test script to enforce this 30 second limit. It was enforcing a 10 second limit.

Your submitted code must be C only. Your submitted code can't run external programs by calling system or otherwise. You can only use functions from the standard C library and math library. You can't use other libraries - in other words you can't use a -l option to dcc.

If your program is working when run by ~cs1511/bin/captcha_test you don't have to worry about any of the above.

Week 8 - no tuts or labs but there are Revision Exercises

Posted by Andrew Taylor Saturday 22 April 2017, 07:02:23 PM.

There are no COMP1511 labs or tutorials this week (week 8).

There are revision exercises which you can complete in your own time.

The revision exercises are not worth any marks but are strongly recommended to help you prepare for the week 8/9 exam.

If you need help with the revision exercises tutors will be present in Kora & Sitar labs (J17 level 3) at these times this week (only):

Wednesday 14:00-16:00 Kora/Sitar

Thursday 10:00-12:00 Kora/Sitar

Friday 10:00-12:00 Kora/Sitar

BTW, info about your exam time & location will be posted by Wednesday (sooner if we can manage it)

submit your code everytime you work on the assignment

Posted by Andrew Taylor Saturday 22 April 2017, 03:57:49 PM.

Remember it is a requirement of assignment 1 that every time you work on the assignment you submit your work using give .

Only your final submission will be marked (make sure you include all the right files in your final submission)

But we want also submissions of all the intermediate stages of your code. It doesn't matter if the code doesn't work or doesn't even compile. Every time you work on the assignment (for more than a few minutes) submit your code with give .

When you submit your code with give it will be placed in a version control system, a git repository on gitlab.cse.unsw.edu.au. Don't panic. This is just to show you what a version control system looks like. git & gitlab won't be used for marking. You don't have to do anything with git or gitlab for the assignment.

All you need to do is use give to submit your code just like you've been doing with labs.

We'll talk a little about version control later in the course, and you'll learn much more if you take COMP1531.

But if something goes wrong and you want to look at or download an earlier version of your code for the assignment , you should be able to find it by browsing through gitlab's web interface using the URL that give prints, which will look like:

https://gitlab.cse.unsw.edu.au/z5555555/17s1-comp1...

with 5555555 replaced by your zid (and you'll need to login with zid/zpass)

new help session times

Posted by Andrew Taylor Friday 21 April 2017, 04:57:22 PM.

Today's help session was very busy (apologies) and thank you to the tutors who stepped up to handle the demand.

We'll try to schedule extra help sessions.

If you'd like more help sessions available please indicate good times for you here

Mid-session Break Help Sessions

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 18 April 2017, 10:03:04 PM.

Assignment questions are welcome in the course forum but if you need to talk to a tutor in person we've scheduled a help session tomorrow (Wednesday) 2:30pm to 4:30pm in Oboe Lab (J17 304). There will also be a help session Friday afternoon

Week 7 Lab Solutions Released

Posted by Andrew Taylor Monday 17 April 2017, 11:22:49 AM.

Week 7 Lab Solutions have been released

You are permitted to use any or all of the code from the lab 7 solutions in your assignment,

You should, of course, include a comment indicating you didn't write the code, and where it came from.

Questions about the assignment are welcome on the class forum, but before asking a question please check that your question hasn't been already answered.

Exam #1 Session Preference - Week 8 or 9

Posted by Mei Cheng Whale Thursday 13 April 2017, 02:36:55 PM, last modified Thursday 13 April 2017, 02:38:46 PM.

We are planning to run 4 exam sessions. 2 on Friday Week 8 and 2 on Friday Week 9. The 2 time slots are 15:00-16:30 and 16:30-18:00. All students are initially allocated to their enrolled time slot in Week 8. We can't fit everyone into Week 8 though, some of you will take your exam in Week 9. If you have a preference for which week/time, please fill out this form .

Week 7 Blogging Topics - Planning for Assignment 1

Posted by Andrew Taylor Monday 10 April 2017, 10:56:19 AM, last modified Monday 10 April 2017, 11:08:29 AM.

