• Graded homework and exams
• Regrade requests
• Final course grades

Attendance

Graded homeworks and exams

• All grading/regrading would be handle through gradescope.

• Homeworks/exams grades would be posted asthmatically on gradescope account.

• We will post homework solutions a few days after the submission deadline; we will post exam solutions (only for the midterms) soon after the exam ends.

Regrade requests

• 0 points: Please note that we reserve (and use) the right to give 0 points to answers we consider to be wrong, nonsense, or unreasonably long (i.e., answers that are twice longer than posted solutions, or twice longer than what would be considered reasonable length).

  Partial credit is given only to answers that are mostly correct - not to answers that a person that knows the material can extend into a correct solution.

• Regrade requests would be handle through gradescope. We recommend talking with the TA if you think your regrade request was not handled correctly. You can also post a private message on piazza.
• Regrades for homeworks will be accepted at most one week after the date of the graded homeworks being returned.
• Regrades for midterms will be accepted at most two weeks after the date of the midterm/exam being returned.
• Please check that your grades are tabulated and recorded correctly. If you notice a mistake, please post a private message to the class stuff on piazza.

• If you believe that your homework or exam has been graded unfairly, please request a regrade. Homework will be regraded by the TA; exams will be regraded by the instructor. To request a regrade, use gradescope. You need to post a convincing explanation why you think you were graded unfairly. (For example, "My answer to problem 2 is correct; see the posted solutions." or "My grade does not match the posted rubric.") Don't revise or explain your answer; we can only grade what you submitted the first time.
  
• If you submit a regrade request, your entire homework or exam will be regraded from scratch. Your grade may go down.

• We will readily admit, apologize for, and correct our mistake if you have been graded unfairly. However, please remember that "unfairly" means your grade is inconsistent with the published grading standard, or that you were graded more harshly than other people in the class, not just that you think the grading standard is too harsh. Please also keep in mind that each homework point is worth less than 0.1% of your final course grade. Frivolous regrade requests will be met with the scorn they deserve.

Final course grades

• We will determine final course grades as follows.

  1. Drop, say, 25% lowest homework problems grades. Every homework would have 3 problems, each worth 100 points. So, every student would have roughly 24-30 homework problem submissions (assuming they submit all of them). Of them, the lowest t would be dropped.
     The value t is computed as follows: It is the maximum of 6 and 25% of the homework problems that would be graded. Thus, if 27 homework problems would be graded, then t=rounded_up(27/4) = 7.

  2. Compute everyone's adjusted course average (ACA). Course work is weighted as follows:
     • 20% for homework,
     • 50%: midterms: 2 midterms * 25% for each midterm.
     • 30% for the final exam.

  3. In rare cases a few students performing exceptionally better than all the other students in a class *might* get an A+. Since A+ is equal to an A as far as GPA in the University of Illinois, this has no impact on GPA. The only guaranteed way for getting an A+ is to get a perfect score on all exams, and homeworks.

  4. Grads and undergrads are graded on the same scale.

  5. Getting an F:
     • Failing to attend 70% of the lectures.
     • Anyone with a homework average below 40% or a ACA below 30%, automatically gets an F. (You can fail in other ways too, see below.)
     • Any student with an exam average <= 25%.
     This are not the only ways to fail this class.

  6. Compute basic statistics of the distribution of the ACA. This would be NOT be done separately for grad and undergrad students. Everybody would be graded using the same grading curve.

  7. Determine letter grade cutoffs, excluding extreme outliers at both ends of the curve.
     • The median is a borderline B/B+, and each standard deviation is worth 2/3 of a letter grade. Thus, the B+/A- cutoff is 1/2 a standard deviations above the median. That is, the range that corresponds to the grade B itself has length of 1/3 of a standard deviation. Thus:
       
       B- = [Median - SD, Median- SD/2)
       B = [Median - SD/2, Median)
       B+ = [Median, Median + SD/2)
       
       ...and so on.
       (The final grading would be at least as generous as this.)
     • The above is just a guideline - the thresholds would be manipulated as the instructor see fit (within reason).

  8. Compute final letter grades from ACAs, except for the outliers from previous steps.

  9. Adjust grades (only upwards!) as the instructor sees fit.

  There is almost no extra credit in this course. There would be questions where we expect very few students to answer correctly, and one can think about them as extra credit.

  A few students that participate extensively on piazza and answer many questions correctly might get a grade bump in the end of the semester. Naturally, useless participation (i.e., providing incorrect answers, asking not so useful questions, making useless remarks, etc) would not be rewarded.

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  Note: We are grading undergrads and graduate students on the same curve

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  Last modified: Tue 2021-10-12 19:41:00 UTC 2021 by Sariel Har-Peled