Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:10AM - 11:00AM, Olin Hall 155

Numerical grade
A final numerical grade will be based on your grades for the following course work:

• Assignments: 39%
• Exercises: 3%
• Quizzes: 4%
• Prelim 1: 13%
• Prelim 2: 15%
• Final exam: 25%
• Course evaluation: 1%

The weights are subject to change as the course progresses. For example, there may be more or fewer quizzes, and more or fewer exercises, and we may decide to give more or less weight to the prelims.

Letter grade
We will determine your letter grade using your final numerical grade from the numerical grade discussed above. But we will also take into account what we know about individual students. In general, letter grades tend to split approximately into thirds for As, Bs, and Cs. However, we don't mind giving all A's if everyone deserves an A!

The quizzes, prelims, and final play the most important part in determining letter grades. If someone doesn't get an A on some prelim or final, we find it difficult to award that person an A in the course. Anyone can hack through the assignments, spending oodles of hours and ending up with a good grade. We cannot control the amount of time spent on assignments, and we certainly can't measure the ability to progam without errors and the ability to test and debug programs. The only thing we can absolutely test is the ability to answer questions on exams.

In general, we try to write the prelims and final so that they can be done in a reasonable amount of time. For example, we would expect students to start walking out on a 1.5-hour prelim after one hour. The ability to answer a questions in record time should not be necessary.