Course pages 2013–14

Course structure

All students should have a copy of the course text book, Justin Zobel's Writing for computer science (second edition). Students can borrow a copy for the duration of the course from the Computer Laboratory library (William Gates Building), on payment of a refundable deposit.

Preparatory reading is to be read before the lecture.

Exercises are due before 16:00 on the indicated days. They should be submitted to the Graduate Education Office (room FS05 in the William Gates Building).

There are five ticked exercises (1-5, 4% each), two assessed exercises (6-7, 10% each), and a test (8, 60%). The test covers material from across the course. Ticked exercises are designed as formative assessment: you will get full marks if you submit a reasonable attempt at the exercise. Assessed exercises are summative assessment, marked on their quality. The test is summative assessment. You can expect that parts of the test will be similar to that previously attempted in the ticked exercises.

Supplementary information and downloadable files for the exercises are online.

The table summarises the lecture content, preparatory reading, and exercise due dates. All the lectures will be at 14:00 in Lecture Theatres in the Wiliam Gates Building. The first lecture is in Lecture Theatre 2, all others are in Lecture Theatre 1.

The lecturers are Prof. Neil Dodgson (module leader), Prof. Peter Robinson and Prof. Simon Peyton Jones.

The final four lecture titles are provisional and may change.

Careful readers will have noticed that the preparatory reading covers all chapters of Writing for computer science other than Chapter 4 "Punctuation". While punctuation is important, it is not something on which we lecture. Students are invited to read that chapter in their own time.