CS 373: Introduction to Theory of Computation
Fall 2013
Graded work for this course includes homework, exams, and quizzes.
We will use Moodle for online grade posting.
There will be two midterm exams and one final exam. The midterms for this course will be held on October 3 and October 31; see Exams page for details. The final exam date is Wednesday December 18.
During the course of the semester there will approximately 26 short quizzes, which are due at the beginning of each lecture. The quizzes will be administered using Moodle. They will contain multiple choice questions. The goal of these tests is to help you ascertain your understanding of the material. When computing the average of your quiz scores we will drop the worst 5 scores.
Problem sets will be assigned every Thursday and will be due the following Thursday at 11:59 pm. The homeworks must be deposited in the drop boxes for this class located in the basement of Siebel Center.
Your homework submissions must follow the homework format guidelines and the homework style guidelines.
In this course you are allowed to solve homework problems in groups of size at most three. If you choose to do so, the names of all the group members must be written clearly on the top of every page.
We encourage each group member to write down the solution to at least one problem in every homework. Being able to write down comprehensible mathematical solutions will be tested in the exams, and so not actively participating in the actual composition of the solution will hurt you in exams, which are worth much more than the homeworks.
When trying to solve a homework problem, it is often helpful to study solutions to other problems on the same topic, e.g. examples in the course textbook or the other texts on reserve in the library, problems covered in lecture or discussion section, and worked solutions posted on line. However, it is cheating to copy solutions to the same, or almost the same, problem. It is also dishonest to go searching (e.g. on the internet) for solutions to the assigned problems. Refer to the Campus Code regarding academic integrity.
We try to avoid assigning problems whose solutions are readily available. However, if you accidently happen upon a solution to an assigned problem, we would appreciate being told where you found it.
When computing final grades, we will drop your two worst homework scores (i.e. the two which damaged your average the most). 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.
The basic policy is that late homeworks will not be accepted.
Our policy of dropping two homeworks 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. Depending on the circumstances, we may ask you to provide documentation (e.g. a doctor's note).
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 online 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.
Your final average is a weighted combination of your exams scores, quiz scores, and your homework average. Specifically
Because raw numerical scores are somewhat unpredictable and tend to run low in theory classes, the letter grades will primarily be decided based on relative ranking within the class. The following curve has been typically used in most theory classes.
| Class Percentile | Grade |
|---|---|
| 95 | A+ |
| 85 | A |
| 80 | A- |
| 70 | B+ |
| 60 | B |
| 50 | B- |
| 40 | C+ |
| 30 | C |
| 20 | C- |
| 15 | D+ |
| 10 | D |
| 5 | D- |
| <5 | F |
We plan to be at least as generous as the above curve, except in the case of the A+ grade, for which the cut-off maybe more stringent, depending on the actual curve. As the term progresses, we will periodically provide you with relative rankings that tell you where you stand in the class.
We expect A students 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 421 and 473).
We only plan to give a handful of F's. Normally, most F's involve students who stopped even attempting to do the work, often very early in the term, but mysteriously never dropped the course. Ideally, we'd like everyone either drop the course early on, or else pass it.
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, etc.