Your final average is a weighted combination of your averages on exams, warm-up problems, homeworks, and attendance. Specifically
You are responsible for keeping an eye on your Gradescope and promptly reporting apparent errors. See the Regrade page for how to report grading and/or entry problems.
If the scores you are receiving alarm you, seek help.
There will be 3 exams and a final (four exams total). Each exam will be worth 10% and the final will be worth 20% of your final grade.
If you do better on the final than on at least one of your exams, then we will also replace your lowest exam grade with your final grade.
For example, if you get 91% on exam 1, 68% on exam 2, 75% on exam 3, and 80% on the final, then the exam portion of your grade will be: ((91 x 10) + (80 x 10) + (75 x 10) + (80 x 20))/50 = 81.2%
Do not miss any exams. If you do, please make a private post on piazza explaining your situation.
Before the first exam, familiarize yourself with the basic CS 475 exam instructions. Only the most critical parts will be explicitly included on the individual exams.
You are expected to prepare for each lecture by doing the posted readings. Basic material (e.g. basic definitions) will typically not be covered in class.
Attendance will be taken in class, this is worth 8% of your final grade. We will not take attendance on the first day of class. Additionally, you may miss 2 lectures and still receive 100% attendance credit. Beyond that, please make a private piazza post explaining your situation. Please do not come to class if you are sick! This is not about Covid - regardless of what you have, the rest of us do not want to catch it.
Weekly homework consists of a set of problems roughly covering the previous week's material. You should explain and justify your answer for every question unless otherwise specified in the problem statement.
These are worth 35% of your grade. We will drop your lowest homework grade when calculating your final grade.
The homeworks may be done individually or in pairs. We strongly encourage you to work with a partner since discussing the material will help you gain mastery of it. You can even turn in just one set of answers for you and your partner - when submitting to gradescope, please select the option to add a partner instead of simply submitting the same assignment twice. Please include both your names on the turned in homework. But make sure that you work on every problem; if you each take half the problems that is not a good way to learn the material.
You may not ask people (other than your partner) for the answers to homework questions (or minor variations of them). However, you may freely discuss general concepts with friends or on piazza. You may also get specific help from course staff e.g. at office hours or using a private post on piazza.
The homework is due 11:59pm each Monday on Gradescope.
There will be no homeworks due on the Monday immediately following an exam.
Weekly warm-up problems should be much quicker to do, they are intended to check your understanding of lecture. These will be autograded, so you will get immediate feedback. You have unlimited attempts for these.
These make up 7% of your grade. We will drop your lowest warm-up grade when calculating your final grade.
There will be a warm-up every week except week 15; this includes weeks with exams.