Winter 2025

Clarke

Assignment: 01
Due: Tuesday, January 21, 2025 9:00 pm
Coverage: End of Lecture 02
Language level: Beginning Student
Files to submit: [Link], [Link], [Link]
Assignment policies for this and all subsequent assignments
• The deadline for submission without penalty is stated above. More details are listed on the
course website’s assignment policies page.
• The work you submit must be entirely your own.
• Do not look up or generate either full or partial solutions on the Internet or in printed sources.
• Please comment your submissions as described in the lecture notes. Please read the course
Web page for more information how to submit your work.

Grading
• You will not receive marks for Ax (where x is 01, 02, ...) unless you have earned full
marks for A00 before the Ax due date. Assignments may be submitted as often as desired
up to the due date.
• Be sure to check your basic test results after each submission! Your basic test results will
be available shortly after you make a submission. Check it!
• If you do not get full marks on the basic tests, then your submission may not be markable by
our automated tools, and you will very likely receive a low mark for the correctness portion
of the corresponding assignment question.
• On the other hand, getting full marks on the basic tests does not guarantee your solution is
correct. It only means that you spelled the name of the function correctly and passed some
extremely trivial tests.

CS 135 — Winter 2025 Assignment 01 1

Here are the assignment questions you need to submit.

1. (60%): Functions
Computers are helpful tools in many fields of human endeavour. Below are functions that are
useful to compute, taken from a variety of areas.
Implement the function definitions below in Racket, using the names given. Place your
solutions in the file [Link].
Note that when you are asked to implement a function, it is best practice for it to be a
direct implementation, though it can be any equivalent implementation. For example, when
asked to implement (a + b), the direct implementation is (+ a b), but the implementation
(+ b a) would be a valid equivalent implementation. When implementing x2 , the direct
implementation is (sqr x), but (* x x) would also be a valid equivalent implementation.
For example, if we asked you to implement the function:
x1 + x2
mean(x1, x2) =
2
you could submit:

(define (mean x1 x2)

(define (mean x1 x2)
or: (+ (/ x1 2)
(/ (+ x1 x2) 2))
(/ x2 2)))

But the one on the left is more direct and would be the better choice.

(a) An example from geometry (Manhattan distance), write a function manhattan-distance

that computes:

manhattan-distance(x1, y1, x2, y2) = |x1 − x2| + |y1 − y2|

(Note the hyphenated name manhattan-distance. Names in Racket can have hyphens in
them for readability, unlike in some other computer languages, where manhattan-distance
would be interpreted as manhattan minus distance.
(b) An example from sports (slugging average):
A baseball batter’s slugging average is based on the number of singles s, doubles d,
triples t, home runs hr and total at bats ab:
s + 2 × d + 3 × t + 4 × hr
batter-slugging-average(s, d,t, hr, ab) =
ab
Write a function batter-slugging-average that computes the above formula.

CS 135 — Winter 2025 Assignment 01 2

 (c) Another example from geometry (surface area of right circular cone), write a function
cone-area that computes:
p
cone-area(r, h) = πr(r + h2 + r2 )

Use the built-in value pi.

(d) An example from physics (escape speed):
The speed needed by a rocket to escape a planet’s gravity is called the escape speed:
r
2GM
escape(M, r) =
r
where M is the mass of the body (e.g. planet) to escape and r is the body’s radius. G is
the gravitational constant 6.674 × 10−11 N · (m/kg)2 . This can be written in Racket as
6.674e-11. Write a function escape that computes the above formula. As part of your
solution, you should define G as a constant in Racket.
(e) An example from mathematics (the partition function):
A partition is a way of writing n as a sum of positive integers. For example 5 + 2 + 1 + 1
is a partition of 9. Mathematicians Hardy and Ramanujan developed the following
formula to approximate the number of partitions for the positive integer n:
q
1 (π 2n
3 )
partition-size-approximation(n) = √ · e
4n 3
Write a function partition-size-approximation that computes the above formula.
Refer to the documentation for the difference between the Racket functions exp and
expt.
(f) An example from finance (Black-Scholes formula), write a function d1 that computes:

d1(maturity, rate, volatility, spot-price, strike-price) =

volatility2
     
1 spot-price
√ · ln + rate + · maturity
volatility · maturity strike-price 2
2. (20%): Speed
Using appropriate units for quantities such as distance, mass, or velocity is often important for
real-world measurements. In fact, NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter crashed into Mars in 1999
because some of the programmers were assuming metric units while others were assuming
imperial units!1
In this question, you will write functions to convert between units. Place your solutions in
the file [Link]. Do not perform any “rounding”. You do not have to worry about
“divide by zero” errors.
1 [Link] p.16

CS 135 — Winter 2025 Assignment 01 3

 (a) The unit of speed most often used in physics is meters per second (m/s). A common
imperial unit of speed is miles per hour (mph). Write a function m/s->mph that consumes
a speed in the units of m/s and produces the same speed in units of mph. You must
use the fact that one mile is exactly 1609.344 meters. Define a constant to help with
the conversion. As a good test case, you should ensure that your function produces
3,600 (the number of seconds in an hour) when applied to 1609.344 (1 mile expressed
in meters).
Reminder: Racket knows how to interpret simple fractions, so 1/3 is the same as
(/ 1 3). You can use this to your advantage when writing test cases.
(b) A more unusual unit of speed is Smoots per millifortnight (S/m f n). You must use the
facts that one Smoot2 is exactly 1.7018m and one millifortnight3 is exactly 1209.6s. De-
fine a constant, or constants, to help with the conversion. Write a function mph->s/mfn
that consumes a speed in units of mph and produces the same speed in units of S/m f n.
As a good test case, you should ensure that your function produces 317 1249 532224
1675 (i.e. 1675 )
when it is called with 1.

3. (20%): Jeopardy!
The game show Jeopardy! has three contestants who answer trivia questions. Each question
has a monitary value. If the contestant answers the question correctly, the monitary value is
added to their total. If they answer incorrectly, the value is subtracted from their total. The
total starts at $0 at the beginning of the game.
At the end of the show there is a “Final Jeopardy” question. For this question each contestant
must decide on a wager before the question is asked. An individual’s wager can be any integer
between 0 and their total (inclusive). This becomes the monitary value of the question for
that contestant that is added or subtracted from their total.
For this question, we’ll label the contestants as c1, c2 and c3. We’ll assume that all three
have totals larger than $0 and that c1’s total is larger than the total of either c2 or c3. The
built-in Racket function max may be helpful.

(a) Write a function min-wager that consumes three numbers representing the total earned
by c1, c2 and c3 (in that order). It produces the minimum that c1 must wager to assure
that he or she will have more money than either of the other two contestants, assuming
that all answer the Final Jeopardy question correctly.
For example, (min-wager 10000 7000 8000) should produce 6001 because c1 will
then have $16,001 (assuming they answer correctly) while the most either of the other
two contestants could have is $16,000.

2 [Link]
3 [Link]

CS 135 — Winter 2025 Assignment 01 4

 (b) Write a function missed-question that consumes three numbers as described for
min-wager. The function produces the amount c1 ends up with assuming (a) they use
the min-wager strategy, and (b) they answer the Final Jeopardy question incorrectly.
For example, (missed-question 10000 7000 8000) should produce 3999.

Place your solution in [Link].

This concludes the list of questions for you to submit solutions (but see the footnotes on the previous
pages as well). Don’t forget to always check the basic test results after making a submission.

CS 135 — Winter 2025 Assignment 01 5