CS 473: Algorithms

Recent Announcements

Mon Jan 13

All solutions have been removed from the course web site.

Mon Dec 23

Final exams have been graded, and letter grades have been submitted to the registrar.

• Graded final exams are available on Gradescope. Regrade requests for the final exam can be submitted until Monday, January 13, three weeks from today.

  We will process all regrade requests (including outstanding requests from earlier assignments), and we will immediately submit an update to the registrar whenever a regrade changes a student's letter grade. On the other hand, we are unlikely to process regrade requests before January, and we reserve the right to refuse any regrade request whose successful outcome cannot change a letter grade.

• We made two adjustments to final exam scores before computing course averages. These adjustments are not recorded on Gradescope.
  • As promised, we gave everyone 1 point of extra credit on the final exam to compensate for the room change during the regular final exam.
  • Problem 3 on the regular exam (bishops) proved to be significantly more difficult than the corresponding problem on the conflict exam (rooks). We adjusted scores for problem 3 on the regular exam upward to compensate for this extra difficulty.
• We computed overall course averages and correspnding letter grades using the algorithm in the grading policies, after adjusting final exam scores as described above. In particular, we did not adjust the letter-grade cutoffs—scores on the final exam were high enough to compensate for lower-than-expected scores on Midterm 1.
• The following graph shows a distribution of total exam scores and course grades.
  • The orange curve shows overall course averages of all students, in sorted order.
  • The blue dots show the corresponding total exam score (MT! + MT2 + final) for each student, exactly as recorded in Gradescope, without final-exam adjustments. Dots further above the orange curve indicate lower homework averages.
  Note that the two plots are on different scales (with the 100% lines aligned)!
  

Thu Dec 19

• Solutions (with tentative rubrics) for the final exam are available.
• Solutions (with tentative rubrics) for the conflict final exam are available.
• Problem 6(b) was broken in both versions of the exam. Everyone will get full credit for that subproblem.
• Everyone (both exam versions) will also get 1 point of extra credit for the room change at the regular final.

Tue Dec 17

This is a last reminder that the final exam will be held tonight (Tuesday, December 17) from 7pm to 10pm in 151 Loomis (the usual lecture room).

• The exam will cover all material covered in Homework 0 through 10.
• Please read and understand the exam policies. In particular, you are allowed to bring two double-sided 8½"×11" handwritten cheat sheets to the exam. A list of useful probability definitions and inequalities will be provided with the exam, just as it was for Midterm 2 and the practice final, but we still recommend including this material in your own hand-written cheat sheets.

Wed Dec 11

• "Homework 11" solutions are available.
• Complete solutions for the practice final exam are available. A video walking through the entire exam will be available as soon as Zoom finishes processing it.

Sat Dec 7

The practice final exam is available. Jeff will walk through part of this exam on Tuesday, instead of the regular lecture. Full solutions and a video walking through the entire exam will be posted on Wednesday.

Thu Dec 5

Homework 10 solutions are available.

Wed Dec 4

“Homework 11” is available. These problems are only for practice, not for submission. We will release solutions early next week.

Tue Dec 3

Midterm 2 has been graded. We released the graded exams on Gradescope on Sunday.

• Regrade requests can be submitted on Gradescope until Sunday, December 22. (However, regrade requests submitted after December 15 may not be processed until after semester grades have been submitted, and we reserve the right to ignore late regrade requests whose successful outcome cannot change your letter grade.)
• Here is a distribution of midterm scores and predicted course grades so far.
  • For each student, we computed an overall average = 36% Homeworks 0–8 (with lowest 5 scores dropped) + 64% Midterm 1. The orange curve shows these overall averages in sorted order, omitting a small handful of students with averages below 34%. Those averages were used to compute the vertical letter-grade boundaries, following the advertised fixed cutoffs.
  • The blue dots show the corresponding total midterm scores (MT! + MT2) for each student. Dots further above the orange curve indicate students with lower homework averages. Note that the two plots are on different scales!
  • This graph only includes students who took both regualr midterms. (The conflict midterms had very similar score distributions to the regular midterms.)
  

• Notice that the current score distribution is significantly higher than the score distribution after Midterm 1. We still expect to adjust the letter grade cutoffs at the end of the semester, but specifics will depend on final overall averages.
• Please keep in mind that this is still only a rough prediction of your final course grades, based on roughly 65% of the overall work. Ingoring any future changes to the letter-grade cutoffs, past experience suggests that most students‘ final averages will be within half a letter grade of these estimates, but differences of up to a full letter grades (in either directions) are common every semester.

Fri Nov 22

Homework 9 solutions are available.

Tue Nov 19

• Homework 10 is due two weeks from today, Tuesday, December 3, at 9pm. This is the last graded homework!

• We are offering a conflict final exam. If you cannot take the regular exam on Tuesday, December 17, from 7pm to 10pm, for any of the reasons outlined in the student code, please fill out this registration form, if possible by Tuesday, December 3. (We will leave the form open until all exams are taken, to accommodate emergencies.) We will announce the date and time of the conflict exam by email to people who fill out the registration form.

  We will schedule the conflict exam to accommoate as many students as possible, if possible before the regular exam. We will only schedule conflict exams after the regular exam for students whose exam schedules make an earlier conflict exam impossible. We will email the time and location of the conflict exam to students who complete the registrsation form.

• If you have a DRES accommodation, you are welcome to take the final exam at the DRES Testing Accommodation Center on Monday or Tuesday of finals week. (If you have conflicts that make these dates impossible, please fill out the conflict registration form.) We strongly recommend scheduling your exam at TAC as soon as possible if you have not done so already.

Mon Nov 18

Homework 8 solutions are available.

Tue Nov 12

Homework 9 is due next Tuesday, November 19, at 9pm.

Wed Nov 6

Solutions for Midterm 2 are available.
Solutions for Conflict Midterm 2 are available.

Tue Nov 5

Homework 8 is due next Tuesday, November 12, at 9pm.

Fri Nov 1

Practice Midterm 2 solutions and Homework 7 solutions are available.

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Earlier announcements