Description
Overview
Assignment 2 introduces the concept of passing parameters to and returning
values from methods. It also requires that methods be used over and over for
different purposes.
Assignment 2 Part 2: Vancouver Island Ferry System:
The Vancouver Island Ferry System is a community based cooperative that runs two small
vessels between various points on Vancouver Island. The first vessel runs between Odgen Point
in Victoria and Parsons Point in Sooke and costs $485.00 per hour to operate. The second
vessel runs between Odgen Point in Victoria and Roberts Point in Sydney and costs $595.00
per hour to operate. Your task will be to write a program that calculates the total daily
operational hours and the gross daily operational cost for the cooperative. The input to your
program will be numbers of runs and durations extracted from the daily ferry schedule.
Although the ports are the same every day, the number of runs and their expected duration
vary due to the Pacific Westerlies (the wind!). Your contact in the cooperative states that
each run requires an additional half hour of operational time for loading and unloading.
Notes:
a) Times and trip durations should be input as 2 integer values, one representing the hours
and one representing the minutes.
b) Your program should make use of static methods wherever possible and should not
contain any redundant code.
c) One method that must be used has the following method signature:
public static double
convertHoursMinutesToDouble(int hours, int
minutes)
This method will expect that the input parameter hours contains an integer
value that represents a number of hours and the input parameter minutes
contains an integer value that represents a number of minutes. The method
will convert these two integers into one real value that represents the time
in hours. Note that the fractional part of this result will no longer represent
minutes: it will be a fraction of an hour. This real value will be returned by
the method.
Use this method at every possible opportunity. In particular, it must be used
for all departure times and trip durations.
Your program could contain the following statements (or similar) to input
time values:
System.out.print(“Input hour (24 hour clock)==> “);
int hour = stdin.nextInt();
System.out.print(“Input minutes ==>”);
int minute = stdin.nextInt();
double time = convertHoursMinutesToDouble(hours, minutes);
d) One method that must be used has the following method signature:
public static double
RouteTotalOperationalTime(Scanner input)
This method uses the Scanner class to read data in from the keyboard. That
data includes the number of runs for the route, and the duration of each
run. The method needs to calculate the sum of all the run durations and
include that extra half hour per run. The method returns this total sum.
e) Your program should be able to handle any schedule that is similar to the example, that
is, one which runs ferries between the same departure and arrival points, but could
have a varying number of runs and varying trip durations.
1. First, choose a sample daily schedule (one is provided on the course web site) and hand
calculate what the output should be. If you are not sure if your calculation is correct,
do not try to write code(!!), instead find someone (a member of the teaching team, a
colleague. . ) with whom to discuss the problem.
2. Implement and test only small portions of your design at a single time. For example, you
might start by writing the convertHoursMintuesToDouble() method and
thoroughly testing that it is correct before you go on. Then write the
RouteTotalOperationalTime() method and test it thoroughly. Run each method
with a spectrum of different parameters. Analyze the results of testing and fixing
any logic errors that are uncovered. Then choose another small part, etc.
3. When you believe the program is complete, use the correct answers that you calculated
in step 1 (above) to test your complete implementation. Then try inputting various other
values to your interactive program and see what happens!
4. Make sure that the print and println statements you use are meaningful and self
explanatory. It is better to write short but descriptive phrases than complete
sentences.
5. Examine your code. If you find that you have written methods that are almost the
same, but each has changed words, variables or values, then they should be combined
into one method that accepts different parameters. (If you are not sure about this
step ASK! It is a vital learning objective of this assignment.)
PART 2 HAND IN: Submit your code for step 5 (above) using the ‘Assignments’ link of
the course web page. Your code must be submitted before the beginning of your
scheduled lab class in the week of October 11-15, 2010. Lab sections B11 And B12
(whose labs this week fall on a statutory holiday) must submit their code before 10 am on
Tuesday, October 12.
Sample output of this program:
V A N C O U V E R I S L A N D F E R R Y S Y S T E M
Gross Operational Cost Calculation
Victoria to Sooke – Number of runs ==>7
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 45
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 47
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 50
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 51
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 51
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 50
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 50
Sooke to Victoria – Number of runs ==>7
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 35
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 35
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 34
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 32
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 30
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 30
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>0
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 30
Victoria to Sydney – Number of runs ==>4
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>1
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 15
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>1
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 20
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>1
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 20
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>1
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 20
Sydney to Victoria – Number of runs ==>4
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>1
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 5
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>1
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 8
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>1
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 5
Duration – Number Hours (24 hour clock) ==>1
Duration Minute (0-59) ==> 10
RESULTS:
Total daily operational hours: 30.216666666666665
Gross daily operational cost: 16163.916666666666
Grading – The marker will look for:
Documentation
Documentation in the implemented code must include the author’s
identification and the purpose of the program. Each group of instructions
must be preceded with a comment describing their common purpose.
Each method must be preceded with a comment describing its purpose as
well as an indication of the input to and the output from the method.
White Space and Indentation in the code and Adherence to Java naming conventions
Methods
The main method plus the convertHoursMintuesToDouble and
RouteTotalOperationalTime methods must be called repeatedly, i.e., as much as
possible passing different value in each call. (i.e., There should NOT be multiple
variations of these methods for different runs.)
Your methods should accept input parameter values and return an output value exactly
as described above.
Other suitable methods (or no other methods, if appropriate.)
Compiles and produces correct output
The code constitutes a valid Java program (i.e. compiles *and* runs without error on
the ECS 250 lab machines). It must accept input (time values) and print output (cost
info) exactly as described above.
More to Discover
Consider the complexity of a program that would calculate the daily operational time of
the fleet that is operated by the BC Ferry Corporation. Your program could easily be
expanded to do this calculation. There are, however, more efficient methods of
inputting the times, making execution less tedious.
The problem of creating a schedule is actually quite a complex problem. In the case of a
ferry corporation, there are likely to be constraints on the available times on a dock,
the availability of staff, coordination with other transportation services (like busses),
tide tables, etc. Many transportation industries, such as airlines, trucking companies,
railways, need conflict free schedules. But so do building project managers,
manufacturing business and universities. Imagine the challenge of scheduling all the
courses at this university! There are student groups, instructors, and classrooms that
must all be free of conflicts.
In general, the scheduling problem has been studied a lot and found to be very difficult
(or perhaps impossible) to solve. That is, no efficient solutions have yet been found,
even though many computer scientists has worked on the problem.
