View All Pages

Deliverables and Evaluation

(Please read this carefully even though it's long)

Simply put, there are two avenues we will use. "Weekly problems" where students submit problems for grade worth 45%  and "Exams" which will be timed, in-class tests; there will be two "in-terms" and one "final" worth 55%. There are many extra-credit avenues. Details follow.

Deliverables

  • Problem Sets. We will provide you with PLENTY of problems to solve since this is the only way to learn and get better in this course. For most modules we will release problems before the module begins, and many of them will have solutions available. Some of them will be for handing in and they will be marked brown ("for-credit").
  • Exams. There will be three "in-class, closed-book" exams. The dates & times of these are/will be announced on the schedule. The two in-class midterms will be "topic-wise", but the finals will be cumulative. The goal of these exams are to test your mastery on the learning objectives of this course.

Extra Credit

  • Drill Quizzes. After many of the MWF classes, we will release Canvas Quizzes which would pertain to the material done around that day. These are Canvas Quizzes where most of the questions are supposed to just test the concepts done in class. These are potentially easier than the problems released every week. Students would have two attempts at these and Canvas records the average (answers shown after first attempt). 
  • Coding Assignments. We will release some coding assignments as the course goes along. These assignments will often involve coding up some of the algorithms we do in class, and use them to solve a problem at hand. Many of these are "interview" questions or questions from "Leetcode". 
  • Advanced Problems. Some problems in the weekly sets will be colored blue and are potentially more challenging interesting than the others. Even trying them out will make you stronger! However, we would recommend trying them only if you feel comfortable with the "non-blue" problems. 

Grading 

Weekly Problems. To obtain the full 45% of the "weekly problems", a student needs to get 110 points scaled linearly (if a student gets 100 points, then they will obtain 45*100/110 ~ 41%). Via the extra credits, there are multiple avenues to get these 110 points.

  • Brown Problems. Almost all brown problems are worth 5 points and will be graded in {5,4,3,2,1,0} scale implying A, A-, B, B-, C level, and unsatisfactory work, respectively. Students who receive 4 (ie, A-) or 2 (ie B-) will have the opportunity to resubmit a revision by sharing a link in a regrade request on gradescope to bump it to 5 (ie, A) or 3 (ie, B) respectively. There will be around 27-28 25 brown problems released, so one can get the full 110 points even by not scoring "A"s on all submissions.
  • Extra Credit Drill Quizzes. These can give up to 10 points for the 110 points if one does all the drills and gets 100%. Otherwise, it will be scaled linearly.
  • Extra Credit Coding Assignments. The coding assignments will be graded in {2, 1, 0} scale and will directly contribute to the 110 points. One can earn up to 12 points in this manner. 
  • Extra Credit Blue Problems. The blue problems will be graded in {2, 1, 0} scale, and will be held to a much higher bar than the brown problems. The points here will directly count towards the 110 points. One can earn up to 20 points in this manner.

As you can see, there are multiple avenues of obtaining the full 45% in the weekly work, and we recommend students use their preference and judgement in deciding which avenues to pursue.

Exams.  The two midterms are each worth 15% of the 55% points, and the cumulative finals will be worth 25% of the points.
We will  release "timed, take-in-home quizzes" which could act as "weekly practice" for these exams. These are not mandatory to do, but they act as a good "sample tests" and will be distributed topic-wise. The instruction staff will try to give feedback on these on a first-come-first-serve basis. We highly recommend you try and obtain feedback. 

Attendance Bump. To incentivize attendance in the 9L classroom, I will allocate a "discretionary bump" (of up to 1%) for students who attend almost every class. This may matter in the final letter grades if one happens to be in the "border".

 

Final Letter Grades

I usually curve grades, and the medians for COSC 31 has usually been B+

Having said that, here are some sufficient conditions

  • If you get >90% overall, then your grade will be in {A-, A}
  • If you get >75% overall, then your grade will be in {B-, B, B+, ...}
  • If you get >65% overall, then your grade will be in  {C+, C, C-, ...} 
  • If you get >60% overall, then you will not fail (but read on...)

It's been my experience that some students steadily grow into the course, and a poorer performance in earlier parts/tests of the course affect their final grades. With that in mind, the "final" will also act as a following litmus (for the "extreme grades")

  • If you get >92% on the final, then you will get an A 
  • If you get >87% on the final, then you will get at least an A-;
           ....however...
  • If you get <25% on the final, then you will probably not pass the course (hopefully, no one will be here)