(A long read)

There are many ways you will test your learning in this course.

Drills. After almost every (MWF) class there will be a drill exercise of 1 or 2 problems with a 36 hour deadline.
- These are individual assignments to be done with MINIMAL discussion restricted to clarification. If you are confused about how to do a drill, then it probably indicates some part of the material you didn't understand. Try to fix that by going over material, or, seeking help. Please don't ever, ever feel shy to seek help.
- These account for 20% of your grade.
Weekly Problem Sets. Almost every week, you will have a weekly problem set containing 3 problems to hand in. They will be due Wednesdays 11:59pm, and you will have at least a week on them. You are encouraged to discuss these problems with others, but what you hand in should be in your own words.
- These are individual assignments, though you can discuss with others (fellow students/TAs/instructor). You must cite who you have worked with, even if that answer is "no one".
- These account for 40% of your grade.
Tests. There will be two tests. They will, in all probability, be in-class, timed, closed-book tests.
- These will account for 40% of the grade.
Extra Credit Problems. Along with the weekly problem set, we will give out one extra-credit problem. The same principles as in weekly problem sets hold : you can discuss with fellow students, TAs, instructor, but the thing you finally hand in should be completely in your own words. These will account for up to 5% of the grade, and can be used to "top-up" the drills and weekly psets (not your tests, but see below)

Submissions and Slack: My submission deadlines are strict : you can't be late. Indeed to incentivize this, for the weekly problem sets, if you hand in one day early, you will get +1 point (of course, one never gets more than 100%). So, start early and submit early, and pleeeease don't keep things for the last minute.

Sometimes, unforeseen things occur. To account for this, we will provide some "slack". Here are two ways:
(a) For Drills, we will simply give you 10% slack. That is, if you get X% in the end, then we will replace it by MIN(100, 1.1* X)
(b) For Weekly PSets, you can take one of two slack options:

A 10% as above
Or simply miss out one PSet. We will replace the score on this PSet by the average of your scores on all other PSets.

The second option is useful when, for some reason, you just can't hand in one problem set.

Furthermore, remember, you can always do the extra credit problems to "top up" the drill and weekly pset points. That's another reason to finish the weekly psets early : then get working on the extra credit problem.

Extras:

Ungraded Practice (UGP) Problems. Every week, I will also publish ungraded practice (UGP) problems for which "hints" and "solutions" will also be published. One suggestion is that before head-on attacking the weekly problem sets, read some UGP problems, spend around 1/2 an hour on each to see if you can make headway, take a look at the hint, give it another half-hour, and then read the solutions to see if they make sense. You will hopefully feel readier to take on the weekly pset problems.

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Final Grades

Somethings you ought to know about my courses : (a) I usually curve grades, and my medians are usually B+, (b) my tests are usually hard with medians of 70%

Having said that, here are some sufficient conditions

If you get >90% overall AND you get >70% in the tests, then you will get {A, A-}
If you get >75% overall AND you get >60% in the tests, then you will get > {B+, B, B-}
If you get >60% overall AND you get >45% in the tests, then you will get > {C+, C, C-}
If you get >50% overall AND you get >30% in the tests, then you will not fail

I stress these are necessary conditions. If you get 88% over all and 75% in tests and you have done some extra-credit, then I may give you an {A,A-}

Also, the amount of extra credit you do can help you with the "sign" in front of your letter grade. If you are at 90% and have done, say, ~5% of the extra credit (which was included in the 90%), then you may still get an A. On the other hand, your friend with 91% and 0% extra credit may get an A-. The instructor will retain the discretion over the sign.