CS 374A fa24: Grading Policies

If you have any questions or concerns, please ask in lecture, during office hours, or on EdStem.

Graded work

• Homeworks are graded by the entire course staff, directly within Gradescope. To keep grading consistent, each numbered problem is graded by (say) 4 graders, under the supervision of one of the TAs, using a common detailed rubric developed within Gradescope. All numbered homework problems are worth the same amount. Under normal circumstances, all homework should be graded within two weeks of submission.
• Exams are graded by the instructors and graduate TAs. Graded exams will be available via gradescope. Under normal circumstances, all exams should graded within two weeks.

Partial credit

Regrade requests

• Please check that your grades are tabulated and recorded correctly. If you notice a mistake, please use gradescope to ask for a regrade. Regrade period for homeworks/exams is one week after the grade is available.
• Please double-check the posted solutions for correctness. If any posted solution contains a serious error, all students will receive a perfect score for that problem. Yes, really.
• If you do not understand your grade on a homework or exam problem, please discuss your grade with one of the instructors or TAs during office hours. After that discussion, if you still believe that your work has been graded incorrectly, please request a regrade.
• Late regrade requests will be ignored. Homework and exam regrades can be requested within Gradescope.
• All regrade requests must include a brief written justification for the request. Good justifications include the following:
  • My answer agrees with the posted solution, but I still lost points.
  • I lost 4 points for an incorrect time analysis, but the rubric says that's only worth 2 points.
  • You took off points for missing the base case, but it's right here (right here!).
  • My answer is correct, even though it does not match the posted solution. (This happens more frequently if your answer is not even remotely similar to the "standard" solution.)
  • There is no explanation for my grade.
  • The official solution is incorrect; here's a counterexample.
  Regrade requests with poor or missing justifications will be denied.
• You will lose all points on a question if you waste our time by submitting repeatedly unjustified regrade requests.
• We can only grade what you actually submitted. You cannot get a higher grade by explaining what you meant, either in person or in writing; your original submission must stand on its own.
• If you submit a regrade request, we will regrade the submitted problem from scratch. The TAs will regrade homework problems; Instructors will regrade exam problems. Your grade may go down.
• We will readily admit, apologize for, and correct our mistakes if you have been graded unfairly. However, please remember that "unfairly" means your grade is inconsistent with the published grading rubric, or that you were graded more harshly than other students, not just that you think the rubric itself is too harsh. Please also keep in mind that each homework point is worth approximately 0.1% of your final course grade. Don't fight for each point like your life depends on it - it does not!
• You would lose points (and potentially all of them) for long and tedious solutions.

Final course grades

1. Compute raw totals from homework and exam scores. Course work is weighted as follows.
   • Homeworks is worth 28%:
     • In the following a homework problem is one of the following:
       1. A weekly problem set submitted on Prairie Learn (i.e., GPS or PL set).
          GPS = Guided Problem Set.
       2. Two weekly homework problems submitted on Gradescope.
       Thus, there are *3* homework problems every week, for 11 weeks, which gives 33 homework problems overall.
     • When calculating the homeworks contribution to final grade, we consider only the top 26 problems.
     • Specifically, we will include only the top 26 homework problems scores in computing your final grade. We expect to grade 11 homeworks, each with 3 problems. Should for some reason we would grade less homework problems, we will still use the top 26 homework problems.
     • If you submit everything, this policy is equivalent to dropping (roughly) two homework sets.
     • If you submit less than 16 homework problems then you are likely to fail unless there is an overriding excuse.
   • Exams are worth 72%: There will be two midterm exams, each worth 21% of your raw total, and a cumulative final exam worth 30% of your raw total.
   • Exceptions:
     • Forgiven midterm exams will be treated as if they did not exist; the other exams will have more weight in the final grade calculation.
     • We will not drop zero grades that result from cheating offenses.

2. Remove outliers at both ends of the curve.
   • Anyone with a raw total over 95% automatically gets an A+. This rule typically applies to the top 1–2% of the class.
   • We reserve the right to give any student meeting at least one of the following conditions an automatic F:
     • Raw total below 33%
     • Raw exam average below 25%
     • Submitted less than half of the homework problems.
     This rule typically applies to the bottom 2-3% of the class. These are not the only ways to fail!

3. Determine letter-grade cutoffs from the raw totals. Outliers are excluded from the cutoff computation to avoid unfairly skewing the curve. The median is in the middle of the B, and each standard deviation is worth one full letter grade. For example, the B+/B cutoff is 1/6 standard deviations above the mean, and the D/D– cutoff is 1/2+1+2/3=13/6 standard deviations below the mean.
4. To avoid the rat-race, we have guaranteed cutoffs, as follows:

   Min	Max	Letter Grade
   0	45	F
   45	49	D-
   49	52	D
   52	54	D+
   54	58	C-
   58	62	C
   62	66	C+
   66	72	B-
   72	75	B
   75	80	B+
   80	85	A-
   85	95	A
   95	200	A+	~ 2%

   You will be assigned the higher grade of the two proposed cutoffs (but we will try hard to make sure that the curved cutoffs would be more generous than the guaranteed cutoffs.
5. Compute final letter grades (for non-outliers).

6. Adjust grades upwards at the instructor's whim.

374B is run independently - we are not using their curve in computing the final grades. If you want to be graded according to their curve, please take section B instead of this section.

Extra credit

• Being in the top k participants on EdStem (the value of k would be small - say 5 or 10 - to be determined during final grade assignment). (As long as most of your answers are useful and correct [and add to the current discussion {i.e., don't repost others answers just to increase your count}] - a campaign of disinformation on EdStem would gain you little.)