Mini Internal Assessment Example

In this post , we observe some code which establishes a menu driven interface and shows we can implement data processing from the menus.

This code will be demonstrated in class.

See the code below:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdbool.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <time.h>
/*
Demonstrates a 2 level menu with
a simple data processing cycle

When faced with the main menu, select 1 then 1 again to
execute the process of calculating area.


Author: Vedesh Kungebeharry
*/


//constants
const double Pi=3.14;


//global static  variables
char choice;


//function declarations
void    initialization();
void    showMainMenu();
void    showMathMenu();
void    runMainMenu();
void    runMathMenu();
void    pause();
void    exitProgram();
void    AreaOfCircleUserInteraction();
double  AreaOfCircle(double radius);

//main flow of control from process to process
int main()
{

    initialization();
    runMainMenu();
    exitProgram();

    return 0;
}


/*
*initialize all instance variables and arrays here
*
*/
void initialization()
{
    choice = '_';
}

//displays the main menu and accepts input
void runMainMenu()
{
    int sentinel=0;//used to break  out of our menu loop
    while (sentinel>=0)//loop menu here
    {
        showMainMenu();//display menu text

        choice = getch();//get a character from the input buffer

        system("@cls");// clear screen after getting input

        switch (choice)//based on the choice take the desired action
        {
            case '1':   printf("\nYou chose Option 1: Math Calculations\n");
                        runMathMenu();//displays the math sub menu and accepts input
                        break;
            case '2':   printf("\nYou chose option 2\n");
                        break;
            case '3':   printf("\nYou chose option 3\n");
                        break;
            case 'q':   printf("\nYou chose to quit\n");
                        sentinel=-1;//update the sentinel so that looping will cease
                        break;
            case 'Q':   printf("\nYou chose to quit\n");//cease if upper case
                        sentinel=-1;
                    break;
            default:
                    printf("\nYou have entered an option that is not in the menu\n");
                    break;


        }
        if(sentinel>=0)//if we have continued regular execution , continue looping
        {
            printf("\nreturning to main menu in 2 seconds...\n");
            pause(2000);
            system("@cls");
        }

    }



}

//shows and accepts input for the math sub menu
void runMathMenu()
{
    int sentinel=0;
    while (sentinel>=0)
    {
        showMathMenu();//show options

        choice = getch();//get a character from the input buffer

        system("@cls");

        switch (choice)
        {
            case '1':   printf("\nYou chose option 1: Area\n");
                        AreaOfCircleUserInteraction();//start interaction to calculate area
                        break;
            case '2':   printf("\nYou chose option 2\n");
                        break;
            case 'r':   printf("\nYou chose to quit\n");
                        sentinel=-1;
                        break;
            case 'R':   printf("\nYou chose to quit\n");
                        sentinel=-1;
                        break;
            default:
                    printf("\nYou have entered an option that is not in the menu\n");
                    break;


        }
        printf("\nreturning to Math menu in 2 seconds...\n");
        pause(2000);
        system("@cls");
    }

}

void showMainMenu()
{
    printf("1. Option 1: Math Calculations\n");
    printf("2. Option 2\n");
    printf("3. Option 3\n");
    printf("Q. Quit    \n");
    printf("\nPlease select an option...");
}

void showMathMenu()
{
    printf("1. Area of circle\n");
    printf("2. Volume of Circle\n");
    printf("R. Return to main menu    \n");
    printf("\nPlease select an option...");
}

//pauses execution
void pause(int milliseconds)
{
    clock_t now = clock();
    while(clock()< now+milliseconds);

}
//prompt user to enter data and output results
void AreaOfCircleUserInteraction()
{
    double area,radius=-999.99;
    printf("Enter the radius...");
    scanf(" %lf", &radius);
    area=AreaOfCircle(radius);
    printf("\nThe area of a circle of radius \t%.2lf is \t%.2lf\n\n",radius,area);
    system("pause");

}
//helper function to calculate area
double AreaOfCircle(double radius)
{
    return Pi*radius*radius;
}
//exit gracefully
void exitProgram()
{
    printf("\nExiting program in 2 seconds...\n");
    pause(2000);

}



Updates to this post

28th Sept 2023 – changed “This code will be demonstrated in class tomorrow.” to “This code will be demonstrated in class.”

© 2019  Vedesh Kungebeharry. All rights reserved. 

What is a problem?

A problem is defined as the “difference between the current state of things and a desired future state in an information processing system”

Example


CURRENT STATE:

A score taker for a football game could be using a paper based information processing system consisting of

Hardware:

  • A notebook
  • Pencil

Data management:

  • Ruled lines forming a table in the notebook,
  • Columns for scores, fouls, Events etc
  • Calculations such as cumulative minutes or penalties in the game (these are calculated mentally by the score taker and recorded during the progression of the game.)

