Term project

The goal of this term project is to give you a chance to reflect on what you have been exposed to in this course, conceptually, practically, and methodologically.

General expectations

You are expected:

• to work in groups, as you did for the weekly handins, and
• to write an individual report, using your own words.

The individual report

“Mad Eye” Moody (nostalgically): Where is our capslock key when we need it?

In a constantly vigilant sort of way, your report should include

• a front page with title, name, student number, and date,
• the names of the other members of your group,
• a second page with a table of contents, and
• from the third page and onward,
  • an introduction,
  • a series of sections and subsections reflecting the structure of the project, and
  • a conclusion where you assess what you did and reflect on how you did it and on the perspective your assessment and reflection provide.

Pages should be numbered, and the narrative should be spell checked.

An inspiring (and not necessarily humorous, just on topic) quote or three would be welcome.

Throughout, remember to embrace the structure where the computation is described informally (textually), where it is accounted for with a unit-test function, where it is specified inductively, where this inductive specification is mirrored into a structurally recursive function, and where the implementation is verified to pass the unit tests – unit tests whose limitations should be scrutinized.

About describing your programs: of course you should not paraphrase the code, because what is the point of that.

Finally, there will be bonus points for brevity and conciseness, because the measure of your understanding is the clarity of your discourse.

Specific expectations

• The Mini-project about multiplying integers in a tree using an accumulator is mandatory.

• The Mini-project about depth-first and breadth-first traversals is mandatory.

• The Mini-project about indexing data structures is mandatory.

• Time permitting, you are welcome to consider either of

  • the Mini-project about computing the width of a binary tree,
  • the Mini-project about implementing a sieve,
  • the Mini-project about a simple variant of the knapsack problem, or
  • the Mini-project about three language processors for arithmetic expressions.

  (Pick the one that appeals to you.)

Version

Created [04 Apr 2020]