14:440:127 Introduction to Computers for Engineers Syllabus

Taught by Prof. Philip Brown, Fall Semester, 2016

Course Description
Welcome to Introduction to Computers for Engineers! This course is an introduction to computers,
computer programming, and their applications to different engineering fields. In this course, you will form
an understanding of how computers handle information, the fundamentals of computer programming, and
how we can use computers as a tool to solve problems. We will use MATLAB, a computer programming
language and interface, as our window into these topics.
Course Topics
Through this course, students will learn:
1. An understanding of how computers work. This will be demonstrated by an ability to:
a. Describe the central processes behind all computing
b. Describe the main strengths of computing
c. Use bits to represent more complex abstract concepts
d. Describe what a programming language is
e. Describe what a computer program is
f. Define a Turing machine
2. An understanding of the fundamentals of programming using MATLAB. This will be
demonstrated by an ability to:
a. Describe what variables are, in terms of bits and what they represent
b. Set variables in MATLAB and give them values
c. Describe the different types of information variables can represent in MATLAB
d. Modify the value of variables with arithmetic and logical operators
e. Assign values to variables via user input
f. Write program that produces a desired output
g. Use conditional statements to perform different operations depending on an input
h. Describe the uses of conditional statements
i. Use loops to repeat operations a desired amount of times
j. Define the different types of loops and describe their uses
k. Create functions that operate on a universal level
l. Describe the advantages of user-defined functions
m. Create more complex, modularized programs with multiple user-created functions
n. Use some tools that are specific to the MATLAB programming interface
3. An understanding of the broad usefulness of computer programming. This will be
demonstrated by an ability to:
a. Use programs to solve engineering problems
b. Describe some contemporary topics in computer programming and their applications
c. Explore computer programming might be used in different engineering disciplines, including
their own.

Required Materials
MATLAB
Students will have access to MATLAB through the computer labs, including the one in BEST 111
(BST-111), the location of all recitation sections. In addition to computer lab access, you can install
MATLAB r2016a on your personal computer. While this is not required, I highly recommend you do so.
Please download it from https://software.rutgers.edu/product/3326. You will need to log in with your
NetID. The product key you need is under the details tab, while the download is under the Downloads
tab. MATLAB can potentially take up 6 GB of disk space, so make sure you have room.
iClickers
Please purchase an iClicker from the bookstore or download the iClicker app on your smartphone (this
requires a subscription to use). Bring this to every lecture. I will go over how to use the iClicker during the
first lecture.
Optional Textbooks
There is no required textbook for this class, but I recommend purchasing one of two textbooks if you
want extra reference material during this course, and in your future uses of MATLAB:
1. MATLAB: A Practical Introduction to Programming, Third Edition by Stormy Attaway (ISBN
987-0-12-405876-7). This book follows the order of topics for this class very closely.
2. MATLAB for Engineers, Fourth Edition by Holly Moore (ISBN 987-0-13-348597-4). This book
was a required text for the previous version of this class. It is a useful reference, but the topics are
a little out of order from how we will cover them.
Course Website
You can access the course website through:
http://sakai.rutgers.edu
You must have your NetID set up to access this. The website will be central to this course. There you
can always find the latest version of this document, information on course dates, assignment submission
links, your assignment grades, course announcements, and a link to the course forum on Piazza. Please
make sure you have access to the course website.
Prerequisites and Requirements
There are no prerequisites to this course, and it is open to all students at Rutgers. This course is required
for all first-year engineering students. This course will assume that students know high school-level math.
Lectures
Lectures will take place Tuesday evenings in ARC 103 in the Alison Road Classroom Building.
Lectures will contain a combination of course content and active learning activities, and will be your main
source of information on material you need to know in this class. Please bring your iClicker to lecture. It
will be an integral component to how we interact during lecture sessions. Additionally, I reserve the right
to add a lecture participation component to the course grade, and lecture participation will be measured
using the iClicker. While lecture slides will be posted after lecture on Wednesday, you are advised to take

