Applications Programming --- Lab 1

Objective:

• Get familiar with your computer
• Get familiar with applications on your computer
• Get familiar with extracting data from information
• Start to use Excel to store and format data

References:

• Introduction
• Data

Tasks:

If you are using lab computer (which runs Windows):

• Understand the difference between C: drive and U: drive;
• Understand the security issues when you use computer;
• Find the computer information
  Click the start button at the bottom left corner, then click on the "Control Panel". Then, in the opened control panel window, find and click the "System" icon. You should see:
  "View basic information about your computer", including Windows (OS) edition, Processor, and Installed memory (RAM), System type (whether you are using 32 bit or 64 bit (more common) operating system.
• Find the file management software
  File Explorer by default. Or go to the Start menu, and click on the "Computer".
• Get familar with the file system on your computer
  create a new folder to hold your CSCI 112 works in a convenient location, down load the csv file mentioned in the later task item and try to move the file to your newly created folder.
• Find a text editor
  Notepad by default
• Find your Excel information
  Find Excel, open a blank workbook, then click the "FILE" button and then the "Account" menu item. You should see the Product Information of your Excel.

If you are using your own computer with MacOS, some of the tasks would be performed differently:

• Find the computer information
  Click the apple icon at the top left corner, then click on the menu item "About This Mac". You should see:
  Operating System (such as macOS Catalina, version 10.15.6), Processor and Memory
• Find the file management software
  Finder by default
• Get familar with the file system on your computer
  create a new folder to hold your CSCI 112 works in a convenient location, down load the csv file mentioned in the later task item and try to move the file to your newly created folder.
• Find a text editor
  TextEdit by default
• Find your Excel information
  Find Excel, launch it, click on the "Excel" menu item and then the "About Microsoft Excel". You should see the version and other information of your Excel.

The rest of the tasks for which ever type of OS:

1. Learn to tell the difference between a text file and a binary file
   Text files can be opened and edited by a text edit, on any computer system. And binary files usually need special software to handle them.
2. Learn to read the meta data about a file
   On Windoes: Find the file, right click on the file and click on the "Properties" in the drop down menu.
   On MacOS: Find the file, control-click on the file and click on the "get info" item in the drop down menu.
3. Learn the connection between file extention names (types) and the applications to open the files
   In both Windows and MacOS file's meta information, there is an item called "Open(s) with", which associate an application with opening the files with the same extention name as this file.
4. Get familiar with a csv file. Download an example csv file that shows rent data of an appartment for the past 10 years.
5. Open the downloaded csv file with your Excel
   yes, both csv file and Excel file can be opened by MS Excel
6. Format Excel cells so that the data looks as shown in the following table:
   

   	Year	Inflation Rate	Monthly Rent	Yearly Rent
   1	2010	3.2%	$700.00	$8400.00
   2	2011	2.3%	$736.40	$8836.80
   3	2012	4.3%	$768.07	$9216.78
   4	2013	3.8%	$816.45	$9797.44
   5	2014	2.2%	$863.81	$10365.69
   6	2015	2.5%	$900.09	$10801.05
   7	2016	2.9%	$940.59	$11287.10
   8	2017	3.7%	$986.68	$11840.17
   9	2018	4.0%	$1042.92	$12515.05
   10	2019	2.5%	$1105.50	$13265.96

   Select the cells you want to format, right-click (on Windows) or control-click (on MacOS) on these selected cells, and then choose "Format Cells" item from the drop down menu.
   In the opened "Format Cells" window, you can choose Category of data, Number format, Alignment, etc.
7. The following paragraphs show a sample of the information about an organization's members. Extract the data from the information, design and store your data with proper types in an Excel file:

   A volunteer organization has the following members in year 2021:
   Oliver is 38 years old and joined the organization at September 9th, 2015. His occupation is elementary teacher. He is given an ID of 1379 with the organization.
   
   Marsha joined the organization at June 12th, 2018 when she was 33 years old. Her current occupation is medical doctor. She is given an ID of 2933.
   
   Robert is 42 years old and works as a constructor. He joined the organization at March 15th, 2012. His organizatin ID is 2733.
   
   Jane has the organization ID of 3282. She is 25 years old and joined the organization at May 5th, 2019. She worked as a theatre technician.
   
   

   You can expect more descriptions containing similar information about the organization's other members.

There is a weekly assignment 1 following this lab.