Textbooks and Other Materials

A quick perusal of the campus store shows that there are no required textbooks for this class. However, that does not mean that there is nothing to purchase.

iClickers (Required)

This course will use iClickers in many lectures. In fact, everyone who registers in this course is expected to have an iClicker and to bring it to class every day. They are primarily intended learn how you think the lecture is going and see how well you understand what has been presented. They will be used often, and they will contribute to your participation grade. However, you will never be graded on whether the answers you submit by iClicker are “correct”. it is more of an attendance grade.

You must buy a physical iClicker. We have found the phone apps to be completely unreliable. And they cost just as much as a regular iClicker anyway (more, since you can buy a used iClicker). You can buy an iClicker at the Campus bookstore, and you should be able to use it in several of your courses over the years. If you have never used an iClicker before, then you will need to register it with Cornell (or at the very least the course). There are two ways to register your iClicker:

If you own a used iClicker, the iClicker site is currently charging a registration surcharge. The CS 1110 registration is free, so it is an option for students that are only using an iClicker for this course.

Use of someone else’s iClicker, either because you forgot yours or because they cannot be there and asked you to click theirs once or twice, is a violation of the Code of Academic Integrity and will be prosecuted.

WARNING: We do not support the REEF phone app. You must buy a physical iClicker.

In past semesters, we allowed students to use the iClicker App on their mobile phones. This was not ideal. Integrating mobile phones with in-class polls can be quite tricky, and the server went down on students a few times through the semester. However, we supported it because the app was free (as iClicker Go), making one less expense for you.

However, now iClicker charges for the use of this app. There is no point in paying for this app when you can buy a used iClicker cheaper (and we allow you to register used iClickers for free). As no one is benefiting from this app, we are no longer supporting it.

Text (Optional)

Historically, the main text for CS1110 was Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, Second Edition, by Allen B. Downey. While we still refer to this text, we have become less enamored with it over the years. It presents material in a fundamentally different order than we do in this course, and it is really only good as a supplementary reference.

Instead of requiring a textbook that you will never use, we recommend that you get the PDF or eBook, which is available free online.You can download it from Green Tree Press. If you absolutely need a paper copy, you can buy one from Amazon.

Other Python Texts

You may use any other text that you wish as a reference. While most texts will not cover the computer science material that we do, they can be good Python references. Here is a sample of conventional texts:

  • Campbell, Gries, Montojo, and Wilson, Practical Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python 3
  • Zelle, Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science, 3rd ed..
  • Guttag, Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python.