your own notes during lecture, as slides will not necessarily contain all of the relevant information from
a lecture.
Recitation, Homework, and Cody
Attendance in the weekly recitations is required. You must attend the recitation session to which you
were assigned. You must attend the entire class period. Please be prompt to your classes, and do not leave
early. Recitation instructors may reserve the right to mark you as absent in either case. All recitations are
in BST-111 at BEST Computer Labs in the BEST West Residence Hall (54 Bevier Road).
During recitations, you will receive a mini-lecture for teaching assistants before doing hands-on
MATLAB assignments. You muse upload your assignment code to Sakai Assignments-2 within 72 hours
of your recitation section.
You are responsible for verifying that your work is uploaded successfully and in the right location on
Sakai. Additionally, there will be mandatory naming requirements on many recitation assignments.
Please pay very close attention to these naming requirements, as failing to name files correctly will result
in a loss of some or all credit on an assignment. All naming and file format requirements will be posted
with assignments, and will be explained by recitation instructors.
Uploaded recitation work will count towards the recitation grade only if the student was present during
the corresponding recitation session. Please always remember to sign the attendance sheet during
recitations.
There will be homework assignments in this class that are not part of your graded work. They will be
posted first to Sakai, and then to https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/cody/. Cody is a website that
lets people (namely your instructors) post problems for other people (namely you, the students) to solve.
You can write MATLAB code, and submit an answer, and receive feedback as to whether you code was
correct. You can also communicate with others about how to solve problems. We will discuss how to use
Cody during the third weeks lecture. You are expected to spend several hours a week (e.g. 4-8 hours)
working on homework problems, and exam questions will likely draw heavily upon the homework.
Exams
There will be two exams in this class. Both exams will be closed-book. Exam 1 will cover all topics
through Recitation Assignment 6 (see the table below), and Exam 2 will be cumulative of all of the course
information. I will weight Exam 2 slightly higher than Exam 1. Exams will be distributed during recitation
sections at the BEST computer labs. You must attend your recitation section to take the exam. Bring your
RU photo ID and sign the attendance sheet at both exams.
Absences
Students who will miss or have missed a lecture should visit me or a recitation instructor in office hours
if they wish to go over any information from that weeks lecture. We will not go over the entire lectures
materials and activities with you, so please review them ahead of time and have questions ready.
In order for a recitation absence to be excused, you must follow the following procedure. Please note
that the failure to follow this procedure will result in an unexcused absence and a 0 on that recitations
assignment.
1. Contact me immediately by email explaining the reason for the absence.
2. Provide me with verifiable documentation justifying your absence.

3. Submit the same documentation to Dean Peng Songs office (ENG-B134). Once they verify it and
approve it, they will issue a letter of excuse to be sent to me (you can email it to me).
4. Send me a copy of your schedule, your recitation section number, and TAs name so that alternative
arrangements can be made. Because time is of the essence, please contact me ASAP regarding such
arrangements, even if the Deans letter is not yet available.
Students with Disabilities
Rutgers University welcomes students with disabilities to all of the Universitys educational programs.
In order to receive consideration for reasonable accommodations, a student with a disability must contact
the appropriate disability services office at the campus where they are officially enrolled, participate in an
intake interview, and provide documentation. If the documentation supports your request for reasonable
accommodations, your campus disability services office will provide you with a Letter of
Accommodations. To begin this process, please complete the registration form from the ODS web site at:
https://ods.rutgers.edu/students/registration-form
https://ods.rutgers.edu/students/documentation-guidelines
Please note that requests for exam accommodations must be submitted separately for each exam to the
ODS office at least five working days prior to the exam. Otherwise the ODS office will not process your
request.
Academic Integrity
Most submitted assignments in this class must be worked on individually. Students must accept and
adhere to the Rutgers academic integrity policy described at:
http://academicintegrity.rutgers.edu/
Students must sign an attendance sheet and bring a RU Photo ID to all recitation sections and exams.
Please note that cell phones and other wireless devices will not be allowed during exams. Students should
refrain from using electronic devices during recitations and lectures except to take notes and aid in their
class participation. Students who disrupt class with electronic devices will be warned once, and then politely
asked to leave class thereafter.
Office Hours
Both the course faculty and recitation instructors will hold office hours for this course. Any student is
welcome to come to any office hour time. We will be happy to assist you with questions about course
content, homework assignments and course logistics. All office hours are walk-in and first-come, firstserve. You do not have to attend the office hours of your recitation instructor. Please note, however, that
any questions about grades will only be answerable by me or your recitation instructor. If you have an
urgent course-related matter, please email me directly at philip.r.brown@rutgers.edu. If need be, he will
schedule an appointment with you.

Course Schedule (Tentative)

This table represents the tentative schedule of this course. As this course is in the process of redesign,
some of these details may change, but the overall structure should remain close to this:
Week #

Dates

9/6- 9/9

Lecture/Recitation
Recitation

Topic
No Recitation

Assignment #
--

Computers, Data, and Programming

Lecture
Recitation
2

9/12-9/16
Lecture
Recitation

9/19-9/23
Lecture
Recitation

9/26-9/30
Lecture

Conditional Statements, Style and

Commenting, the Turing Machine

Arrays and Loops, What is Hacking?

Matrices and Nested Loops, What are

images to a computer?

