Advanced Computer Skills (ACS) course

Lecturer: Dr. Paolo Coletti Paolo.Colettiunibz.it Office E203
Teaching assistant: Dott. Damiano Somenzi Damiano.Somenziunibz.it

Website: www.paolocoletti.it/advancedcomputer

Course

ACS course presentation A.Y. 2011/12.
ACS syllabus A.Y. 2011/12.

Prerequisites

In order to correctly follow this course each student is required previous knowledge on these topics:

• Computer science and Information Processing course. The whole content of this course is taken for granted in ACS course and no questions will be answered. Moreover you will not be helped with file handling during the course or exercises and especially you will not be helped during the exam.
• Statistics A course. From this course it is important to have a clear idea of what these statistical instruments mean and how they are used: mean, median, standard deviation, correlation, histogram, boxplot, contingency table, distribution, regression model. Their theory will not be explicitely asked at the exam, however they will be asked and used during ACS course.

Course content

• Visual Basic for Applications. In this part we will see how to build functions and programs.
• SPSS - Statistical Package for Social Science. In this part we will see some aspects of SPSS, namely data entry, data handling, and data checking, basic data analysis, regression models and statistical tests.

Organization

Prof. Coletti is in charge of:

• Visual Basic algorithms (approximately 12 hours in a standard classrooms),
• SPSS theory and exercises (approximately 18 hours in lab A518).

The teaching assistant is in charge of:

• Visual Basic for Applications exercises (approximately 24 hours in standard classroom).

Books

• Excel VBA Macro Programming (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) or Excel 2007 VBA Programming for Dummies (Chapters 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 20) or Excel VBA Programming for Dummies (Chapters 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 21) or Writing Excel Macros with VBA (Chapters 3.1-4, 4.3-5, 5.1, 5.4-5, 6.1-3, 7.1-3, 8.1-5, 16.2.3, 19.1-2)
• Statistical tests for SPSS. This book will not be asked at the exam; however, it is a good tool to take full benefit from this course
• Discovering Statistics Using SPSS (Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13.1-4, 16.1-4) or SPSS Survival Manual (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 22).

Exam

Exam is divided into two parts.

The first part is held in a standard classroom all students together and consists in VBA exercises. This part's time is 90 minutes, but may vary according to the complexity of exercises. This part is completely on paper and "closed book": the only allowed tool is this sheet with the list of VBA commands and functions, which will be given by us. No other paper or electronic help or tool is allowed.

The second part is held in computer room in turns of 25 students each. Turns will appear on this website as soon as enrolment is closed. If you have specific timetable's needs, please write an email to Prof. Coletti as soon as possible, before the timetable appears. This part consists in SPSS exercises. This part's time is 25 minutes, but may vary according to the complexity of exercises. This part is totally open books: you may use any written or electronic document (including books, previous exams with solutions, your personal handwritten or electronic notes and my slides). You may not, however, use any communication program or device.

The exam's grade consists in a weighted-average of these parts:

• written test on flowchart and Visual Basic for Applications (60% of the final grade);
• practical test on SPSS (40% of the final grade);
• file handling errors (such as using wrong file names, producing not required files or directory, submitting several copies of the same file) count negatively towards the final grade.

It is a good idea to practice with previous exams that you find below.

Differences from A.Y. 2010/11

Please, if you followed the course in A.Y. 2010/11 take note of these important differences.

• relational databases and Access have been removed from the course, even though their knowledge is taken for granted since they are part of Computer Science and Information Processing's course
• VBA now has more lessons, examples in class and exercises, therefore this exam's part will be slightly more complex
• there is no more a minimum in each exercise in orde to pass the exam, you just need a weighted grade of at least 18.

Study resources

Exam

Do not contact me before the exam's correction for your exam's result!
While I fully understand your concerns about the exam's grade, I cannot accept any contact before your exam is corrected. Therefore, to avoid possible unclear emails arriving to me before the exam and especially between the exam and its correction, any email with the following content will be entirely ignored (also any other content of the email will be ignored):
- telling me how many exams are missing or that you have to graduate or to go to other universities/jobs
- telling me that you are worried about the exam's result
- asking for an appointment, or coming to my office, without motivations not related to the exam
- asking for hints on your grade or to see your exam before it is corrected
- asking me to correct your exam before the others'.
I will have report to the Dean any ambiguous request. According to art. 7 of exams regulations I will give the results to the secretary not later two weeks after the exam, usually much earlier and I will not accept any request of anticipated corrections.
You obviously can, and are invited to, come to me to look at your exam's errors after grades are officially communicated.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Where can I get Windows, Word, Excel, Access, Acrobat, SPSS, IZArc?
A: You can download IzArc from www.izarc.org for free. For Windows Vista Enterprise Multilanguage, Office 2010 and SPSS you should open a ticket on https://support.unibz.it and fix an appointment with the network administrators: they will give you the installation disks and you have the right to install these programs on your notebook. Remember to select also Access when you install Office. Adobe Acrobat licence is unfortunately not available, but to produce and protect PDF files you can install alternative free programs such as PDFCreator http://www.pdfforge.org/products/pdfcreator .