The week 7 blogging is your plan for assignment 1:

What is your overall strategy for the assignment?
What features will you use to recognize digits?
How will you extract digits from CAPTCHAs?
What are the prototypes of functions you intend to write?

Assignment 1 - CAPTCHA Cracking

Posted by Andrew Taylor Saturday 08 April 2017, 09:28:55 PM.

Assignment 1 is now available. Don't panic the week 7 tut & lab will take you through getting started on the assignment.

You'll also have a chance during the week 7 lab.to check out the environment that will be used for the week 8/9 exam.

If you have a Friday lab, your tutor will let you know about an alternative lab time.

If you can't attend this alternative time, you can attend any other week 7 tut/lab if there is room.

If you attend another lab session, assessment will have to wait until you attend your regular lab again in week 9.

No Exam or Other Class Good Friday (Apr 14)

Posted by Andrew Taylor Wednesday 05 April 2017, 08:55:39 AM.

Apparently some student timetables incorrectly show a COMP1511 Other class on Good Friday (Apr 14).

This is incorrect - UNSW does not run classes on public holidays.

COMP1511 will have an exam after the break Friday Week 8 (Apr 28).

Due to the class size some students will sit the exam Friday Week 9.

You will have full exam details by Monday Week 8 including your exam time & location - and what to do if you need to change these.

Arrangements for students who will miss their lab class due to the Good Friday will be announced shortly.

Week 6 Blogging Topic

Posted by Andrew Taylor Monday 03 April 2017, 11:03:39 AM.

Was splitting your Farnarkling programs into separate functions and separate files good?

What did you learn about functions?

What did you learn about multi-file C programs?

Farnarkle Tournament in Progress

Posted by Andrew Taylor Saturday 01 April 2017, 05:34:33 PM, last modified Monday 03 April 2017, 05:04:59 PM.

The long awaited Farnarkle Tournament is in progress, view the Leaderboard here

[edit - The Farnarkle Tournament is over]

Farnarkle Tournament Delayed

Posted by Andrew Taylor Friday 31 March 2017, 07:32:15 PM.

We can't start the Farnarkle tournament tonight - apologies if you were looking forward to it.

I'm hoping it can be started about noon tomorrow (Saturday).

You'll have to wait for the week 6 lab exercises. The standard lab exercises should be available by 19:00 tomorrow. The challenge exercises may not be available until Sunday afternoon.

Poll: How Did You Go on Lab 4

Posted by Andrew Taylor Thursday 30 March 2017, 02:07:50 PM.

Please complete this survey so we all can all see how the class handled last week's COMP1511 lab exercises.

Lab 5 Autotests Improved

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 28 March 2017, 10:12:44 AM.

To help you check that your code handles different values of N_TILES and MAX_TILES correctly I've added autotests for lab05 which #define N_TILES and MAX_TILES to other values.

Apologies to Monday lab people this wasn't available for your lab.

I've also added a simple autotest for farnarkle_player

The code I was hoping to use for the farnarkle_player tournament isn't available - but I'll try to have something ready to go after the last lab on Friday - details will be announced here.

Week 5 Blogging Topic of the Week

Posted by Andrew Taylor Monday 27 March 2017, 04:31:39 PM.

The week 5 blogging topic is The 3 Most Confusing Things About the Programming Language C you've encountered so far.

And don't forget to also blog about the topics you blog about every week - mistakes you made, things you learnt etc.

Farnarkles & Arkles - lab 5 is here

Posted by Andrew Taylor Saturday 25 March 2017, 01:00:10 AM.

Lab 5 is now available - and its about playing a game!

Beware it will take you plenty of time to figure out the exercises as its our first multi-file program. Also beware Arkle counting is tricky.

The autotests aren't yet available - they need a modification to the autotest script which should be completed by Sunday evening - apologies for the delay.

Poll: Should COMP1511 Go Faster, go Slower or Continue at the Same Speed

Posted by Andrew Taylor Sunday 19 March 2017, 07:52:11 PM.