Lecture

Matrix Math vs Loops, Debugging in

MATLAB

Recitation

Exam 1 During Recitation Time

--

Lecture

Modular Programming, Debugging,

Engineering Applications 1

Arrays revisited, plotting in

MATLAB, Engineering Applications
2

Revisiting data types and loops,

Engineering Applications 3

Recitation
Lecture

Engineering Applications 4

10

Recitation

--

Lecture

No Lecture or Recitation due to

Thanksgiving

Recitation

Engineering Applications 4

10

Lecture

Final Lecture, Contemporary Topics

in Programming

--

Recitation

Exam 2 During Recitation Time

--

Lecture

No Lecture

--

Recitation
5

Variables and Operations in

MATLAB, the MATLAB Workspace,
Scripts
The structure of a program, Usercreated and built-in MATLAB
functions, inputs and outputs, Cody

10/3-10/7
Lecture
Recitation

10/10-10/14
Lecture
Recitation

10/17-10/21

10/24-10/28
Recitation

10/31-11/4
Lecture
Recitation

10

11/7-11/11
Lecture

11

12

13

14

11/14-11/18

11/21-11/25

11/28-12/2

12/5-12/9

Course Grades
The final grade in this course is based on 2 exams and work from 10 recitation assignments along
with recitation attendance:
Assignment
Exam 1
Exam 2
Recitation Work
Attendance

Grade Component
~35%
~40%
~25%
-x%

Where x is a penalty based on the number of absences. Prof. Brown reserves the right to alter grade
components slightly, as need be, but they will not be altered drastically from the above table. The number
x will scale in the following way:
Absences
1
2
3
4
5+

x value
3%
6%
12%
20%
Automatic F

Additionally, you will receive a 0 on recitation assignments when you are absent from recitation,
even if you complete them and hand them in. These penalties do not apply to excused absence. If you
were to get a 90 on each exam and 100 on all of your recitation assignments, but miss 4 recitations, you
would get a 62.5 (a D) in this class after penalties. Long story short: come to class. If you do not come to
recitation, you will not pass this class. If you do not attend lecture, you will miss valuable information for
completing the recitation assignments and passing exams. More importantly, you will miss out on learning!
Percent of Credit
90-100
86-89
80-85
75-79
65-74
55-64
0-54

Letter Grade
A
B+
B
C+
C
D
F

Note that grades will not be rounded to the closest whole number. You must get at least 90% of course
credit to get an A, 86% to get a B+, etc. We will not round 89.99 to 90. Sorry!

Section
Number
1

Recitation
Day
Monday

Recitation
Time
10:20AM

Recitation
Instructor
Prof. Brown

Recitation
Room
BST-111

Lecture
Day
Tuesday

Lecture
Time
5:00PM

Lecture Room

Monday

12:00PM

A. Abas

BST-111

Tuesday

5:00PM

ARC-103

Monday

1:40PM

A. Abas

BST-111

Tuesday

5:00PM

ARC-103

Monday

5:00PM

S. Tsianikas

BST-111

Tuesday

5:00PM

ARC-103

Tuesday

12:00PM

S. Rupavatharam

BST-111

Tuesday

5:00PM

ARC-103

Tuesday

1:40PM

H. Choi

BST-111

Tuesday

5:00PM

ARC-103

Wednesday

10:20AM

N. Cuitino

BST-111

Tuesday

5:00PM

ARC-103

Wednesday

1:40PM

R. Li

BST-111

Tuesday

5:00PM

ARC-103

Wednesday

5:00PM

I. Liberis

BST-111

Wednesday

12:00PM

ARC-103

10

Thursday

10:20AM

R. Li

BST-111

Wednesday

12:00PM

ARC-103

11

Thursday

12:00PM

N. Cuitino

BST-111

Wednesday

12:00PM

ARC-103

12

Thursday

1:40PM

H. Choi

BST-111

Wednesday

12:00PM

ARC-103

14

Friday

10:20AM

S. Tsianikas

BST-111

Wednesday

12:00PM

ARC-103

15

Friday

12:00PM

S. Rupavatharam

BST-111

Wednesday

12:00PM

ARC-103

16

Friday

1:40PM

I. Liberis

BST-111

Wednesday

12:00PM

ARC-103

ARC-103

Faculty
Prof. Philip Brown
Undergraduate Education
Email: philip.r.brown@rutgers.edu
Office Hours: Monday 3:30 - 4:30 PM, Wednesday 9:00 10:00 AM, Friday 3:30 4:30 PM
School of Engineering Building room B114A
Instructors
Ahmed Al-Abdel Abass
Hyangjoo Choi
Nico Cuitino
Ran Li
Isabel Liberis
Siddharth Rupavatharam
Stamatis Tsianikas