Inputs :

  • Goals scored,
  • Scorer’s name
  • Team scoring


  • Fouls
  •  Attacking player name , victim name
  • Minute of foul

Outputs (to officials and score board operator):

  • Scores
  • Fouls
  • Minutes

Desired future state:

Input:

  • Scores along with player’s Number entered manually
  • Fouls with attacker and victim names number manually via keyboard

Processing:

  • Store player’s names from looking up numbers
  • Automatically timestamp goals and fouls

Output:

  • Statistics directly to website and scoreboard.

© 2019  Vedesh Kungebeharry. All rights reserved.

The Importance of algorithms

In our discussion, we consider well defined precise algorithms (in flowcharts or pseudocode) as compared with narrative algorithms.

Some of the reasons why algorithms are beneficial or important to the problem solving process are:

  1. Algorithms serve as a blueprint for other programmers to follow

  2. When problems are complex, an algorithm’s precise structure allows for an accurate development of a solution in parts.  This documentation (the algorithm itself) is useful since it is difficult for  the problem solver to remember many sub-processes , procedures and inputs/outputs to the problem.

  3. Because algorithms are intended for a computer system and programming language, it allows us to design for that particular programming language’s structure and for efficiency ,given    the limitations of system resources.

    For example, an algorithm which processes DNA sequence information for matching DNA strands together (see Longest common sub sequence) can be developed strictly for solving the problem without considering system resources.   In this case the algorithm still resembles programming language. 

    Usually in this type of general solution, array sizes are allowed to be very large or of infinite size. If memory becomes a constraint, we can now modify the algorithm to use say, array sizes at a maximum of  1000 to allow for the intended program to run within the limitation of our system resources.

  4. Algorithms are easily testable when using dry runs and trace tables.

© 2019  Vedesh Kungebeharry. All rights reserved.

Decimal to binary

Task: Create an algorithm which accepts a decimal integer and outputs it’s binary equivalent.

This algorithm was designed and implemented in Flowgorithm:

See the video below for an explanation of how the algorithm works:

Decimal to binary algorithm explained

The code in C is shown below:



Copy and paste from here:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>//library needed for string operations

int main()
{
    //declare and identify integers
    int number, remainder;

    //declare, identify and initialize all strings
    char  result[20]="";
    char  remainderString[20]="";


    //initialize all other variables
    number=-1;
    remainder=-1;

    //get input
    printf("Enter a number in decimal\n");
    scanf("%d", &number);
    printf("\n");

    while (number!=0)
    {
        remainder=number%2;

            /* #Implementation_Result

                Here we implement the following:

                    result=remainder + result
            */

            //first convert the remainder to a string,
            //and store the converted data in "remainderString"
            itoa(remainder,remainderString,10);

            //add "remainderString" to "result" in that order.
            //the result of the concatenation is stored in "remainderString"
            strcat(remainderString,result);

            //now copy our data so far back to "result"
            strcpy(result,remainderString);
            /*End #Implementation_Result*/


        number=number/2;

    }

    printf("The binary Result is %s \n",result);
    return 0;
}

© 2019  Vedesh Kungebeharry. All rights reserved. 

Spreadsheet Functions

Functions

A function is a predefined formula provided by a spreadsheet application.

Functions are written in the following format:

                =FunctionName(parameter1, parameter2, …, parameterN) 

e.g

=sum(e3, d4, r5),

=max(a5,a27,b44)

=SUM(D3,D4,D5,F3:F4)

a function with a single parameter is shown below:

                =FunctionName(parameter)

e.g.

=SUM(F3:F4)  (note this is 1 parameter, a range)

=ABS(-44)

Note that a function’s  actions can be accomplished with a formula:

e.g =SUM(D3:F3) becomes =D3+E3+F3

Absolute addressing – prevents a cell’s row number or column letter from being updated when a formula is copied to another cell.

e.g          $C4        – prevents the column letter from being updated

                C$4        – prevents the Row number from being updated

                $C$4      – prevents both column letter and row number from being updated.

Secret tip!!!!!!!!  – use F4 to set a cell’s address to absolute addressing.

Class Demo

Download the excel file here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NNSBoalQj278kbyctaYaaw5M1OII8tto/view?usp=sharing

StudentRoll NoMathFrenchSpanishTotalsAverageBonus ScorePass/Fail?
Jim1105520710Work harder
Mary2752051003350Good Job
Tobias Reiper3125 17913Work harder
Mario4135523812Work harder
Bonus50%
Student Number4
  
Max Average33
Min Average7
  
# Marks < 303
Number of spanish marks entered3
Number of spanish marks Missing1

Sheet with formulas

StudentRoll NoMathFrenchSpanishTotalsAverageBonus ScorePass/Fail?
Jim11055=SUM(C3:E3)=AVERAGE(C3:E3)=(1+$B$10)*G3=IF(G3<30, “Work harder”, “Good Job”)
Mary275205=SUM(C4:E4)=AVERAGE(C4:E4)=(1+$B$10)*G4=IF(G4<30, “Work harder”, “Good Job”)
Tobias Reiper3125 =SUM(C5:E5)=AVERAGE(C5:E5)=(1+$B$10)*G5=IF(G5<30, “Work harder”, “Good Job”)
Mario41355=SUM(C6:E6)=AVERAGE(C6:E6)=(1+$B$10)*G6=IF(G6<30, “Work harder”, “Good Job”)
Bonus0.5
Student Number=COUNT(B3:B6)
  
Max Average=MAX(G3:G6)
Min Average=MIN(G3:G6)
  
# Marks < 30=COUNTIF(G3:G6, “<30”)
Number of spanish marks entered=COUNTA(E3:E6)
Number of spanish marks Missing=COUNTBLANK(E3:E6)

Homework:

Give examples of the following functions:

Sum, average, max, min , count, counta, countif , date , if 

© 2019  Vedesh Kungebeharry. All rights reserved. 

