Please review the page entitled Assignment Notes before starting and submitting each assignment.
The table below contains links to this semester's assignment instructions (in the "Assignments:" row) and solutions (in the "Solutions:" row). Assignments are typically posted well in advance of their due date to allow students to start early on them. Solution are posted soon after the last due date for all class sections working on an assignment. The "Examples:" row contains links to examples or mock assignments that students can use for guidance as they work on each assignment. These examples will be similar to the assignments, but each assignment will also be unique. The examples can help a student understand what is expected for each assignment, but cannot simply be copied to solve each assignment.
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Note that almost all problems have many possible solutions. Only one solution for each problem gets posted. Your solution will probably be different, but it could be equally correct. For analysis assignments, your approach might be quite different, in which case you will have to judge on your own whether your solution is equally effective, or see your instructor. For coding assignments, your code is likely to be similar in syntax, but may be quite different in layout because the C++ Programing Language is not sensitive to layout. Each programmer uses his or her own style.
Be aware that the purpose of doing these exercises is to "get your feet wet" and allow you a chance to "do", rather than to just "read about" analysis and programming. The assignments are not scored. So don't worry about your performance on them affecting your grade. It is not so important to "get them right" the first time. Rather it is important to learn from them. We often learn more from our failures than our successes. You might be asked to revise the work and resubmit it until they have demonstrated a mastery of the techniques being studied. And ultimately all assignments must be successfully completed to pass the course. The purpose of the assignments is to present students with a learning goal that will require them to employ the skills that are introduced in the course reading assignments. They are not there to create frustration, which is an impediment to learning. Nevertheless, they are intended to be challenging. Although students are asked to work alone (meaning without the assistance of other students), that does not mean without guidance from the instructor. If you are confused about how to proceed, contact me for guidance. But do so early enough for me to examine your work and respond before the due date. Submit any work that you have completed so far, noting if your submission is a "work in progress " in your drop box message. Subsequent submissions will replace earlier ones.
If a you have not completed an assignment by the due date, I expect you to study the posted solution and use it as a guide to completing your own. You will get more academic benefit if you can do an exercise entirely on your own. But you must weight that against the danger of falling behind in the class and make that call yourself. The important thing is that you learn the concepts in the course. A reasonable approach is to try to do the exercise without viewing the solution and then examine it only if needed to overcome an obstacle in completing your own solution. Remember that the assignments are not assessment instruments; they are learning exercises. So you should use the posted solutions to check your work before sending in a late submission or requested revision. Your submission is intended to show that you ultimately understand the concepts involved in the exercise; not that you figured it out yourself.
It is important that the work that you submit be the results of your own thinking and not just a reflection of what you think I want to see. The examples and solutions that I post are intended to serve as guides to illustrate the formats and typical approaches that have been learned and recognized by programmers over the years. I do not want students to submit exact duplicates of my solutions. I want them to use the work I post to develop their own solutions. In the case of analysis assignments, each student will create unique algorithms and identifiers. There are many possible correct solutions. In coding assignments, although you are required to follow the approach and use the identifiers shown in the analysis, there are still many possible ways to implement that analysis in C++ code. So when I ask you to review a posted solution in order to revise your own work, remember that you are still expected to continue with your own unique solution, but adjusted based on the example of an alternate solution provided in my solution.