Instructor

Gerald Senarclens de Grancy

Office hours

on appointment

Contact

cms@senarclens.eu

Course calendar & location

http://find-santa.eu/calendar.xhtml

Course homepage

http://find-santa.eu/teaching/cms.php

Prerequisites

Formally: none

Solid understanding of computer software in general will facilitate the tasks.

Capability to read English documentation.

Knowing some basic HTML is helpful.

Administrative rights to a computer will offer you the full benefits of flextime.

"Textbooks"

Primary

Further Reading

Course Content

Introduction to using computer programming to assist in information retrieval and managerial decision making.

Students will get to know a state of the art high level programming language that is easy to learn. To facilitate the process, some valuable tools to assist in the development will be presented.

The course uses a step by step approach. It starts with the most basic concepts while using interesting homework tasks to deepen their understanding. Computational Management Science 2 offers dedicated lab sessions to help with solving the homework tasks.

The intent is to make the course more fun than a "traditional" course that covers computer programming. You should learn to code what you want - not to code what you can code. The focus won't be programming language features, but how to get your work done in a programming language.
Short outline

Objectives

Upon completing the course students will

• be confident with basic computer programming.
• have acquired skills in implementing basic algorithms.
• know syntax and semantics of procedural programming: assignment, sequential operations, iteration, conditionals, functions.
• be comfortable using basic tools that help programmers.
• be able to solve simple managerial problems that cannot be solved with more common tools.
• be comfortable using version control to keep track of changes in your code.
• be able to read other people's source code.
• be able to communicate with techies on a fairly technical level.
• know enough to independently acquire additional knowledge in the field.

Whom this Course is for

Students who are willing to work hard...

• ... in order to achieve skills that will help them getting their work done.
• ... to become more creative, think more precisely and be able to analyze and solve problems logically.
• ... to have more choice in the labor market.
• ... because they have (almost) no prior programming experience.
• ... and are curious how to solve tasks more efficiently.
• ... because many things YOU need to get done have to be partly/ widely self-taught.
• ... because "There is no substitute for knowing your application area, your programming language, and the relevant programming technique." – Bjarne Stroustrup
• ... and believe that technical know how is crucial for successful IT project managers in order to communicate with their teams.

Who should not attend this Course

• Anybody who already is a skilled programmer.
• Students who just want a 'cheap' positive grade. (They might need less effort elsewhere; this module has 4 + 4 ECTS credits. This corresponds to an average of 200 hours of work.)
• Cheaters.

Workflow

1. Students do required reading before every CMS 1 class (readings are announced one week before they are due).
2. During CMS 1 sessions, the content of the reading will be extended, discussed and your knowledge deepened. Reading the assigned chapters is absolutely required - otherwise there would be too much information to grasp.
3. At the beginning of CMS 2 sessions, randomly selected students will present their homework and explain how it works.
4. During CMS 2 sessions, you'll also get time to work on your assignments and ask related questions. However, you'll have to work on your assignments at home prior to these sessions to make them beneficial.

Assessment - CMS 1

• No single knock-out criterion (except plagiarism).
• A minimum of 50.5% of the points is required to pass the course.

Assessment - CMS 2

• No single knock-out criterion (except plagiarism).
• A minimum of 50.5% of the points is required to pass the course.

Homework Assignments

• The assignments will be available on the course homepage.
• Most minor assignments will be posted two sessions before they are due, so there'll be one session to ask questions and discuss problems you have encountered.
• Each assignment has to be completed (as it might be required for later assignments).
• The first two assignments have to be solved individually.
• Later assignments are for teams of two students.
• The teams will be randomly chosen for each of these assignments (pair programming).
• The assignments have to be handed in 2 hours before the session on their due dates.
• Send all files of each assignment as a single tar.gz or tar.bz2 archive.
  • The archive must contain a single folder named "#_firstname_lastname" (or "#_firstname_lastname_and_firstname_lastname") which contains all files (named as laid out in each individual assignment). Replace # with the assignment number. Keep all input files and the grader in this directory as well. Do not use subdirectories. E.g.

  • └── 2_gerald_senarclens
        ├── guessing_game_draft.py
        ├── guessing_game_improved.py
        ├── child_in_car.py
        ├── hw2_grader.py
        ├── grader.py
        ├── inputfile.txt
        └── guessing_game_release.py
    

  • The archive must have the name of the folder it contains followed by the filetype (eg. 2_gerald_senarclens.tar.gz).
• Send the assignments to cms@senarclens.eu. The subject has to be
  "[ASSIGNMENT #] first_name last_name" or
  "[ASSIGNMENT #] first_name last_name, first_name last_name". Replace # with the assignment number and first_name last_name with your name(s). E.g.
  • [ASSIGNMENT 2] gerald senarclens
• You can send multiple versions of your assignments. Only the last version sent before the deadline will be graded.
• The assignments will be checked for plagiarism.

Academic Honesty

Grading

The grade scale is shown in the table above. The grading curve may be lowered if necessary but it will not be raised. This means that if you received an 87% then you will at least get a 2, but may receive a higher grade based on the curve.