Terms 2-3, Deep Springs College, Prof. Brian Hill
Four subjects will emerge:
There is a rich variety of background needed to deeply understand these subjects. Our classes will have a mix of developing the needed background and programming the Hewlett-Packard 25. In other words, we will constantly mix theory with concrete and pragmatic considerations.
The subjects are influenced by what Hewlett-Packard considered to be the HP-25’s target market and by the capabilities of the calculator. This peculiar combination of constraints means that we will be taking a tour of a wide variety of subjects that mattered to practicing scientists and engineers in the mid-1970s. These subjects matter just as much today.
Detailed daily schedules will be kept retrospectively:
There will be no text to purchase for the above subjects. Instead I will be preparing handouts. I will draw from three books:
Additionally:
We will run the HP-25 app on smartphones. There is more than one developer offering these. They are inexpensive.
Five major areas:
There will be a lot of handouts. Get a three-ring binder to keep all the handouts and problem sets organized. Assignments should be on 8 1/2 x 11 paper (and not torn out from a bound notebook). Multi-page assignments should be stapled. Corrections should be erased (if done in pencil) or recopied (if done in pen).
The College’s general policies on absences and late work are applicable. There was an email from the Dean on this September 8. The policies below are consistent with that email:
Whereas missed coursework affects both your classmates and professors by lowering the thinking and understanding you bring to a given class, and interrupts the course schedule that has been set up and is adjusted on an ongoing basis with substantial care. The same is true for absences — whereas a handful of absences might be “normal” at colleges with large lectures or less serious academics, at Deep Springs we expect students to miss no classes save for legitimate health issues or emergencies requiring also missing labor and governance obligations.
For a student wishing to submit a course assignment past its required deadline, the student may request an extension on the assignment directly from the professor 48 hours in advance. Within 48 hours of the due date, the student must request an extension directly from the Dean. Exceptions will be granted by the Dean only if the student faces unforeseen and unforeseeable circumstances. A student who misses the deadline will be penalized a number of points that is roughly equivalent to a whole letter grade for each 24-hour period the assignment is late. Assignments cannot be turned in after solutions and graded assignments have been passed back, which generally happens 1-2 classes after they were turned in.