CS 230 Fall 2006                                                Assignment 11 – Arrays - Basic                                                                     100 points

Assigned: 11/15/2006

Due: 12/01/2006 at the start of class (Note, we will have a new assignment for lab on 11/30 (and no lab on 11/23 due to Thanksgiving)

Pre-Lab (Do Before Lab):  Bring a new disk. Plan out tasks, objects, and events needed for program. Plan out major pseudocode

Main Assignment:

You have been recently hired by a professor to write a program to figure out curves for tests. The scores from the test should be read in from a file (scores.txt) and displayed in a rich text box. These scores should be put into an array of scores as they are read in, since we will need to go back and revisit those scores.  Determine the high score and the low score. Calculate the “middle mean” for the scores – the middle mean is the mean (average) of the numbers other than high and low number (all other numbers). Calculate a curve (in this simplified version of the program, the curve will be enough points added to raise the middle mean to 80 – but make sure you NEVER subtract points!) . Once the curve has been determined, add it to all student scores, and display the updated scores in a rich text box. Also, display the middle mean, high and low scores (all before the curve) and curve in read-only text boxes as well. There is little interface capability needed – just provide an exit capability.   

Hand in:

• Floppy disk with an entire folder containing all files related to the project.  Please set the name of the project to something other than the default name (WindowsApplication1, …). It is helpful if you use a name that identifies you as well as the assignment (e.g. yourlastname assignment 11). Use Windows to copy the whole folder, instead of trying to “Save As”.
• Print out of your code.

Miscellaneous:

• You must turn on Option Strict and Option Explicit
• You must use the filename specified above, so I can easily test a bunch of different programs in a row. A sample file is provided on the assignments page of my www site. In the spirit of thorough testing of programs, you should try other versions of files as well.
• You cannot add points to the students’ scores until all students have been processed; that is one reason why we NEED arrays for this assignment.
• For simplicity in your first array assignment, we will not have any student names at all; the scores file will only contain scores, no names.
• For simplicity, we will assume that all scores come from an accurate source, so will be in the correct range (0-100) (if there had been a problem, we would have to just ignore that score since we cannot re-prompt anybody fro a correction)
• The array should be large enough to handle a large class (100 students)
• Almost all of the work will be done in the form load event handling procedure – and in any independent procedures or functions called by it. We have covered procedures and functions – I recommend that you continue to use them (e.g. extracting a line of text from the text in a file).

· MAKE SURE YOUR PROGRAM WORKS!

· Put YOUR NAME, e-mail address, date, and purpose of the program in comments at the beginning of the program.

· You MUST include comments that explain your program in order to get full credit.

· Remember to use meaningful variable names, and indent to show the structure of the program (VB usually does this correctly).

· Put your name on the form as a Label or as part of the form title.

· Try to use good user interface design. In this case, the user has little to do, but the user still needs to know what the answers/ results mean.