Herbert J. Bernstein
Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science
Dept. of Mathematics and Computer Science, 1300 William Floyd Parkway, B205, Shirley, NY 11967
21471
CSC 1009N -- Introduction to Spreadsheets and Data Analysis -- Spring
2014
Monday, Wednesday 1:00 pm -- 2:21 pm KSC 102A
Assignments
All assignments are to be submitted as text-only email or posted on
the web and submitted by email
containing the URL of the
assignment to:
with absolutely no attachments. Assignments will
in general not be accepted late.
No assignments will be accepted on paper. No assignments will be
accepted on diskettes or thumbdrives.
You may use a Google Sites or
Google Blogger
to post assignments on the web as a means of submission.
The grade for the assignment will be sent back to the email address from
which the
assignment email was sent. In the case of group assignments in which
multiple students
are involved, one student should be the sender of the email and the other
students should
be listed both in the email "CC:" list and in the body of the
message.
Students should check this page frequently for updates.
Assignments with an assignment date one week or more in the
future are subject to change.
Assignment #1, assigned Monday, 27 January 2014, due Monday,
3 February 2014.
If you have not already done so, sign up for Google Sites and
create your personal portfolio web page. If you are taking more than one CS course, you must use
the same personal portfolio web page for all CS courses.
In addition to the web page you will use for your portfolio, create an additional web page
to use to be able to post course assignments so you can send those URLs to the instuctor
instead of using email attachments.
If you have not already done so, sign up for
Google Blogger and create a blog to use as a public notebook
for this course. Be sure to record your experiences in doing this entire assignment
in your blog.
Based on what you have seen and read and/or by experimenting with Excel
or with Open Office Calc, if cell A1 contains 5, cell B1 contains 3.5 and cell C1 contains
1.25 and cell D1 contains the formula =SUM(A1:C1), what will show
on the spreadsheet in cell D1?
Do exercises 4-1 and 4-2 on pages 70 - 71 in Gips
Email your answers to the instructor no later than
noon on Monday, 3 February 2014.
If at all possible, form a study group for your work in this
class. You are free to work with others on the rest of this
assignment, but you must list all the people you work with on
your answers.
Read Gips, pages 99-206 and make notes.
Read all of Artymiak and make notes.
Do exercise 6-12 on page 121 and copy out the completed
windchill table (not the formulas, but the resulting numbers).
Try to do exercise 11-17, pp. 197 ff. If you are able to post files
to the web, post the workbook. If not, describe your solution
in detail and with formulae in the body of an email message
and arrange a Skype session with the instructor to resolve your
issues in posting on the web.
Remember that you are free to work with others, and, especially
for this problem, are encouraged to do so. It is very important
that you work on this exercise. You may use either Excel or
Calc.
Assignment #3, assigned Monday, 10 February 2012, due Wednesday,
19 February 2014
By now you must have your Google Sites web site and your blog
fully operational. If you are still having trouble, be certain to
contact the instructor and get this resolved.
Once again, if at all possible, form a study group for your work in this
class. You are free to work with others on the rest of this
assignment, but you must list all the people you work with on
your answers.
Read Gips 207 - 310 and make notes.
Post your intial thoughts on what simulation project to
do for your portfolio project on your blog.
Do and submit the pencil and paper exercise 15-1 on p 295 and make notes
Prepared a detailed, thoughtful proposal of an original spreadsheet
simulation project for your portfolio project for this course, post the proposal
to your portfolio project web site and email the URL to the instructor.
Assignment #6, assigned Monday, 3 March 2014, due Monday,
10 March 2014
If you have done the previous assignments to this point, you have now been
exposed to the basic tools you need in order to make serious use of spreadsheets.
Now it is time to apply those tools and start building your portfolio to
show future employers or graduate schools what you can do. Carefully
re-edit your portfolio web site to have a description of your current
best simulation project, and carefully update your blog with information
on your progress (or lack thereof and reasons) on your portfolio project.
The problems you have done up until now will be evaluated over the
next week. They are all important, but the one that is the best test of
how well you understand working with spreadsheets is probably Conway's game of life.
