I know a lot is changing right now in this and your other courses, so I wanted to give one place where you could reasonably expect to get your questions answered. If you have more questions, feel free to reach out by email or Piazza to let me know, and I can add their answers here.
While things continue to change, I want to emphasize that the guiding policy I have is to put flexibility, good humor, and the opportunity to learn above grades and formalities. It is my intent that nobody should have to worry about whether or not they will pass this course if they are meaningfully attempting all the work assigned. To that end, please let me know if you're running into an issue with being able to do this work so we can troubleshoot it together.
Here's my goal for the schedule each week:
If one of these deadlines is going to cause problems, reach out to me to let me know.
Lots! For class and office hours, I'm using Zoom; for grutoring hours, we're using Google Meet and Jamboard; for external Q&A, we're using Piazza and Slack (which you can also use to communicate with other students and organize); for hosting lecture videos, I'm using YouTube. All lecture slides, handouts, and homework files are still going to Piazza and assignments are all still due on Gradescope.
Like the old grading scheme, the new grading scheme is based on an absolute number of points. However, where the target for a perfect score for the class was 2000, it now is 1800. This breaks into: 1000 points for homework, 500 points for exams (the midterm + final), 200 points for participation activities (attendance from before, glossary entries, and lecture-based Gradescope worksheets), and 100 points for a final project describing a modern algorithm.
Like before, the letter grade for the class will be computed based on how many points total you get. 1700+ is an A, 1600-1700 is an A-, 1500-1600 is a B+, and so on, down to 800-900, which is a D.
EDITED: Close to the end of the semester, I'll send out information with your grade and ask you to let me know whether you'd like a grade or pass/no credit. You will be graded according to the policy of your home campus in general. If you don't respond to surveys requesting information about which you prefer, the default will be P/NC or your campus equivalent. Recent guidelines to unify the colleges state that a "pass" grade must be equivalent to a C or better, which requires 1100+ points in the above scheme.
There will no longer be a second midterm.
There will be a timed take-home final exam, but the contents will be short answer and multiple choice. This will be supplemented with a few-page writing assignment on a modern algorithm which you will be able to complete over multiple weeks. If you have accommodations for time for your exam, we'll manage that through the exam administration settings. If you're worried you won't be able to find a place with limited distraction during that time, reach out to me before the exam so we can compose a plan.
Participation is now worth more than it was before (200 points, or 10% of your grade). This is broken down into 20 points for completing a glossary day, 80 points for your attendance through March 3, and 100 points for completing short quizzes associated with each lecture for the remainder of the course (described in more detail under the Lecture header below).
Attendance for March 5, 10, and 12 are not factored into your participation.
The scheme above is designed to weight all of the work you completed so far at the same value it was before. By lowering the total number of points in the class by 200 points and the threshold for each letter grade by 200 points as well, my hope is to retain the value of the work you've done so far while reducing pressure in the coming month.
If you were experiencing significant issues earlier in the semester that led to a failure to submit numerous homework problems such that you are worried about passing the course, please reach out to me about possible alternatives to make up some of that work.
At present, I still anticipate having 10 total homework assignments.
I am working on ensuring that these assignments match reasonable expectations for the resources you have available (including your energy during this stressful time). My goal is to keep the same number of problems with respect to concepts, but to make those problems a little easier to intuit.
Yes! While some grutors are not able to support online grutoring hours in their new arrangements, others have graciously agreed to try out grutoring through Google Meet and Jamboard. You can get links to access these resources through the calendar on the front page of this site. I also am working out what office hour times will best help supplement this on top of office hours during historical lecture times.
You can also use Piazza to post questions, or ask around on the class Slack: hmcalgs2020sp.slack.com. If through grutoring hours, office hours, or Slack, you happen to get a hold of the answer to a question that you think others might have, please write it up on Piazza (you can even get a few homework points back doing this)!
Yes, you can and should talk to classmates about homework! As before, I'd prefer that you kept that circle to people involved with the class: grutors, fellow students, and the instructor. You'll be assigned to a group of students as a starting point for getting going on homework assignments together., but you are in no way limited to that group or required to work with them.
The collaboration policy now allows you to share materials with each other about the homework, (e.g. pictures of whiteboards, chat messages describing ideas, etc.) as long as your writeup and associated figures remain your own work. While I prefer not to, it is likely that I will start checking a little more closely than I have in the past for text similarity (which happens to sit close to my research area). Please abide by the law and spirit of the HMC honor code by not making this a big part of my job and keeping your writeup uniquely yours.
Yes and no. We'll still have homeworks with largely the same format of TeX writeups of solutions, with partial credit assigned to partial solutions. However, you should expect the "partial" bar to be a lot higher, in that any sizeable attempt at solving a problem will always get at least half credit.
The short answer is no. Regular class times will no longer be lectures. Instead, course material will be presented through a combination of videos and handouts that you'll consume outside of class time. With each lecture day will be a corresponding "worksheet" on Gradescope with a few questions. These will usually be open for ~48 hours: either Sunday 9 PM-Tuesday 9 PM or Tuesday 9 PM - Thursday 9 PM. As with worksheets, these quizzes are graded based on completion, and can be excused if extenuating circumstances will prevent you from completing work during that time.
That will vary depending on the topic. Sometimes (as with Lecture 17), I'll put up between 30 minutes and an hour of video up on my YouTube channel to watch under the class playlist, If I think the lecture is reusable from last semester, I'll use that as the basis; if not, I'll record new things on my tablet. I'll also try to link useful worksheets and, if necessary, attach sections of the textbook or from other written sources that I think do justice to the material. I may also find external videos as substitutes for me talking. (I'm much better at talking in a classroom than video production: if I can find something that explains things more cleanly in a video format than I'd be able to generate in limited time, I'd prefer to give you that.)
What used to be regular lecture time I now want to use as much as possible for face-to-face interaction via Zoom: see Piazza for the link. My goal is to spend about half an hour of each of these answering questions about the material presented in external videos, and the rest of the time talking to people about questions on homework. If you want to drop in and out of the regular Zoom call during that time, that's okay; for instance, you and people in your group may have a Google Meet group, and as you come up with a question together, one of you will rejoin Zoom to go get it answered.
I don't intend to record who attends which section time. As long as they stay similar sizes, I'm happy with you attending either lecture. I may change this if we end up very unbalanced. If you are in a time zone that will make attending class difficult, let me know and we can talk about whether an alternate time would make sense.