Grading and Assessment

Grading

We expect the median course grade to be a 3.5.

• Midterm Exam: 25%

• Final Exam: 35%

• Section Participation: 5%

• Homework: 34%

  • Homework 0 is significantly shorter than the other assignments, and it will be worth about half as much as the other assignments. The rest of the homeworks will be equally weighted.

• Course Stewardship: 1%

  • We appreciate and recognize the time and effort required from students in order to create a positive classroom environment. This includes, but is not limited to: participation during lecture + section, giving feedback via our mid-quarter survey and course evaluations, and participating on Ed by asking and answering questions.

Regrading Policy

If grading mistakes occur, students are encouraged to bring them to the attention of the course staff. To do so, request a regrade in Gradescope.

• Regrade requests must be submitted within one week of when the grades are initially posted. We will not respond to regrade requests after this.

• Deductions are applied consistently to all students using a pre-written rubric. As a result, we will generally not change the amount of points deducted for an error due to a regrade request, because this would result in the deduction being inconsistently applied across the class.

• When you request a regrade, the TA will carefully review your submission and the rubric, making changes to the original grade as required. Note that the grade may go up or down as a result.

• If students wish to fix an inconsistency between the grading of two assignments that had similar answers, both students must request a regrade. The staff will then determine whether the appropriate correction is to add points to the student who lost them or to remove points to the student who received more credit. 

Challenge Problems

• “Challenge problems” are designed to have little (but some) impact on your grade whether you do them or not.

• Challenge problems provide an opportunity to work on something interesting and optional.

• Challenge problems will typically allow you to get approximately 5% of additional credit on an assignment, yet they will typically be much more difficult than this credit amount suggests.

• You should only attempt a challenge problem after finishing the rest of an assignment.

• Challenge problems may be less carefully specified and less carefully calibrated for how difficult/time consuming they are.

Section Policy

Section is an opportunity to practice course material without being graded on correctness, which is crucial for learning new material. Section is worth 5% of your course grade, but it will be graded based on effort and completion, not correctness. Section attendance is expected. You may go to any section. If you miss section, you may complete the section assignment independently and email your solutions to your section TAs by 6:00pm on the day of section.

There will also be practice exam questions during each section. These will be submitted on Gradescope, both for students who attend section in person and for those who are completing the section material independently.

Exam Policy

You are permitted to bring one page (standard 8.5 x 11 size) of notes to each exam. You must prepare your own notesheet and it must be handwritten. We will collect the notesheets at the end of the exam.