Grading

Grading

You have a considerable amount of control over the final grade you would receive in this class if you work hard, and should have a fair idea where you approximately stand at any point of time!

• Grading is done on an absolute, but adjustable scale. Anyone earning

  • 90% or more of the total number of points available will receive a grade in the A range (A+, A, A-);

  • 80% or more guarantees a grade in the B range (B+, B, B-);

  • 70% or more guarantees a grade in the C range (C+, C, C-);

  • 60% or more guarantees a D (no +/- in this range).

• At the discretion of the instructor, the grading scale may slide down (i.e., grades go higher), but it will not slide up.

• Assignment of +/- in the letter grades will be decided by the instructor based on class performance for each grade range except the A+ grade. The highest overall score in the class, and only the exceptional performances will receive the A+ grade.

Workload

• Homeworks (35%): Homework assignments (due in 7-10 days) are of two types:

  1. Written problem solving and programming assignments (25%):
     There will be 6 to 8 homework assignments in the entire semester. They are typically submitted through Gradescope and are autograded (you can try as many times as you want). Hence it is possible to get very high (full in many cases) score on these assignments if you start early and spend enough time and effort. Remember, these assignments take time to solve - start early and allocate enough time to solve these problems.

     • Late policy: Homeworks will be due at 6 pm. 

There will be 5 free late days that you can use in the entire semester (in 24 hours chunk), and maximum 1 late day per homework assignment. 

If you update the homework after the deadline, it will count toward late day or late penalty (if no late day is left).

Late penalty - after the late day or after the deadline (if no late day left) there is an automated deductions of 25% of you score of the entire homework "per day". However, we will try to post our solution after 2 days of the original deadline. You will receive no credit after the sample solution becomes available, so do not count on these additional late penalty days much.

You might find it useful to save your solutions to an online drive like Duke Box (meant for automated synchronization) to be able to access them from any machine.

Exceptions will only be made in the case of documented excuses; follow the standard university procedure for filing them - in other words, you must submit an Incapacitation Form (STINF), Religious Observance Notification Form, or Notification of Varsity Athletic Participation Form before the deadline of an assignment -- these forms will give you two days (48 hours) of extensions. These forms cannot be combined with late days (i.e., you cannot submit a STINF for an assignment after the original homework deadline has passed) and the late penalty of 25% per day won't apply after that extension, i.e., your homework won't be accepted after 48 hours of the original deadline. For any other reason, you must arrange for your academic dean to email the instructor regarding your circumstances (Dean's Excuse). You must have an email from Sudeepa granting the extension.  

Strongly suggest: Start working on homeworks right after they are released, try to finish homeworks as early as possible, and reach out to us early in office hours so that you can get enough help.

• 2. Gradiance exercises (10%):
     Gradiance is an online service pioneered by one of the authors of the textbook, Prof. Jeffrey Ullman at Stanford. One of the best features of Gradiance is that you are permitted to test yourself on a particular topic as many times as you like. You receive immediate feedback for each attempt, which avoids the shortcoming of the traditional submit-and-then-wait-for-grades assignments where one error in understanding can permeate solutions to multiple problems and does not get rectified until much later. We encourage you to continue testing on each topic until you complete the part of the assignment with a 100% score. The highest score will be recorded. The questions will be the same in every attempt, but the answer choices will be selected at random. We will drop the lowest two scores at the end.

     • Late policy: Gradiance exercises will also be due at 6 pm. There are no late days or hours for gradiance assignments (under all circumstances). It will automatically close after the deadline. The website might have occasional downtime for maintenance. Make sure to start early and finish them by the deadline.

• Project (25%): The course projects are to be done in groups of five members. All project members must be chosen from the same discussion section. More details would be posted later.

• Midterm (17%) and final (18%): Both midterm and final exams are open-book and open-notes. Final is comprehensive but may focus on materials not already covered by the midterm. There won't be any make up or late exams. If you miss the midterm, if you have a documented excuse (STINF/other forms before the exam, or Dean's excuse before/right after the exam), your midterm score will be replaced by the score you receive in the final. Warning: Historically most of the times, the final exam has been perceived harder by the students than the midterm and is comprehensive with the entire course material. 

The final exam is required. To get a valid grade in this class, you must take the final exam as scheduled by the university. No make up exams will be held. 

• Class Participation (5%): 

  1. Attendance and assignments in discussion sessions (3%): Each discussion session may have points for attendance by solving quizzes and practice problems in class . All discussion sessions have the same weight. We will drop the lowest three scores for discussion sessions to account for the days when you cannot attend it.

  2. Communication (2%): We will be regularly contacting you about some information we might need, or your progress, feedback, concerns, etc. These points are reserved for your response within the time limit provided in the emails. All are required and all have the same weights.

• Extra credit problems (2% on top of 100%): There might be 0-2 extra credit problems with each assignment, each with equal weight, which you can choose to solve to get up to 2% extra credit to boost your overall score. We will drop (ceiling of) 25% lowest scores, e.g., if there are 5 extra credit problems in the entire course, we will drop 2 lowest scores, and if there are 10 extra credit problems, we will drop 3 lowest scores.