Contents:

• Overview
• Internet Requirements
• Practice Problems
• Problems to be Submitted
• Extra Credit

Topic: Welcome to the course
Related Reading: none
Due: 8pm Wednesday, 1 September 2004

This "assignment" will not be graded, however we encourage you to complete it as a warmup for future assignments. This will give us a chance to introduce you to the style of assignment descriptions as well as to aspects of the computer system we will use for electronic submission of remaining assignments.

Every assignment will be submitted electronically and thus will eventually require an Internet connection for submission.

However, in doing the real work before submission, assignments will differ in their reliance on Internet access. Some can be done without any Internet connection others will rely on Internet access throughout.

For example, this particular assignment requires an Internet connection for submission as well as during the preliminary work, as it involves exploring several aspects of the course web page.

Each assignment will include a collection of "practice" problems related to the course material. Often these will be similar in style to the required work, but perhaps a bit simpler. The purpose of suggesting these problems is to get students headed in the right direction. Furthermore, as these problems are not required, students are free to use the practice problems as a source of discussion with other students.

For this assignment, we ask you to fill out the online questionnaire, if you had not already done so.

We would like to give you experience in using the electronic submission procedures we will use for all future assignments.

Please create a text file named "aboutme" which contains a few short paragraphs telling the instructor anything you wish to share about your background, your level of computing experience, or your outlook for the course. This file will be kept in confidence.

Then read details of the electronic submission process and submit your 'aboutme' file.

Assignments will be graded out of a total of 20 points. Each assignment will contain an extra credit portion, which will generally allow a student to earn 1 or 2 additional points.

The purpose of offering these problems is to give direction and challenge to those students who wish to dig a little deeper into particular topics we are studying. Though we offer a token amount of additional credit for motivation, the purpose of attempting the extra credit should not be simply to improve one's grade. In truth, a student hoping to improve a course grade would be much better advised to direct all of his or her efforts into doing the required portion of the homework as well as possible.

We will start with a true extra credit problem on the first Assignment.