Prepare your best updated version of Conway's game of life and post it to your Google sites
assignments web site. Update your blog with information on your progress and problems with the
game of life.
As practice in doing simulations, prepare a spreadsheet that simulates
two possible investments for the next 20 years. One investment is to put
your money into a bank that will pay you interest each year at some interest
rate uniformly distributed between 0.5 percent and 5 percent per annum,
using the rand() function once per year to pick the interest rate for that
year. The other investment is to put your money into numbers tickets
that have one chance in 1000 of hitting your number and will pay you $500
on a 1 dollar bet if you win. You always bet on your lucky number 007. Use
randbetween(0,999) to pick the winning number. Whether you are simulating
the bank or the lottery, you have 1 new dollar available to invest each day,
plus whatever dollars you have earned up to that point. Be sure to do the
simulated 20 years at least 100 times. Post your spreadsheet on your Google
sites assignments web site. Update your blog with information on your progress and problems
with this assignment.
Assignment #7, assigned Monday, 10 March 2014, due Monday,
17 March 2014.
You have had a lot to digest. We will back up
to a simpler assignment. You still need to do a simulation
as your portfolio project, but for right now try this ...
Write a spreadsheet to be used to manage the grades for a class of
17 students. The spreadsheet should allow for up to 30 assignments
or quizzes, compute average grades and use some reasonable algorithm to
assign letter grades on the basis of these averages. Post your spreadsheet
on your Google sites assignments web site. Update your blog with
information on your progress and problems with this assignment.
Assignment #8, assigned Monday, 17 March 2014, due Monday,
24 March 2014.
Continuing the simpler assignments of last time, now write
a spreadsheet to keep track of all your school assignments
by course, due date, completion date and grades. Include in
your spreadsheet formulas to warn you of the number of assignments
dues on any given day and your running averages to that day for
all assignments by course. Post your spreadsheet
on your Google sites assignments web site. Update your blog with
information on your progress and problems with this assignment.
Assignment #9, assigned Monday, 24 March 2014, due Monday,
31 March 2014.
The remaining assignments and quizzes for this course all relate to completion
of the portfolio project. Students are advised to fill in earlier missing
assignments and quizzes promptly both to be ready for the final and to free
time to work on a good portfolio project.
In all cases, your portfolio project is to be a simulation. Even if you
do not have all aspects of the simulation itself working, you are to
prepare a complete and coherent user manual for the simulation explaining
in detail what it is that your similation simulates with examples of
runs and explanations of what the various outputs from the simulation
are and how the user can start, stop or otherwise control the simulation.
This user manual is to be posted to your google sites portfolio web site
(not just to google docs, and certainly not sent as an email attachment).
Assignment #10, assigned Monday, 31 March 2014, due Monday,
7 April 2014.
Prepare a detailed system design document that expands the user
manual for your portfolio project with a complete explanation of
the way it works. Each and every sheet and formula should be
explained. Do not replace your user manual with the
system design document. They are intended for different audiences.
Both are important.
Assignment #11, assigned Monday, 7 April 2014, due Wednesday,
23 April 2014.
Clean up your portfolio project web site. Add a brief description
of yourself to the site and other features that would help to
make it useful in a job hunt. Remove anything extraneous from the
site. If there are things you need to keep, but that are not
appropriate to a portfolio, move them to your course web site.
Do Quiz 11. This is the
last quiz for the semester except for the final.
All assignments, quizzes or other materials to be considered
for your grade other than the portfolio project and the final
must be submitted no later than noon on Wednesday 23 April 2014
if you need a grade within the semester.
Assignment #12, assigned Wednesday 23 April 2014, due Monday,
28 April 2014.
Complete your portfolio project and send the URL to the instructor
by email.
You must present your portfolio project in a coherent 10 minute
presentation in class on 28 April, or via a Skype session before that.
There will be a review for the final in Wednesday, 30 April and
the final will be held in 2 parts in the class sessions of 5 and 7 May 2014.
Updated 18 January 2014.
