Online Materials for CSCI 4446/5446:

We will be using some online materials from a MOOC offered through the Santa Fe Insitute's Complexity Explorer platform to supplement the lectures, readings, and assignments in this course. If you have not done so already, you will need to go to that webpage and register for the MOOC. It doesn't cost anything or engender any formal responsibilities to do to, BTW.

The main mechanism for this will be a couple of short videos to set you up for each of the 30 lectures this semester, together with an online quiz about each one. These quizzes will not be graded-there are solution videos online as well-but they will prepare you to absorb the in-class material more easily and to pass the ten online ``unit tests'' that are part of your grade.

The timing here is up to you; one good strategy is to watch the videos before the corresponding lecture and to use the online quizzes afterwards, to check your understanding. (If you score 100% on the quiz, there's no need to watch the quiz solution videos, but they're there for you if you need or want them.)

There are a couple of problems here and there on the unit tests that aren't applicable because our homework is different than the MOOC assignments: e.g., the question about the trapezoidal solver on unit test 6. Just skip those; I'll normalize that out of the grades.

The lecture-video mapping is listed below, as well as on the problem-set handouts. The timing for the unit tests is completely up to you. You may take them whenever you wish (any time before the final exam). Some students like to do this along the way; others have found that they're useful in studying for the final.

You do not need to do the homework assignments that are on that MOOC webpage.