This course will have weekly homeworks, take-home midterm, and in-class final exams that account for 25,25, 45 percent of your final grade, respectively. Each homework may require 3/4 hours of your time. The date of the final exam will be scheduled by the university. Discussions are allowed and encouraged for HWs. However, no discussion is permitted during the exam hours. In addition to these, each student should scribe the notes for two lectures. This will account for the remaining 5 percent of your final grade.
In addition to the traditional homeworks, every now and then I will suggest some "challenging" problems in the direction of the course. These problems are not mandatory. But, they will have extra credit (%5, 10%, or %15 each depending on its difficulty). We will at least have 4 or 5 of these problems and overall they can have upto 40 percent extra credit.
All the students are expected to respect Columbia University's honor code described here: http://www.college.columbia.edu/honorcode