Pivot tables. [Size – 9 mb]

This post contains a gif 
image that is 
approximately 
9 MB in size.

Introduction…

You’re going to wish that your teachers started excel with a pivot table instead of teaching you formulas and filters, some of which can be complex to understand and difficult to put into practice. I guess teachers know that our absolute addressing lab class would be interrupted with , “You should’ve just used a pivot table!”

What are they and what do they do?

Pivot tables are new tables that are created from an existing table that contain custom summary features for your original table’s data.

For example, consider the following data:

Employee #NameRegion Sales Commission For January# Items Sold
1Roly BasimaAmericas18501
2Louna RebaAfrica28307
3Cole KhayriyyaCaribbean10505
4Khalida FuadCaribbean22807
5Perlie ShanelleAsia15103
6 Briscoe Benjamin Asia16001
7Misha StreetAmericas46008
8Janice KemplinCaribbean18302
9Aracelis OylerAfrica29304
10Alvina CoppolaAfrica17707

Figure 1 – Raw data (note that all data was randomly generated.)

You could quickly arrive at a summary view:

Pivot table showing a summary of our data.
Pivot table showing a summary of our data.

This takes about 20 seconds and requires no knowledge of formulas.

The proof is shown in the gif below:

Inserting a Pivot Table in less than 20 seconds.

Creating a pivot table from our data

  1. Copy and paste the data from the table above (Figure 1) into a new excel workbook. The result is shown below:

2. Select all the data that will be used to create your pivot table:

3. Click on the insert tab on the ribbon, and choose Recommended Pivot Tables :

4. Choose a suggested pivot table that you’d like to insert. In this example, we chose the third one. Click “Ok” to insert the table.

5. After Clicking on “Ok” (from step 4), Excel inserts your pivot table on a new sheet. See the result below:

Resulting pivot table

Making sense of your pivot table by manipulating it’s rows, columns and values.

A demonstration of how to manipulate the pivot table in the video below:

Using a pivot table effectively.

Download the finished tutorial from the video here:

Here is a link to the Pivot table tutorials provided by Microsoft office:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AUjWnMFhnetVlmyztoESdQI4_L–y2q6

A pivot table’s purpose

A pivot table can help you to make strategic decisions based on your operational data. In our example above, we look at some sale information for the month of January (Operational Data) and create a summary (Strategic Data) to make strategic decisions.

Strategic decisions are made by the leaders of your organization (by you if you’re the leader) and affects how you approach your next set of goals.

From our example, we see that the largest commissions are paid to our sales people in the African continent who also sold the most items in January. Using that information, we may want to communicate with our sales force in Africa to determine the causes and try to apply their methods fro success in other regions.

Our assumption becomes, “Our African Sales force seems to be motivated and practice good methods in selling our products. We must investigate if this is true by comparing their methods to other regions.”

From the assumption above, we can now make our first strategic decision:

  1. Monitor sales in Africa to see if the trend continues

If we find our assumption to be true we can now make the following strategic decisions and plan:

2. Learn the best practices from our African Sales Force

3. Start a training program for our entire company scheduled to run in the month of July .

In class exercise

Describe any other scenario that can result after analyzing the pivot table from our example.

References

https://scraperwiki.com/2014/07/the-history-of-pivot-table/

Random name generators for names used in example:

https://www.behindthename.com/random/

http://listofrandomnames.com/index.cfm?generated

© 2019  Vedesh Kungebeharry. All rights reserved. 

Search engines

A search engine is website application that allows users to search for information on the world wide web.

Search engines are mainly accessed by their website address. When a user visits a search engine’s website address, they can input their search criteria (also known as a search query) so that the search engine may produce a list of website pages which contain information related to the search criteria.

e.g, a user may visit http://www.google.com and proceed to input the search criteria funny videos :

user enters the search query “funny videos”

Now they can click on the search button –

Click on the search button to perform the search.

And now you can view and visit web pages from various websites which contain related results:

search results

© 2019  Vedesh Kungebeharry. All rights reserved. 

Implementing Incomplete functions – Programming practise (Part 3)

Download this file: ProgrammingPractise 3 – Commissions and Rewards.fprg

Be sure to read the comments at the start of each function to get an idea of what needs to be implemented. I’ll be happy to answer any questions that you have in class.

See this post if for some detail on how to use the above file: https://islandclass.wordpress.com/2019/05/16/implementing-incomplete-functions-programming-practise/

© 2019  Vedesh Kungebeharry. All rights reserved.