Week of Jun 15th - 18th, 2020

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday:
You'll have these three days to work on the "Guess The Word" project, described here. Please note that I have made some minor changes to the project description, to give you some extra hints and to clarify that I want you to follow the steps as described in the document.  The URL for your REPL and the name of your partner (if any) should be in this spreadsheet.   The assignment is due by 4 PM on Wednesday, June 17th.  If you worked with a partner, you each need to submit your assignment to Google Classroom individually.

Thursday:
Watch this video of Steve Jobs' speech at Stanford University back in 2005.  I've probably seen this 50 times now, and I still get something valuable from every time.  It's not what you'd expect.

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

- from "The Summer Day" by Mary Oliver 

Have a great summer!

Week of June 8th - 12th, 2020

Remember, there will be a progress grade for CodeHS Unit 8 sometime after 9 PM on Sunday, June 7th.

Monday:
CodeHS Unit 8 Quiz
You are free to study for the Rutgers exam once you've finished the quiz.

Tuesday:
Rutgers exam.  First period students need to report for attendance at 8 AM as usual, but I will not be assigning any coursework.

Wednesday:
The Secret Rules of Modern Living: Algorithms  - the video is 58 minutes, so be on time!
"Algorithms touch our lives every day, yet most of us are unaware of their extraordinary impact. They can guide a surgeon's hand, or build works of art, and control what we read and the products we buy. Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy demystifies the hidden world of algorithms, revealing where these 2,000-year-old problem solvers came from, how they work, what they have achieved and how they are now so advanced they can even program themselves."  We will compile a list of the algorithms the movie discusses as we go along

Thursday:
Rutgers exam. First period students need to report for attendance at 8 AM as usual, but I will not be assigning any coursework.

Friday:
Programming is not just about remembering some particular feature about Python, it's also about actual problem solving -- taking something that's hard to understand and turning it over in your mind and breaking it down until it make sense.  You will probably have to try and fail a few times before you get there.  That takes time and effort, but sooner or later you're going to have to learn how to do it -- if not with programming, then with something else in your life.  The assignment below tries to walk you through the process step by step, but you're still going to have to put in some persistent effort to understand it.  If you haven't had this real problem-solving experience yet, this is a great time to try it.  Go review The Guy Under the Car first if you forget what that's about.  

As you probably know, I've been dismayed by the amount of sharing of answers that I believe I've seen this semester since we've been working remotely.  Do you remember when we first started programming, and I mentioned the former teacher at Allied who said that Allied students can't learn to program, because they need to be spoon-fed all the time?  This is what that teacher was talking about. It's been obvious in a few ways -- mostly by the identical odd programming mistakes and poor choices of variable names that I see repeated in program after program submitted to CodeHS by different people.  I'm afraid that some of you plan to do that again.  I am perfectly aware that there are Python programs on the web that would appear to solve the problem that I am presenting for the final project, and I will be looking to see not only that your program works, but that there's evidence that you followed the steps outlined in the project description -- that is, you have the structure, functions and variables that it specifies. 

The last programming project of the semester is described here.  As before, you can do it by yourself or with one partner.  Please put the URL for your REPL and the name of your partner (if any) into this spreadsheet.