D. Nixon: CS 12 > Week 8

Home (CS 12) | Assignments | Tutorials | Quizzes & Exam | Other Info

Computer Science 12


Week 8




Friday, October 28, 2011



Assignment 8 (due next week)

  1. Access assignment: Postponed to a later week.

  2. Excel assignment:

    3. Experiment with using Goal Seek with various functions. Try using GOALSEEK with each one of the financial functions (PMT, PV, FV) to simulate one of the other financial functions.

    Experiment also with using Goal Seek with various other Excel functions too. Try some examples similar to the ones in the tutorials.

    You will not be asked to upload a spreadsheet to Blackboard, but you are expected to become fluent enough in the use of Goal Seek with various functions that you can answer quiz questions about them.

  3. Blog:

    4. Create a blog on Wordpress.com. You may use either your real name or a psuedonym. Write a first blog post briefly introducing yourself and any topic that is of interest to you (limited only by Queens College's computer use policies).

    Then go to your dashboard, which will have a web address similar to username.wordpress.com/wp-admin/ (replacing "username" with your actual Wordpress username). In the left hand column, click "Appearance." You will be taken to the first of several pages of possible "themes" for your blog, in random order. (The themes are arranged in various other orders, linked on that page: "A-Z", "Popular", "Newest", "Premium", and "Friends of WP.com".) Experiment with activating several of the free themes.

    Then write a second brief blog post voicing your thoughts and feelings about three specific Wordpress themes (which you should mention by name).

    Copy and paste the URL of your blog (http://username.wordpress.com/ replacing "username" with your actual Wordpress username) into the "notes" area of the relevant page on Blackboard. (Do not submit a file.)

    A list of links to blogs by all students in this class will be posted here on this website later in the semester, so that you can post comments on each other's blogs.

  4. Practice using a command-line interface, and preparing to use a Unix system next week:

    5. Practice using the Windows Command Prompt, as instructed in this week's tutorials on the Windows Command Prompt.

    Make sure you can access the Unix site for this course, as instructed in this week's tutorials on WinSCP. (Next week you'll be uploading your website there.)

  5. Paper:

    6. Your paper will be due two weeks from now. It should be six to eight pages long, double spaced, with a font size anywhere between 12 and 18. The final version of the paper must have a table of contents at the beginning, properly formatted footnotes (which will place themselves automatically at the bottom of the relavant page), citations, a bibliography, and at least three other sections whose titles will appear in the automatically generated table of contents at the beginning. The paper must be an original paper, not plagiarized. (Warning: BlackBoard includes the ability to search automatically for possible plagiarism.)

    The paper must have the following filename:

    where "last" and "first" should be replaced by your own last name and and first name, respectively.


To all information for Week 8  |  To all homework assignments



Tutorials on Microsoft Word topics relevant to your paper

Styles for headings (needed in table of contents):

Table of contents:

Footnotes:

Citations (needed for bibliography, and should be used in footnotes):

Bibliography:

Numbered headings (optional):

General tutorials and FAQs on matters relevant to writing an academic paper:


To all information for Week 8  |  To all tutorials about Word



Tutorials on Excel topics covered this week

On Goal Seek:


To all information for Week 8  |  To all tutorials about Excel



Tutorials on miscellaneous topics covered this week

Brief introduction to the Windows Command Prompt:

Logging on to a Unix system via WinSCP:

Next week, you will be taught how to upload your HTML pages (created earlier in the semester) to a website that will display them.


To all information for Week 8  |  To all tutorials about miscellaneous topics



Study guide for next week's quiz

The October 28 quiz will be an on-paper quiz.

Thre will be an Excel spreadsheet problem, and possibly also some multiple-choice and/or fill in the blanks questions regarding Excel as well. You will be responsible for all concepts learned thus far.

There will also be some questions about Goal Seek and how it could be used with various Excel functions we've covered so far. You might first be given a picture of a spreadsheet and asked to write a formula appropriate to some problem, along with fill-in-the-blanks and/or multiple-choice questions about how Goal Seek could then be used with that formula. To be prepared for these questions, you must practice using Goal Seek with a variety of Excel functions.

As on the previous quiz, there will be some fill-in-the-blanks questions, and possibly some multiple-choice questions, on database terminology. Any of the basic database concepts covered in class will be fair game. Know the meaning of the following terms, in the context of databases: "table," "record" (a.k.a. "tuple"), "field" (a.k.a. "attribute"), "key," "foreign key," "referential integrity," "query," "form," and "report."

There will be some fill-in-the-blanks or multiple choice questions about the Windows command prompt. Be familiar with the use of the dir and cd commands to navigate a hierarchy of directories/folders, and be familiar with the use of drive letters such as C:.


To all information for Week 8  |  To all quiz and exam study guides

D. Nixon: CS 12 > Week 8