Syllabus



Logistics

Time and Location
TR 8:00 AM-9:15 AM in 75 Shannon, Room 203
Faculty Info
Shelby Kimmel
Please call me "Professor Kimmel" or "Professor"
Pronouns: she/her
Office: 75 Shannon, Room 210
skimmel [at] middlebury (dot) edu
Office Hours
Location: 75 Shannon, Room 210
Please come to office hours with specific questions, comments, or concerns
  • Drop-in: Monday 10-11, Tuesday 1:30-2:30, Wednesday 3-4, Thursday 3-4
  • Appointment (in person or video conference): go/KimmelHours, frequently Thursday 11-12. When you sign up please specify whether you prefer in person (at my office) or video conference (Google Hangouts).
  • If Drop-in and Appointment hours don't work with your schedule and you would like to meet, please send me an e-mail.
Communication
  • I will e-mail you for urgent matters. You can always feel free to e-mail me, but I will not answer coding questions or problem set questions via e-mail, except for logistical or typo questions.
  • I will keep the Calendar up-to-date with assignments and lecture notes.
Peer Tutors
CS Tutoring Site
Canvas Site
Canvas Site
Department Wiki
Department Wiki

Goals

Learning Goals are broad and somewhat immeasurable goals that I want you to achieve by the end of the course. Learning Objectives are concrete, measurable learning outcomes that will help you to reach the Learning Goals.

Learning Goals

Learning Objectives


Environment

My goal is to create a classroom environment that is equitable, inclusive, and welcoming, in order to promote learning for all students. If aspects of this course create a barrier to inclusion, please let me know, as I am constantly working to create a more equitable environment. I do not tolerate discrimination.

Names/Pronouns

I will honor your request to address you using your preferred name and pronoun. I will collect this information in the first week of class, but feel free to communicate this information to me through e-mail at any time.

Academic Accommodations

Students with documented disabilities who believe that they may need accommodations in this class are encouraged to contact me as early in the semester as possible to ensure that such accommodations are implemented in a timely fashion. Assistance is available to eligible students through Student Accessibility Services. Please contact the ADA Coordinator Jodi Litchfield, who can be reached at litchfie@middlebury.edu or 802-443-5936 for more information. All discussions will remain confidential.

Title IX

You deserve a community free from discrimination, sexual harassment, sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, and stalking. If you experience or know of a Title IX violation, you have many options for support and/or reporting; see go/titleIX. Note that I am a mandatory reporter.


Learning

Learning happens when you develop new neural pathways. You do this by repeatedly practicing new skills and applying those skills in novel situations (transfer). Thus, my role is to facilitate your learning by providing guided practice with feedback. I expect you to be an active participant in your learning and to recognize where you need additional practice or guidance, and to seek it out by coming to office hours, or using additional resources, e.g. these textbooks. I also expect you to manage your time to foster learning: it takes repeated practice over several days or weeks to build new neural connections, and last minute cramming, or starting the problem set the day before it is due, is not conducive to long-term learning.

Based on your past learning experiences, you may already have the neural pathways in place to quickly learn certain topics, while you may have to work harder on others. Students come into this class with a wide range of prior experience, and hence some students find some topics "easy" and some topics "hard." This has nothing to do with your ability to learn this material. You all have the capacity, with sufficient practice, to rewire your brains to become experts in this subject.


Honor Code

You are expected to maintain the highest level of academic integrity in this course. All work you turn in should be your own. However, collaboration on problem sets and programming assignments is not only allowed, but encouraged. If you work with another student on a problem set or programming assignment, please acknowledge that person (e.g. "I worked with xxx.") Additionally, please adhere to the following guidelines:

For problem sets, you may discuss or work on problems with others, but you should write up your solutions on your own, using your own words. However, I recommend practicing solving some problems on your own, since this is what you will have to do for quizzes and exams.

For programming assignments, spend as much time as you would like working with others to understand the project and sketch out an approach. Then, when you are ready, without the notes you used while working with others, write your own program. You may also discuss debugging approaches with a peer, but again, you should make changes to your code on your own. You may use code snippets that you find online to implement specific functionality, if you make a note in a comment about where you found the code, but you should not try to find code online that implements the full assignment.

The exams and quizzes must be entirely your own work. Exams and quizzes should be completed without any notes or other resources, unless specifically allowed for. You may not share any information about tests or quizzes with any other students, either within or outside of the course.


