Overall scores for the course will be determined roughly as follows:
| 5% | Section Participation |
| 65% | Homework |
| 10% | Midterm exam |
| 20% | Final exam |
Homework assignments will not be weighted equally because they are of different length and sophistication. Later assignments will generally be weighted more heavily because they are more involved. In particular, we expect the individual assignments to have the following weights in the overall grade:
| 5% | HW1 |
| 7% each | HW2–7 |
| 9% each | HW8–9 |
Since the structure of the course is entirely new this quarter, we will need to make adjustments on-the-fly. However, we expect overall percentage scores to be translated into course grades roughly as follows:
| 96.5% | 4.0 |
| 94.5% | 3.9 |
| 92.5% | 3.8 |
| 90.5% | 3.7 |
| 88.5% | 3.6 |
| 86.0% | 3.5 |
| 84.0% | 3.4 |
| 82.0% | 3.3 |
| 80.0% | 3.2 |
| 78.0% | 3.1 |
| 75.5% | 3.0 |
| 73.5% | 2.9 |
| 71.5% | 2.8 |
| 69.5% | 2.7 |
| 67.5% | 2.6 |
| 65.0% | 2.5 |
| 63.0% | 2.4 |
| 61.0% | 2.3 |
Grades for scores below 60% will be determined by the instructors on a case-by-case basis. (In particular, we reserve the right to pass students whose percentages would fall below 2.0 if we continued the table above.)
As an example, an average of 90% on the homework assignments and 80% on both the midterm and final exam would give an overall percentage score of 86.4%, using the tentative weights in the first table above. Per the second table, that translates to a 3.5 grade as it is above 86.0% and below 88.5%. In a similar manner, an average of 80% on the homework assignments and 70% on both the midterm and final would would translate to a 3.0 grade, while an average of 70% on the the homework assignments and 60% on both exams would translate to a 2.5 grade.