Q: How can I have Windows, Office, SPSS in English?
A: For Windows Vista, if you have installed the university version Control Panel -> Click, Language and Region -> Change Display Language. If you instead have your own version, probably you have a single language version and you may not change the language.
For Office, if you have installed the university version, in the Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Office -> Microsoft Office Tools -> Microsoft Office 2007 Language Settings. If you instead have your own version, depending on the version you may or may not have this tool.
For PASW 18 or SPSS 17 you can change the language inside the program Edit -> Options -> General.

Q: May I take the exam before taking the Computer Science exam?
A: You may, but beware: Statistics and Computer Science are prerequisites for this course, so you will have serious problems during the exam if your knowledge in these subjects is not enough. Unfortunately I see many people wrongly believing to have enough knowledges in Computer Science (especially on file handling) and consequently there are several exams with mistakes which could be easily avoided.

Q: May I fix an appointment to talk with you?
A: I have office hours explicitely dedicated to this task, which I try to scatter evenly during the semester with a higher frequency before exams. Try to write an email to me and, if I still have some hours left (in some months I might be entirely absent), I will fix it in agreement with you. In any case all the office hours are open to everybody, I do not fix personal appointments. Obviously you may always ask me questions via email (please, state your problem clearly).

Q: When will the next exam be? Can you give me a hint on the exam's date because I have to catch a plane? Can you move the exam's date? Can you fix the exam's date on the week I suggest?
A: Please stop writing me emails on this topic. Following a request from the students (in A.Y. 2009/10) exam's dates are decided by the secretariat with the agreement of students' representatives. Therefore I do not know the exam's date it until it is officially published on the university online calendar and I have no power to move it.

Q: What if I may not enrol online for technical or administrative reasons?
A: Please write an email to me so I may put you in some turns. In any case you must ask the secretary what to do, since not enrolled students may not attend the exam.

Q: May I do the exam with my computer?
A: Yes. But beware: (1) you must be able to navigate the Internet and to enter directory \\ubz01fst\Courses\Course_Coletti (an alternative can be being able to navigate the Internet and producing a CD). Do not wait for the day before the exam to check it. (2) You are responsible for your different programs' versions and configurations and for the absence on your computer of specific programs. In particular, check that you are able to produce PDF files. (3) If you use another operative system, you are responsible if your files do not open correctly on my Windows Vista.

Q: May I do the exam using Windows in a different language?
A: Yes, sure.

Q: Will the exam be "open books"?
A: The written part is "closed book": the only allowed tool is this sheet with the list of VBA commands and functions, which will be given by us. No other paper or electronic help or tool is allowed. Practical part is instead totally open books: you may use any written or electronic document (including books, previous exams with solutions, your personal handwritten or electronic notes and my slides). You may not, however, use any communication program or device.

Q: Will the exam be similar to the previous ones?
A: Sure, but every year I add the new topics and do not ask topics which were removed from the syllabus.

Q: I lost a file during the practical exam because I did not save it correctly. What may you do?
A: Absolutely nothing. With time spent on exercises you should know the unreliability level of your programs, and how often you have to save.

Q: My files were not copied correctly at the end of the practical exam. What may I do?
A: Checking that the copy is correct, and practicing file copy even during the exam, is your task and is official prerequisite for this course.

Previous exams

Q: Why cannot I read SPSS output files .spo? Why are there extra PDF files?
A: SPSS changes version every year. Some output files, expecially those with extension .spo, cannot be opened by the new SPSS versions and new output files cannot be opened by old SPSS versions. Therefore, for every solution I usually either provide the output in the latest format or I provide a pdf file containing the output, in case your SPSS is not able to open the output file correctly. Obviously you do not need to do the same at the exam, unless specifically instructed to produce pdf files.

Q: I cannot produce the same graph/output that you have in your output file.
A: Probably your SPSS version is different from the version that has been used to produce that file. The important thing is that you are able to fulfill all the requests on the exam's text, producing an identical result is not important. For non parametric tests, from PASW 18 the output is different.

This page is maintained by Paolo Coletti.

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