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CS5600

Policies and Grading

Grading

  • 10%: homework
  • 40%: labs
    • Lab0 (2%), Lab1 (8%), Lab2 (10%), Lab3 (10%), Lab4 (10%)
  • 20%: midterm exam
  • 30%: final exam

Exams: All exams will be closed book. The exams will cover material from lectures, labs, homework, assigned readings, and any other taught material.

Collaboration, source material, and academic integrity

We are very serious about integrity. Sometimes students think we’re not and it is unpleasant for them when they figure out that we are serious. If you cheat, you will own the consequences.

  • The work that you turn in must be yours. Code that you turn in must be code that you wrote and debugged. Do not discuss code, in any form, with your classmates or others outside the class (for example, discussing code on a whiteboard is not okay). As a corollary, it’s not okay to show others your code, look at anyone else’s, or help others debug. It is okay to discuss code with the instructor and TAs.

  • You must acknowledge your influences. This means, first, writing down the names of people with whom you discussed the assignment, and what you discussed with them. If student A gets an idea from student B, both students are obligated to write down that fact and also what the idea was. Second, you are obligated to acknowledge other contributions (for example, ideas from Web sites or other sources). The only exception is that material presented in class or the textbook does not require citation.

  • You must not look at, or use, solutions from prior years or the Web, or seek assistance from the Internet. For example, do not post questions from our lab assignments on the Web. Ask the course staff, via email or Piazza, if you have questions about this.

  • You must take reasonable steps to protect your work. You must not publish your solutions (for example, on GitHub outside our class repo, or on Stack Overflow), in this semester or any future semester. You are obligated to protect your files and printouts from access.

  • If there are inexplicable discrepancies between exam and lab performance, we will overweight the exam, and possibly interview you. Our exams will cover the labs. If, in light of your exam performance, your lab performance is implausible, we may discount your lab grade (if this happens, we will notify you). We may also conduct an interview or oral exam.

Homework and lab lateness

Homeworks: We will not accept late homeworks, but we will drop your lowest two homework scores.

Labs: We do accept late labs, but with penalties.

  • You have 120 slack hours in total for all your late labs. Late labs with slack hours will be graded normally. You can use slack hours however you want. That means you can be 120 hours late for one lab, or 30 hours late for each of the four labs. When you’re using your slack hours, you must fill in the slack.txt file in your submission with the number of hours you use in this lab and number of hours left. TAs will check this file and make sure we agree on these numbers.

  • Late lab submissions without slack hours will be penalized. Every hour late incurs 1 point (out of 100) drop for the lab. A fraction of an hour will be counted as an hour.

  • There is a floor: labs that are 100% correct will get at least 50 points (out of 100); labs that are X% correct and, say, 100 hours late would get X% of the 50 points.

  • Anyone who asks for lab extension must send an application email to the instructor. We will consider the application according to the situation. But, here are cases that we will not grant extensions: exams, project deadlines, job interviews, business trips, and paper deadlines.

Lab challenges and Rockstar Programmer Award

There are challenges in Lab1–4, which give you extra credits.

  • Extra credits are transferable to cover up other labs. For example, you got 110/100 for Lab1, 80/100 for Lab2, and 100/100 for other labs. Your final lab grade will be 8% * (110/100) + 10% * (80/100) + 22% (100/100) = 38.8% out of 40% (see Grading for lab weights).

  • Extra credits are not transferable to exams or homework. Namely, if your final lab grade exceeds 40%, you will get 40%.

  • If your labs get full marks, you will be awarded Rockstar Programmer Award with a digital certificate to recognize your excellent performance in CS5600 Labs.

Absence from class

There is no roll call. Instead, we run “lottery” (lottery script) to randomly pick students to answer questions. If you are picked but do not show up, you get a 1% penalty from your final grade (100% in total). Your absence from one lecture only counts once (even if you’re picked multiple times that day).
Note: there is no ceiling for this penalty. If you get extremely unlucky, you may get -24 (out of 100).
Some valuable numbers: we run the lottery 10-20 times per lecture.