Please give us feedback on whether COMP1511 should go faster, slower,

or stay at the same speed completing this survey

It's Prime for COMP1511 Week 4

Posted by Andrew Taylor Friday 17 March 2017, 11:05:49 PM, last modified Sunday 19 March 2017, 08:36:26 AM.

It's good weather for writing C programs - luckily there are five new standard lab exercises to get started on for week 4. Remember that learning to code takes lots of practice.

Beware: the last exercise (prime_factors.c) is deceptively difficult and will need thought and planning beforehand.

We're interested in facilitating lab pairs work outside lab time - so please complete this poll on lab pair communication

Lab 3 - Challenge Questions made Tougher

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 14 March 2017, 02:53:54 PM, last modified Thursday 16 March 2017, 07:54:24 PM.

Some students have spotted a way to do both order3 challenge questions that I hadn't expected - well done - but it makes the challenge questions too easy (no fun). I've added this rule to the order3 challenge questions:

You are not permitted to use printf inside expressions - you can only use printf as a statement (the way it has been used in lectures).

So if if you've taken this approach go back and try again (sorry). If you can't find another approach your tutor will be very sympathetic if you tell them you found this approach before I changed the rules to disallow it.

Leap into Week 3

Posted by Andrew Taylor Friday 10 March 2017, 06:25:52 PM.

There are five standard lab exercises to do next week, so its very important you start before the lab - either with your partner or without your partner.

Make your lab time, with your partner and with a tutor nearby, as productive as possible.

Why not get started this weekend. Check out out the formula for leap years, write your first while loop ....

If you aren't set up to work at home - really do sort that out this weekend - try vlab its great!

Vlab is Good Way to work from Home

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 07 March 2017, 05:55:03 PM.

If you aren't set up to work from laptop or home desktop try using Vlab using the instructions here

Its a good way to work if you have an internet connection.

Welcome to Week 2

Posted by Andrew Taylor Monday 06 March 2017, 12:31:18 AM.

Welcome to week 2 - make sure you prepare for this week's tutorial and lab. Don't panic your tutors are going to give you lots of help.

I've just revised the CBasics notes to make your preparation (hopefully) much easier.

Apologies for the delay in getting these up.

Also huge apologies for the technical difficulties in the A-stream lectures on Wednesday.

I'm changing my presentation setup so network failures hopefully won't waste time in future lectures.

Course Forum

Posted by Andrew Taylor Tuesday 28 February 2017, 06:57:20 PM.

Hi Everyone, we'll be using Ed for the COMP1511 course forum . Your UNSW e-mail should contain an invitation to activate an Ed account. Please activate your account.

The course forum will be a central part of COMP1511 and is a great place to get questions answered - or to answer questions and help your fellow students learn.

Welcome to COMP1511

Posted by John Shepherd Saturday 25 February 2017, 02:19:15 PM, last modified Saturday 25 February 2017, 10:41:38 PM.

Welcome to COMP1511 and welcome to CSE!

The COMP1511 website is at https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP1511/17s1/ and you login using your zID and zPass .

You've probably been told to access your course through UNSW's Moodle system, but most CSE courses don't use Moodle (because we have better systems in-house :-).

There's not much content on the website yet, but it's coming Real Soon Now.

Speaking of the first lecture , we look forward to seeing all** of you on Monday at 11am !

Note that Tutorials (aka "tutes") and Laboratory Classes (aka "labs") start in Week 1, with a nice easy introduction to your friendly tutor, CSE and the Labs. Check under Timetable on the web site for the times and locations of your classes.

If you have a laptop bring it to your week 1 lab if you can.

** Well, strictly Andrew and I will only see half of you each. Andrew Taylor (course convenor) will see all of you who are in the A lecture stream in the Keith Burrows Theatre and I'll see the B lecture stream students in Mathews Theatre A . Both streams, however, run at the same time (Mon 11-1, Wed 11-1). Why two streams? Because there are so many of you that we can't fit you all in one lecture theatre! Why streams at the same time? Keeps the UNSW Timetabling people happy.

COMP1511 Notices

Notices