Check-ins

A check-in is just a weekly opportunity to score some points and ensure that you are keeping up with the course content. The requirements vary from week to week, but may involve responding to a survey, taking a brief online quiz, or participating in a discussion forum. They are due by midnight on the designated day.

1. Tue 28 Jan
   • Complete this quick survey to help me understand your background and interests.  +6
   • Review notes on number systems and binary.  +6
2. Thu 6 Feb
   • Review notes on text encoding.
   • Send me an email. It should contain the ASCII encoding of your first name or nickname (using upper and lower case), in decimal, hexadecimal, and binary.  +8
   • Also look up two foreign Unicode characters (accented letters, symbols, or ideograms), figure out how to type them on your operating system, and include them in your message.  +4

   • Here is an example of what I expect:

     Name: Chris
     Decimal: 67, 104, 114, 105, 115
     Hex: 43, 68, 72, 69, 73
     Binary: 0100,0011 0110,1000 0111,0010 0110,1001 0111,0011
     Unicode: I chose “𝄞” (1D11E, the musical symbol treble clef) and “Å” (00C5, a capital A with ring accent)

3. Tue 11 Feb

   • Below are links to a series of images that are lossy-compressed using different quality settings. Open them in separate tabs of your browser, and then try to rate them in order from worst quality (1) to best quality (5).

     • Ropes: (A)  (B)  (C)  (D)  (E)
     • Penguin: (A)  (B)  (C)  (D)  (E)

     Submit your ratings here.  +12

4. Mon 17 Feb
   • Everyone will get  +12 points for this check-in, but I’d like you to do the following:
   • Please complete this anonymous survey
   • If you can bring a laptop to class on Wednesday 19 February, please install Logisim on it before then.
5. Tue 25 Feb
   • Review notes on Boolean logic
   • Take the online quiz on Blackboard about Boolean logic gates  +12 (best of 2 timed attempts)
     • Connect to our course on Blackboard, then look for “Check-ins” in the sidebar.
6. Tue 4 Mar
   • To help you with the sorting exercise, please watch these videos:  +12
     • Selection sort (Harvard CS50) (up to 5:30)
     • Getting sorted (Computerphile) (up to 6:20)
7. Sun 23 Mar
   • If you can bring a laptop to class this week (March 24, 26), please install Python on it before then.  +12
8. Tue 1 Apr
   • Submit (by email) a Python program for the Exercises section at the bottom of the Python notes page.  +6
9. Sun 6 Apr
   • We’ll skip this check-in.  +12
10. Tue 15 Apr
    • We’ll skip this check-in.  +12
11. Tue 22 Apr
    • We’ll skip this check-in.  +12
12. Tue 29 Apr

    • Please watch the following videos about encryption (14 minutes total for the 4 required ones.)  +12

      • Caesar Cipher & Frequency Analysis (2:36)

      • Polyalphabetic cipher (2:26)

      • One-time pad (2:55)

      • Public-key – Diffie-Helman (5:23)

      • Public-Key – RSA (Optional, 16:30)