CS 142
Network Sciences
SPRING 2025

Instructor: Lenore Cowen
Cummings 323; 627-5134; cowen AT cs.tufts.edu
Office Hours: Mondays/Wednesdays, 1:30-2:30pm in Cummings 323 or by appointment.
Lectures: Mondays/Wednesdays 4:30pm-5:45pm in JCC 280.

Instructions and schedule for the final project are posted here

Piazza: We are going to experiment with Piazza for this class. You can subscribe here: https://piazza.com/tufts/fall2025/cs142 once you have the password to sign up (also being distributed by email to people enrolled in the class, or email the instructor).

Diversity, Inclusion, and Collegiality: Tufts, the Computer Science Department, and the course staff intend to create a welcoming environment in which all students feel supported and believe that their learning needs and perspectives are valued. We intend to present materials in ways that are respectful to students of any background, ethnicity, race, culture, gender, sexual orientation, or age. We welcome your suggestions on how to improve course effectiveness for yourself or others. If you have religious conflicts with class meetings or requirements, please connect with the course staff. In this class, we will encourage questions, discussions, and some assignments that involve interacting in groups. While disagreements and differing opinions can be an important part of the learning experience, we expect all students to treat each other with collegiality and respect. Please reach out to course staff if there are any issues with inter-student interactions. While we do not expect this will be necessary, please be reminded that we will, if needed, follow the steps outlined in Tufts' sexual misconduct and non-discrimination policies.

Please also be aware that Tufts faculty are "mandated reporters": if we see, hear, or learn about any kind of discrimination or sexual misconduct, we are required to report it to the university. If you would like to access confidential counseling for an issue, you can find relevant resources here.

Accomodation for Students with Disabilities: Tufts University values the diversity of our students, staff, and faculty, recognizing the important contribution each student makes to our unique community. Tufts is committed to providing equal access and support to all qualified students through the provision of reasonable accommodations, so that each student may fully participate in the Tufts experience. If you have a disability that requires reasonable accommodations, please contact the Student Accessibility Services (SAS) office at Accessibility@tufts.edu or 617-627-4539 to make an appointment with an SAS representative to determine appropriate accommodations. Please be aware that accommodations cannot be enacted retroactively, making timeliness a critical aspect for their provision. In addition to following the standard procedures, if you have a disability and would like to discuss how we can better support your learning, feel free to set up an appointment with course staff.

Academic integrity: Tufts policies on academic integrity are here. In this class, there is both a lot of group work and some assignments where you are encouraged to build on existing libraries and code. For homeworks, while you are welcome to discuss problems with others in the class in an initial brainstorming phase, when it is time to write up your assignment in code, English and math, we expect that writeup to be your own individual work. In addition, when that individual work has benefited from group discussions or brainstorming, or alternatively, from material or libraries that exist on the web, you are obligated to acknowledge and credit anyone you talked to (Robin and I discussed how to solve problem 3) or any sources you consulted or utilized (I am using the Foo library version 10 written by X, available from Y). If you work in a small group for the final project, attribution and proper credit is particularly important.

Policy on sharing. This course is designed for everyone to feel comfortable participating in discussion, asking questions, learning, and facilitating the learning of others. In order for that atmosphere to be maintained, the recordings of our conversations will only be shared with the enrolled students in the class (not posted publicly), and it is prohibited for any of us who have access to the video to share it outside the course. Similarly, I have specifically designed the syllabus, exams, handouts, and lectures for the people who are enrolled in the course this term and those may not be shared outside this course. It is against Tufts policy for anyone to share any content made available in this course including course syllabi, reading materials, problems sets, videos, handouts, and exams with anyone outside of the course without the express permission of the instructor. This especially includes any posting or sharing of videos or other recordings on publicly accessible websites or forums. Any such sharing or posting could violate copyright law or law that protects the privacy of student educational records.

Teaching Assistant: Faith Ocitti
Contact information in the private page.
TA Office Hours: TBA

The website for this class is at http://www.cs.tufts.edu/comp/142

The hws and handouts are password protected; password available in class. We thank C. Mike Pietras for his help in designing homework assignments, and past TAs Henri Schmidt and Polina Shpilker for trouble shooting and continued development.

Announcements:
Announcements will be posted here

Prerequisites: Comp 15 and Math 61. For some of the material, math 70, comp 160 and 135 and Graph Theory are helpful, but we will go over any material that overlaps those courses that we need as we need it.

Course Text: Networks, Second Edition, by Mark Newman. Oxford University Press. You can rent or buy electronic copies of the text through the Tufts Bookstore. Update: Tufts has purchased an institutional license to the electronic version of the textbook: you can access this with your Tufts credentials here:

Tentative schedule: Subject to change