Shortcuts: Part 2 · Course notes · Coursework · Solutions · Exams · Official Syllabus
This page only concerns the first part of COMP11212. You can find here electronic copies of the lecture notes as well as a list of known mistakes which I keep up to date.
Almost every time we use a computer the computer must make sense of what we type into it. How does it do that? How does a computer take a computer program and break it down so that it can be turned into instructions the computer can actually carry out? How can we search documents or webpages for fairly complicated pieces of text, such as all occurrences of a double typed word (`the the', for example), even across line breaks, arbitrary amounts of space, and with the first letter possibly capitalized? How can we make use of tools such as grep.
In this part of the course we study techniques that help us deal with such issues. We look at different ways of describing collections of strings, and how to transform one description into another. We also look at what these descriptions can and can't do.
There are two lectures per week, and each student has one examples class in that period. The first part of the course is structured as follows:
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Activity Lectures Examples classes Coursework Piece 1 Coursework Piece 2 |
Duration Weeks 1 - 4 of term, 30th January to 20th February Weeks 2 - 5 of term (weeks starting 6th to 27th February) Due on Wednesday 22nd February, 2.00pm Due on Wednesday 7th March, 2.00pm |
See the first few pages of the notes for more organizational detail.
The notes, including the exercises, cover all the examinable material for this part of the course. I appreciate any feedback on the course in general as well as on the material handed out. For this purpose please email me at A.Schalk at cs.manchester.ac.uk.
The notes are written in a fair amount of detail because you are expected to spend some time each week in self-study. I do not explain every detail in the notes in the lectures. The lectures are there for me to introduce the big ideas, and to go through examples with you.
The notes also contain organizational information at the beginning, including a description of the format of the exam.
Copies of the notes are handed out in the first week of term. Leftover copies are deposited near the Student Support Centre as usual. If you lose your notes and no copies are left you can print them again from here.
The material for this part of the course is mathematical in nature. There is an Appendix in the notes that shows how the statements in the notes can be made completely rigorous. This material is examinable, but at most 10% of the final mark depends on it. Most students choose not to work on this part, and that is fine, but if you are interested in theoretical computer science then you should work through it.
Despite my best efforts, the notes may still contain some errors. I keep an up-to-date list of them available here.
For each of the four examples classes associated with the first part there is an exercise sheet at the end of the notes. It details a number of exercises. The demonstrators check each week whether you have done the key exercises, and this information is logged in Arcade. There are also preparatory exercises that make the key exercises easier to do, and additional exercises that you could do, or that you could leave for revision. There are also exercises for those working through the appendix of the notes.
Solutions to the exercises in the notes are made available when the last examples class for a sheet has occurred. Solutions for Exercise Sheet 1.
Past experience proves convincingly: Students who do the set work in each week will pass the coursework, and students who do both will pass the exam. On the other hand 90% of students who failed the exam in previous years either failed the coursework or failed to even attend more than 50% of examples classes.
The coursework is detailed on the last two pages of the notes. The deadlines are given above, and they are also mentioned in the notes.
Together the two pieces of coursework for Part 1 are worth 12.5% of the final mark for this course unit.
Exam Format:
The department keeps a wealth of information on exams, when they are, how to prepare for them, where to find old exam papers (where they exist), etc, here.
Previous exam papers. The department keeps an online repository of exam papers. You can find the 2009, the the 2010, and the 2011 papers there.
You can also read my comments on how students performed on my part of each paper and where they lost marks for the 2009, 2010 and 2011 papers.
The link for material for Part 2 will be supplied when it's available.