CS/ECE 374 fa20: Homework and Exam Policies


The course staff must critically examine close to ten thousand pages of homework submissions this semester! We desperately need your help to make sure homeworks are graded and returned quickly. If you have any questions or concerns about these policies, please don't hesitate to ask in lecture, during office hours, or on Piazza.

I apologize in advance for the length of this document. Most of this stuff is obvious to almost everybody, but after teaching this class for many years, I've seen a lot of strange things.


Homework Logistics: How to submit


Form: How to write

Please make it easy for the graders to figure out what you mean in the short time they have to grade your solution. If your solutions are difficult to read or understand, you will lose points.

Be Honest

Be Clear

Be Concise


Content: What to write


No IDK points

In the past, we used to give IDK (I dont know) points. We will not do this semester as it seems to discriminate against people that know what they are doing, but are not sure about it. Naturally, if you write IDK and save us time in grading, we might give you a point for saving us time, if we feel generous.

IDK points make sense when one enforces an aggressive policies of giving zero for solutions that are not very close to being correct. Naturally, students hate such aggressive grading policies.


Regrades Regrades requests would be open for a week once grades are released (except for final exam). Regrade requests are not intended for arguing about point allocation, or whether or not the grading scale is fair.

Unfortunately, certain students think that they can tire us into giving them point that they did not earn, by keep asking for unjustified regrade requests. As such, superfluous, argumentative and repetitive regrade requests, after an appropriate warning, would results in a zero on the relevant questions - please do not waste our time.


Last modified: Mon 2020-09-14 21:09:19 UTC 2020 by Sariel Har-Peled