Graded work for this course includes homework, exams, and quizzes.
We will use Illinois Compass for online grade posting.
There will be two midterm exams and one final exam, held in class, roughly 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through the term. The dates will be indicated on the Lectures page. Details and review materials will be available on the Exams page.
There will be three quizzes, containing straightforward, quick-answer questions. They will be held near the start of three lectures, between the exams. The dates will be indicated on the Lectures page.
There will be problem sets roughly every week, typically due a week from the release date.
Your homework submissions must follow the homework format guidelines and the homework style guidelines.
Some homework problems may be marked "bonus." Scores from these problems will be added to your homework average just like other problems. However, we anticipate that they are appropriate for only some of you (e.g. very difficult) and the rest of you should not feel bad if you don't do them.
In this course you are allowed to discuss homework problems with your classmates, and to work together in small groups (e.g. 2-3 people). Read the cheating and collaboration policy for details of what is and is not allowed. In particular, notice that each person in a homework group must write up and turn in their own solutions, in their own words.
The goal of homework problems is to understand the material and the goal of working in groups is to help all of you understand the material. If you merely copy someone else's solutions, you will do poorly on the exams, which are worth much more than the homeworks.
When computing final grades, we will drop your worst homework score. This is intended to cover all manner of minor reasons why you might have trouble turning in a homework on time or completing it well. These include minor illnesses, car trouble, collisions with work due for other courses, and the like. See below for our policies on excuses for major problems.
There's two sorts of homework points: regular and bonus. Bonus points may come from problems marked "bonus" or extra (above 100%) credit for exceptional solutions to normal problems. Your average is the total number of regular and bonus points you accumulated, divided by the total number of regular (non-bonus) points available. So, bonus points could increase your homework average above 100% though, in practice, they are likely to be offset by the occasional small mistakes that even A+ students make.
The basic policy is that late homeworks will not be accepted.
Our policy of dropping one homework is designed to cover the usual, common range of minor problems (e.g. minor illness). In the rare cases where you have some problem that is out of the ordinary, please come speak to us about appropriate arrangements. This would include, for example, serious illness or injury, family emergencies, major snowfall blocking roads between your home and campus, major computer systems outages in the Siebel center, and the like. We expect to hear about such issues promptly and to receive delayed work as soon as reasonably possible. Depending on the circumstances, we may ask you to provide documentation (e.g. a doctor's note).
If you have a conflict with an exam or quiz, or are too sick to reasonably take it, please contact us. Similarly, contact us if you had a major problem while taking an exam or quiz, e.g. you turned out to be sicker than you thought. Depending on the circumstances, we may offer a makeup exam, excuse you from the exam/quiz, or make a note of the issue. When we compute your final course average and letter grade, we'll make the appropriate adjustments to the grading formulas.
If you notice major problems with our schedule (e.g. our midterm conflicts with an exam in another course that many of you are taking), please tell us promptly so that we have the best chance to fix it.
If you have a disability or other special circumstance which may require special accomodations, please speak to us.
We try to grade with perfect accuracy. But, of course, we are only human. Mistakes happen and need to be corrected.
If you have a question or complaint about the way a homework or exam problem was graded, or your compass grades don't match what's written on your homeworks, contact any one of the course staff to get it straightened out. Normally, it's easiest if you find out who actually graded that problem and speak to them in person at their office hours. When this isn't possible, explain the problem on a separate piece of paper, attach it to the assignment, and give it to one of us. We want everyone happy and satisfied, but we can't do much in the couple of minutes before and after class.
We will keep track, somewhat informally, of how much and how helpfully you participated in the life of the class. In particular, we will keep track of your attendance at, and active participation in, your discussion section. We also consider participation on the newsgroup, coming to office hours, being brave enough to talk in lecture, collecting your graded work, and so forth.
Your final average is a weighted combination of your exam scores, quiz scores, and your homework average. Specifically
Because raw numerical scores are somewhat unpredictable and tend to run low in theory classes, the mapping from numerical averages to letter grades must be done by hand. In previous terms, this course has given about 20% A's, 30% B's, 30% C's, 15% D's, and 5% F's. We expect to be at least this generous. As the term progresses, we will try to keep you informed about where we think you stand in terms of letter grade.
We expect A students to have attempted many of the bonus problems and to have shown consistently strong performance and mature mathematical style.
We will give a grade of C- or above to students whose grasp of the material makes them adequately prepared to succeed in the following CS courses (CS 225 and 373).
Most F's are given to students who have effectively dropped the course midway but mysteriously never done the official paperwork. Only a small handful of students finish the full work of the course but with such a low average that we have to give them an F. Ideally, we'd like everyone either drop the course early on, or else pass it.
Since we expect most students to have good participation, it doesn't appear explicitly in our grading formula. However, we reserve the right to make small adjustments (no more than 2 percentage points) in cases of unusually good or bad participation. In practice, this would normally only affect students whose final average is very close to a letter grade boundary.
We reserve the right to make appropriate adjustments to ensure that grades are appropriate in rare and unusual circumstances, e.g. performance that gets dramatically better or worse over the course of the term, extreme mismatches between exam and homework averages, sickness affecting an exam, lost homeworks, etc. Adjustments are typically made directly to the final letter grade rather than to the numerical averages.