CMSC 23710/33710
Scientific Visualization, Winter 2015

Syllabus

Prerequisites

Grading and Assignments

• 4% each: 5 homeworks (completed individually). First one due Monday of second week, after that due Thursdays.
• 11% each: 5 projects (completed individually or in pairs). Due Thursdays, except Project 5, due Tuesday of finals week (March 17).
• 15%: In-class final exam (Tuesday March 10). You may bring a single (double-sided) letter-size page of hand-written notes.
• 10%: In-lab practical exam (completed individually, Monday March 2). Tests ability to write and run basic programs similar to those from previous HWs and Projects.

Late Policy

If you can't finish something on time, it is far better to finish it in some form, as soon as possible, rather than being a perfectionist and taking much longer. You don't want to have a zero grade for any assignment.

In addition, each student is allotted three 24-hour extensions (“late-chips”), to be applied to any homework or programming project, except the first homework and the first project (this speeds their grading, to help you make an informed decision about staying in the class). You can't use multiple late-chips for a single assignment. In the case of two students working in a pair for a project, both students use their extension at the same time. You must request the extension before the assignment deadline, via the work-group server. Exceptional circumstances may warrant additional consideration, at the instructor's discretion (post a private question in the per-assignment folder on Piazza). It is hard to be generous with a student panicking near the deadline about a situation that could have been anticipated earlier.

Communication and Resources

• Lectures: Come to class; you'll learn something! PDFs of slides will be available, but this won't include material on the board, or any summary of in-class discussions.
• There is no required textbook. There will be readings from papers in the visualization literature, from the instructor's "Foundations of Scientific Visualization" notes, and from various book chapters.
• The class web page at http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~glk/class/scivis/ will have information about homeworks, projects, and readings.
• Announcements to the class will generally be sent via the class Piazza page at http://piazza.com/uchicago/winter2015/scivis2015/home. Questions about assignments should also be posted on Piazza. The professor will make an effort to make sure everyone registered is enrolled on Piazza before the first class. If you add the class after that, you will have to make sure to enroll yourself at http://piazza.com/uchicago/winter2015/scivis2015.
• Email and mailing lists:
  • Email to students individually will be addressed to their CNetID@uchicago.edu address. Also, this address will be subscribed to the class mailing list automatically, based on class enrollment. Class-related announcements will sometimes go out on this list. Note the list archives to make sure you haven't missed anything. The authentication for your list membership is the random character password within the initial "Welcome to the Scivis-2015 mailing list!" message.
  • Question should be asked on Piazza, so that everyone can benefit from seeing the answer, though private questions are also possible. If you must email the professor or TAs, please write only to the scivis-2015-teach mailing list. This address provides a uniform and archived way of reaching the entire teaching staff. If you are writing from an address other than CNetID@uchicago.edu, please identify yourself (at the beginning of the message, or in the subject line) with your CNetID.
• The SVN for SciVis page describes how svn will be used for getting files related to the projects (such as datasets), and for handing in homework and projects. Nothing will be done on paper.
• The Software for SciVis page describes what software is required to do the programming assignments. Unlike in past offerings of this class, we will be using the Computer Science Instructional Laboratory (CSIL) Mac computers as the reference platform on which programming work is to be completed and graded.

Academic Honesty

Student interactions are an important and useful means to master course material. We recommend that you discuss the material in this class with other students, and that includes the homework and programming assignments. So what is the boundary between acceptable collaboration and academic misconduct? First, while it is acceptable to discuss homework, it is not acceptable to turn in someone else's work as your own. When the time comes to write down your answer, you should write it down yourself from your own understanding. Moreover, you should cite any material discussions, or written sources, e.g., "Note: I discussed this exercise with Jane Smith." You may feel there is a slippery slope from sanctioned discussions to cheating, but a basic principle holds: present only your ideas as yours and attribute all others.

The University's policy says less than it should regarding the culpability of those who know of misconduct by others, but do not report it. If one student "helps" another by giving them a copy of their assignment, only to have that other student copy it and turn it in, both students are culpable. If you have any questions about what is or is not proper academic conduct, please ask the instructor. (This description of Academic Honesty is derived from those of Stuart Kurtz and John Reppy).