Technology

Technology should only be used if you have a compelling reason why it will enhance your learning. Taking notes on a laptop has been shown to lower quiz scores not only for the student using the device, but for nearby students as well (because it distracts those around you).

If technology is used inappropriately, I reserve the right to forbid its use.


Class Participation

Your participation grade is based on the quality of your group work, your attendance, and additional participation options:

Group Work

Attendance

It is important for you to attend class because of the group problem solving we do - your being in class helps your classmates to learn, just like their presence will help you to learn. Thus, your class participation grade will depend on your regular, on-time attendance. If you will have to miss a class, please let me know as early as possible; you are still responsible for the missed material. I will be happy to answer questions related to the lecture, but I will not repeat the lecture for students who missed the original.

I will use Plickers to keep attendance and for feedback, but the correctness of your Plicker responses will not affect your grade. If you lose your Plicker QR code, ask me for your number and print out another copy from the Plickers website.

Additional Participation

To get full credit for participation, you must also participate in one or more of the additional ways:

Assessments

Problem Sets

The problem sets provide you with opportunities to practice problem solving, and importantly, to figure out what you understand and where you need additional practice. The problems will not necessarily be cookie-cutter versions of the problems we do in class. Instead, you will sometimes have to transfer knowledge from a problem you've seen before to something new. The only way to develop this skill is to practice. If you need additional practice beyond the problem set, you are responsible for finding further practice problems (for example in these textbooks).

You will be graded on effort and thoughtfulness, not correctness. Each problem set will have four parts, and all parts are submitted through Canvas. I will drop your two lowest problem set scores. Please see these detailed instructions for how to submit the Rough Draft, Problem Set, and Self-Assessment.

If you are the first to find a typo in the problem set or solutions, I will give you a small bonus.

Sometimes, life happens. You can choose to not submit up to 2 problem sets (all parts) without an effect on your grade. If you turn in all problem sets, I will drop your two lowest problem set grades. You do not need to tell me when you are not turning them in. You are still responsible for all material.

If you have a regular commitment that makes it hard for you to meet one of the regular problem set deadlines, please discuss with me so we can find an alternate schedule.

Programming Assignments

There will be one programming assignment. It will be graded for correctness, readability, documentation, and style. The goal of the assignment is to gain practice using classical computers to simulate quantum computers.

Quizzes

There will be a weekly quiz for me to assess your understanding and problem solving. Additionally, studies have shown that giving these types of assessments improves learning through the "testing effect." Quizzes will usually consist of two problems, one from topics on the problem set due earlier that week, and one from earlier topics. Quizzes will be taken outside of class through Canvas. All quizzes are completely closed book/note (unless otherwise specified) and must be completed individually. I will drop your two lowest quiz scores.

Tests

The midterm will be self-scheduled. You should plan to set aside 3 hours during the exam window to take the test. If your schedule will not allow this, please let me know as soon as possible. The dates of the midterm is:

The scheduled final scheduled for:

Final self-grade

At the end of the semester, you will give yourself a final self-grade. You will provide a written justification for the grade. (I will give you a prompt.) I will meet with each of you one-on-one to discuss your responses.

Lateness

I expect all work to be handed in on time. If you are unable to meet a deadline, it is important that you get in touch with me as soon as possible. (If you plan to use one of your dropped quizzes or problem sets, you do not need to let me know.)


Grading

Your final grade will be determined as follows:


Texts

There are no required texts; lecture notes are posted on the Calendar. However, you may find the following open access textbooks useful for finding practice problems. In addition, you may find SensusAccess helpful, a service which converts pdfs into mp3 or ebook format.

The following e-books are available through the Middlebury library: Resources By Topic:
Topic Location(s)
Single Qubits, Cryptography
  • GI 2
  • FI 1
  • GCE 2, 11 (from page 243)
Multiple Qubits (tensors product and entanglement)
  • GI 3
  • GCE 4
Teleportation
  • GI 5.3.2
  • FI 6.4
  • GCE from page 226
Quantum Gates and Circuits
  • GI 5.1,5.2,5.6
  • FI 3.1,3.2.1
  • GCE 8
Deutsch's Algorithm
  • GI 7.3
  • FI 3.2.2
  • GCE from page 203
Period Finding Algorithm
  • GI 8
  • FI 4.3.2
Search
  • GI 9.1
  • FI 4.4
  • GCE from page 218
Quantum Error Correction
  • GI 11.1
  • GCE from page 272
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.